A Somerset Sketch-Book (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Somerset Sketch-Book. ON the northern side of Mendip there is a narrow valley winding inland a long way, very little above sea-level; on the other side there is a wide plain, equally low, stretching to the sea, and in the middle of this the Mend Hills rise sheer up like a wall into the sky. 80 steep is their ascent that looking across the valley you are inclined to wonder how any wheeled thing ever gets up there, and indeed how the houses manage to cling to the sides without sliding down altogether. The fairy-tales of our youth used to tell of a hill of glass which had to be crossed by the bold adventurer; in winter the sides of Mendip are rather like that enchanted mountain. And when you do get to the top, past the house where the bladder-fern grows, the place looks as if, though not actually fairyland, it were very near the borders thereof. Mendip is a great tableland, bare and wide, a lonely, windy place of rolling fields and long walls of mortarless grey stone, and there is always a great deal more sky than anything else to be seen there, because until you get near the edge of the plateau you cannot see the country below at all.