Glastonbury, Burrow Mump and the Somerset Levels

On the surface Frog and I are opposite in almost every way. My ideal day out is to get as far away from human civilisation as possible. His is to go shopping. Glastonbury and the Somerset Levels are a good compromise.

The town is charming – lovely people, quirky and dog-friendly shops, attractive main street, and wonderful vegetarian café (Rainbows End). It has a rich spiritual history dating back (perhaps) to prehistoric times*, and sites to see include the mysterious Tor, a ruined abbey and the intricate Chalice Well gardens. Even I like the place.

The Levels aren’t everyone’s idea of beauty but I love their strangeness and the fact that the only tourists (apart from Frog and me) are birdwatchers. Frog likes them because the walks are easy - I'm not likely to drag him up precipitous cliffs or get him lost in remote moorland. Sometimes we walk along the Taunton and Bridgwater Canal and sometimes we climb Burrow Mump, which is a smaller version of Glastonbury Tor but without the crowds and the concrete paths.

Burrow Mump and its ruined church, probably built up here because the spot was once a pagan sacred site. Glastonbury Tor has something similar

Both Burrow Mump and Glastonbury Tor would once have been islands as the whole area, until it was drained in the Middle Ages, used to be marshland. Over the last two winters the Levels have started to flood again. Some blame exceptional weather, some lack of maintenance – the ditches haven’t been cleared properly they say or the river dredged. This winter, some villages and houses have been either marooned, or paddling in several feet of water, or both, for weeks.


Here is what we saw on our day out yesterday.

Floodwaters lapping at the carpark below Burrow Mump . . .

 

. . . and at the foot of the hill itself

An inland sea

The straight line crossing this picture from the (approximate) centre to the bottom right corner is the flooded main road (A361). A fire engine stands guard in case anyone is foolish enough to try and drive along it. Would anyone be that stupid, we wondered, as an ambulance and another fire engine raced past the hill flashing their lights.  (Apologies for my usual wonky horizon.)

The River Parrett, on the bank to the right of the picture, is higher than the floods. Just out of shot (and too far away to photograph), a pump is pouring water into the river (from the floods). Talk about emptying the sea with a teaspoon.

Floods almost as far as the eye can see. Contrast this with the scene in February 2011

The scene from Burrow Mump in February 2011

* For more on the spiritual history of Glastonbury and the surrounding area you could do worse than read The Mists of Avalon, a novel by Marion Bradley (who also writes science fiction under the name Marion Zimmer Bradley)

Our much-thumbed copy of this novel about the spiritual history of Glastonbury

For a factual summary you could check out one of my publications, New Age Encyclopaedia