ANDREW SWIFT v2.qxp_Layout 2 17/12/2021 11:20 Page 1
WALK
Brean Down looking eastward to Uphill
Infinite riches Looking for a new walk to blow away the cobwebs? Andrew Swift takes us on a journey to Brean Down’s breezy heights and finds, just as renowed travel writer S.P.B Mais did in 1938, “infinite riches in little room”...
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s the crow flies, Brean Down lies 20 miles south-west of Bristol. Whichever way you choose to get there – unless you intend to fly – the last part of your journey involves heading due north, past a succession of chalet parks, with what looks like an island rearing up ahead. Between around 5000 and 2000 BCE, when sea levels were higher than they are today, Brean Down was indeed an island. For the moment, however, although it’s cut off to the north by a muddy estuary and lies stranded amid marshy moorland, you can still reach this outlier of the Mendip Hills overland. Even so, it’s very much a place apart. When you reach the end of the road and pull into the car park to continue on foot, the path soon ends at the bottom of a steep flight of steps zigzagging up the cliff. There is another way to reach Brean’s breezy heights, by turning inland along an old military road which swings round the back of the down. There are even a couple of mobility scooters which can be hired to approach the down this way. But, if you can, you should go for the steps, as the views at the top are stunning – eastwards to the clifftop church at Uphill, southwards over miles of shining sands, and northwards over Weston Bay. On a clear day, the long, low white line you can see on the Welsh coast 18 miles away is Llanwern steelworks. What you can’t see, though, is the tip of the headland, as the land continues – gradually but relentlessly – to rise, and you won’t discover what lies at the far end until you’re almost upon it. There is much else to discover, however. Turn right for a few metres, and you’ll discover a World War Two gun emplacement. Beyond it lies a large concrete arrow embedded in the turf, installed around the same time to direct trainee pilots towards bombing
62 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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JANUARY 2022
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No 206
ranges on Brean Sands. A little further on is an abandoned building, its windows barred, a warning notice posted, which looks as if it too might have a military provenance. Its story, though, couldn’t be more different. In 1912, a local naturalist called Harry Cox persuaded the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to buy the shooting rights to Brean Down so that they could ban shooting there. This made it one of England’s earliest bird sanctuaries, and when Harry Cox was appointed its warden he built himself this house so that he could enforce the ban. And here he stayed until his death in 1949. To the right of his house are the earthworks of an Iron Age hillfort, and, as you turn to head west along the down, you pass a Bronze Age round barrow and the site of a Roman temple. After around 500 metres, when you reach the first summit, it is worth turning to take in the view back toward Uphill and the Mendips. From here, you can see the whole expanse of the down, with its few trees leaning inland away from the prevailing wind. As you continue, the track descends before climbing past a series of ridges which formed part of a medieval field system. The next summit, marked by a trig point, is Brean Down’s highest – 97 metres above sea level. A little further on, as the land shelves away, the headland finally comes into view far below, dominated by the ruins of a vast 19th-century fort. As you head down to it – with care, because the track is steep and slippery – you pass a more recent ruin: a World War Two observation post, looking like the lair of a Bond villain or something transplanted from Tracy Island, with its dim, damp interior commanding views of the channel approaches. It makes a suitably atmospheric introduction to the fort itself,
