Stogumber

This village of around 600 people is a real gem and our favourite on The Coleridge Way Walk. The name is a corruption of Stoke, meaning ‘Dairy Farm,’ and the Gunner family.  It’s a mile or so off the route, sitting in a vale between the Quantocks and Brendon’s, and truly unspoilt. Accessed from the Coleridge Way via an ancient sunken track, you then drop off the ridge into its array of colourful thatched cottages that stretch up the village hill to the welcoming White Horse Inn. The village still has its own tiny shop and the impressive St Mary's Church with its rather ghostly triangle of grass, where many of the village were buried together in a common grave during a plague.

As you wander through the village you are surrounded by unusual colour-washed and thatched properties, former mills and shops,  a row of alms houses that date to around 1760 and a restored Tithe Barn. Stogumber was famous for its ale, made with the help of a mineral spring in the village, and advertised as 'good for the clergy and others with weak lungs.'  The White Horse houses walkers along with another B&B in the village and the popular bar still serves up wholesome food and ale to this day for those arriving off the Coleridge Way.