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Geologically closer to Devon than Somerset, the Quantock Hills are a cultivated outpost of Exmoor, similarly crossed by clear streams and grazed by red deer. Just twelve miles in length and mostly between 800 and 900 feet high, the range is enclosed by a triangle of roads leading up from Bridgwater and Taunton, within which snake a tangle of narrow lanes connecting secluded hamlets, reached by local buses from these two towns. North of Taunton, the first villages you pass through on the A358 give you an immediate introduction to the flavour of the Quantocks. BISHOPS LYDEARD , four miles up, has a splendid church tower in the Perpendicular style; the church's interior is also worth a look for its carved bench-ends. The village is the terminus of the West Somerset Railway , linked by buses #28A and, on Sunday, #928 from Taunton's train station (from which you can save money by buying a combined bus-and-rail ticket to Minehead). From mid-March to the first week of November (plus some dates in December) steam and diesel trains depart up to eight times daily, stopping at renovated stations on the way to Minehead, some twenty miles away. For a talking timetable call 01643/707650, for other enquiries call 01643/704996, or log on at . A couple of miles north, COMBE FLOREY is almost exclusively built of the pinkish-red sandstone characteristic of Quantock villages. For over fifteen years (1829-45), the local rector was the unconventional cleric Sydney Smith, called "the greatest master of ridicule since Swift" by Macaulay; more recently it's been home to Evelyn Waugh. Eight miles west of Bridgwater on the A39, on the edge of the hills, the pretty village of NETHER STOWEY is best known for its association with Samuel Taylor Coleridge , who walked here from Bristol at the end of 1796 to join his wife and child at their new home. This "miserable cottage", as Sara Coleridge called it, was visited six months later by William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, who soon afterwards moved into Alfoxton House, near Holford, a couple of miles down the road. The year that Coleridge and Wordsworth spent as neighbours was extraordinarily productive - Coleridge composed some of his best poetry at this time, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan , and the two poets in collaboration produced the Lyrical Ballads , the poetic manifesto of early English Romanticism. In Coleridge Cottage (April-Sept Tues-Thurs & Sun 2-5pm; GBP3; NT), you can see the man's parlour and reading room, and, upstairs, his bedroom and an exhibition room containing various letters and first editions. The village library in nearby Castle Street has a Quantock Information Centre (Mon 2.30-5pm, Wed 10am-12.30pm & 2-5pm, Fri 10am-12.30pm, 2-5pm & 5.30-7pm; tel 01278/732845), which can provide walking itineraries and local information. As for accommodation , the only choice in the village is the Rose & Crown Inn , St Mary Street (tel 01278/732265; under GBP40); this and the tile-fronted George next door also provide the only sustenance to be had in the village, including bar meals. The nearby village of HOLFORD has Quantock House (tel 01278/741439; under GBP40), a beautiful Elizabethan thatched cottage, and a signposted two-mile walk from the village centre is a youth hostel (tel 01278/741224), where you can also camp in the grounds. Holford's Plough Inn , where Virginia and Leonard Woolf spent their honeymoon, serves simple snacks , and is a stop on the #15 Bridgwater-Minehead bus route. From Nether Stowey, a minor road winds south off the A39 to the highest point on the Quantocks at Wills Neck (1260ft); park at Triscombe Stone, on the edge of Quantock Forest, from where a footpath leads to the summit about a mile distant. Stretching between the Wills Neck and the village of Aisholt, the bracken- and heather-grown moorland plateau of Aisholt Common is the heart of the Quantocks - the best place to begin exploring this central tract is near West Bagborough , where a five-mile path starts at Birches Corner. Lower down the slopes, outside the village of Aisholt, the banks of Hawkridge Reservoir make a lovely picnic stop. The Quantock seaboard can be seen at its best at Kilve Beach , signposted off the A39 below Holford. Not so much a beach as a grand shale-studded foreshore, it's perfect for messing about in the rock pools and roaming the seaweedy shore. Six miles to the west, WATCHET is Somerset's only port of any consequence, and the place from which Coleridge's Ancient Mariner set sail. Having made a halt at the harbour, the quiet heart of the village, you can get a good all-round view from St Decuman's church above it, built on the site of the saint's martyrdom. Decuman, who floated over the sea from Wales, was decapitated by a Danish invader who was instantly converted when the saint picked up his bleeding head, washed it in a stream, and gently placed it next to him as he lay down to die. Watchet is only a stop away on the West Somerset Railway from Washford , from where it's a ten-minute walk to Cleeve Abbey (daily: April-Sept 10am-6pm; Oct 10am-5pm; Nov-March 10am-1pm & 2-4pm; GBP2.60; EH), a Cistercian house founded in 1198. Although the church itself has been mostly destroyed, the convent buildings are in excellent condition, providing the country's most complete collection of domestic buildings belonging to this austere order. An exhibition here illustrates how the monks lived and how the local population unsuccessfully pleaded with Henry VIII for the abbey's survival.
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