I’m off to the Watchet for the first ‘Words in Watchet’ festival, with my writing chums the Poet Macaque (who is going to be part of a poetry event) and Fenja Hill who was a winner in the Bath Literary Festival last year. They haven’t been to Watchet before and I’m excited because I know they will not only like this interesting old harbour town but that we’ll all have a memorable time! My other and I visited last year, and this is what I wrote later:
We went down the coast to the small harbour town of Watchet today. We had a little mission which was soon accomplished so we parked up and went for a wander. It’s longer ago than I realised since we visited, so it was nice to see it again, wander around, have some lunch and obviously, since we were beside the sea, we had an ice-cream. It’s on the mouth of the River Washford, down which minerals mined in the nearby Brendan Hills were shipped to be sent out from the harbour.
There’s been a settlement in this area for millennia, the site of an Iron Age hill fort is less than a mile away, and over the years since this small place has been significant in its own little way. Now it’s a great place to visit – which is what we did. We’d set off late so it was lunchtime when we arrived. We parked up and wandered to the harbour, took photos of a statue of the Ancient Mariner, and then stood wondering which of the three interesting old pubs we could see would be the best for lunch. We chose at random and went into The Bell:
The Bell Inn is currently the oldest pub in the town. Dating back to the 16th Century, it boasts many fascinating period features. What is now the function room and skittle alley, used to be stables, with horses being brought in directly through the bar. A serving hatch still exists between the pub and The Old Foundry in Swain Street, where beer was passed directly to the workers. An underground tunnel supposedly runs beneath the pub, used for the purposes of smuggling in days gone by. Local poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was believed to have stayed at The Bell Inn with his friend William Wordsworth and it is said that it was here that he began his most famous work – The Rime of The Ancient Mariner.
We had a very enjoyable lunch and then wandered some more until we found a place to buy an ice-cream. I was thinking all the time that this would be an ideal place to do some writing – maybe next time the writing chums fancy a day out, this would be ideal. Plenty of inspiration to be had, wonderful views across the sea ro Wales, or down the coast to Minehead, or in the other direction East Quantockhead. There are two museums, but we didn’t visit today, and also there’s a station for the West Somerset Railway.
We couldn’t stay too long, but as we left I thought we definitely should plan to come back, explore more and definitely visit the museums – the Market House Museum and the Watchet Boat Museum… and investigate the other pubs!
Lois Elsden 