High standards of grub are the norm in West Somerset

Wandering through the Vale of Taunton recently, I reflected that few places on earth could be more fair in April-time. The trees were still mostly bare but the blossom was out in many places, and the entire countryside bore an air of expectation and awakening in the pale, tentative sunlight. The carpet of arable, pasture and woodland leans upward from the valley bottom into the Brendon and Blackdown hills, with the Quantocks to the north-east. Not much has changed here in 100 years or indeed 200. The landscape is a magical blend of man’s making and pure nature. Here is farming and nothing else: no industry, few roads of any consequence, a single railway line resurrected from the Beeching massacre of half a century ago, its trains whistling mournfully from time to time. Each farm is connected to the one-lane ‘main’ road by a track sometimes a mile or two long, and is the true link of this rural kingdom.