I’m looking for a sign that I’m on the right path – or any path, really. A landmark. Something familiar.
Finding something familiar shouldn’t be hard. Wells is England’s smallest city and I lived here from the age of 3-and-a-bit to the age of 29-and-a-bit. Yet here I am … wherever here is.
The walk had started off just fine.
Out the front door of my childhood home, skirting the grassy oblong where Gary Lineker1 would score tap-ins between bamboo-cane goalposts.
Up the path to the horse chestnut tree from which our next-door neighbour once gathered all the conkers and presented them to us in carrier bags because, unlike the other kids, my brother and I didn’t throw things at the branches as soon as the spiky green pods appeared.
Past the park where Mike Atherton2 played cover drives into the brambles.
Through the car park at Tesco where I flunked an interview for a Saturday job on the checkouts – to the relief of me and, although they didn’t know it, the shoppers of Wells.
Up the high street to the marketplace where Nick Frost waved to my mum in her office window while he filmed scenes for Hot Fuzz.
Round the Bishop’s Palace moat where little me fed the ducks and swans and 20-something me nearly threw up on a bench after an ill-advised attempt at taking up running.
Across the road where I rented my first house – an old cottage that came with the tick, tick, tick-tick-tick of deathwatch beetle and the drip, drip, drip-drip-drip of a leaky roof.
Past Tor Woods and the Cathedral School’s manicured rugby pitches where … actually, I don’t have anything for this bit.
I’m in the east end of town now and I never really ventured to these parts – not when there was an Amiga and Sensible Soccer to be played at home on the other side of town.
Before long I’m being confounded by Beryl Wood – not my old maths teacher, but a 15-acre, long, narrow stretch of beech, oak, ash, sycamore and hazel trees, not to mention a ‘clump of larch’. I know its contents because they’re detailed in a brochure – apparently the wood could be yours for £95,000. If you wouldn’t mind sorting out the footpath, that’d be great.
The route I found online says it is “always a pleasant experience wandering by the stream” in Beryl Wood. “Isn’t this pleasant,” I think to myself as I clamber over, limbo under and crawl between fallen branches.
“The next couple of miles are an exceptionally attractive part of this walk,” says the website. “Isn’t this exceptionally attractive,” I think to myself as I slip, slide and slap down a bank in an attempt to get back on track after losing the path.
I’ve come too far to turn back, but I’m really not sure whether I’m where I’m supposed to be. Then I break free of Beryl’s clutches and escape into an open field from where I can see the familiar sight I’ve been craving: The Mast.
Officially called the Mendip Transmitter, it’s a 290m-tall steel tube that stands atop the 305m-high Penn Hill and brings Freeview to the TV viewers of Somerset and parts of Dorset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and even South Wales.
On December 1, 1969, after two years of construction work, The Mast transmitted Play School and The High Chaparral: Bad Day for a Bad Man in the 4K Ultra HD of the day.
By 1970 it was bringing colour pictures from BBC One and ITV into people’s front rooms. And by the mid-1980s it was fuelling a young boy’s growing obsession with sport by beaming Test-match cricket and FA Cup finals into his eyeballs.
The Mast is more than just a transmitter though – it’s a landmark as recognisable to locals as the west front of Wells Cathedral. Wherever you’re approaching from, when you see The Mast, you know you’re nearly home.
And that’s the case today. From here it really is a pleasant experience wandering down through open fields, with views for miles across the Somerset Levels, back into town and home again.
I suppose, as our viewing is increasingly streamed rather than beamed, The Mast might no longer be required in the future and may well be taken down. That would be a shame – I’d be lost without it.
Basking sharks seen on this walk: 0
Total basking sharks seen to date: 0
Me.
Also me.
Glad you found your way in the end! Although the walk might not have been enjoyable throughout, it made for a very enjoyable article!