Quantocks Quickstep

This is a strenuous 12 mile walk with an elevation gain of 2300 ft. It is suitable for experienced walkers with good fitness. The walk includes several steep hills, high heathland, fields, tracks, quiet lane sections, and rough paths.

The walk offers a variety of landscapes: wooded combes with gushing streams, high heathland with far-stretching views, sunken tracks, fields and peaceful lanes. The combes and the beech track can get very muddy; hiking boots are essential footwear for this walk.

The Route:
From Wilmot’s Pool car park, we’ll head out on to the heathland, with superb views over the great expanse of the Quantocks Hills and out to the sea; on a clear day, you can see the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm in the Bristol Channel.
We then make our way over the top before dropping down to pick up a track of ancient gnarled beech trees, after which we cross fields and then follow some tiny lanes to the village of Crowcombe. We climb up through parkland to reach the top of the Quantocks again, before dropping into another combe and then following a track back through woods and along a lane which runs past the house where the poet William Wordsworth lived with his sister for a year between 1797 and 1798; it was here, in these hills and wooded valleys, that Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote their radical collection of poetry, Lyrical Ballads, so you will literally be following in their footsteps.
We’ll pass through the village of Holford and then make our way through the ancient twisted sessile oak woodlands of Holford Combe before climbing up onto the hills again.