Watchet

Watchet is a harbour town on the Bristol Channel coast of west Somerset, 15 miles west of Bridgwater, in the vale between the Quantock Hills and the Brendon Hills. The 2021 census counted 3,948 people in the parish, so this is a small town rather than a resort, and it works well as a quiet base for exploring the coast and the hills behind it, with Exmoor a short drive west.

The harbour is the centre of the place. It was rebuilt in 1708, and when the port’s trade dwindled it was converted into a marina in 2000. Beside it a statue, unveiled in 2003, commemorates Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Local tradition holds that in 1797 he walked over the Quantock Hills from Nether Stowey and came upon Watchet, and that the town inspired the poem. Walking round the harbourside takes in both in a few minutes.

For a long time the town’s living came from paper. The Wansbrough Paper Mill was once the UK’s largest manufacturer of coreboard, drawing wood from the Quantock Hills, before it ceased production and closed in December 2015. That industrial past explains the town’s working-harbour feel, and the hills that fed it are now simply somewhere to walk.

East and west of town the cliffs change colour. Between Watchet and Blue Anchor they show a distinct pale, greenish blue, which comes from local alabaster. Exmoor and the Quantocks are both within a short drive, so a week here can split between moorland days and days that never leave the shoreline.

Watchet also sits on the line of the West Somerset Railway, a heritage railway running between Bishops Lydeard and Minehead, which gives a car-free way along the coast on its running days, when you would rather not drive.