Goblin Combe and Corporation Woods

Walkers in the Lake District or Wales become familiar with the effects of glaciers on the landscape: U-shaped valleys, corrie hollows, and so on. Glaciers never reached Somerset, but the county has certain so called 'peri-glacial' landforms, caused by the permafrosted tundra climate just next door to the ice cap. Where, for example, is the fair-sized river that carved out the rocky Goblin Combe? This is limestone country, and the water flows under the ground. But in the ice age times the underground was frozen, and the summer meltwaters could flow across the surface and make gorges. Ice age freeze-and-thaw action in the rocks has broken off large boulders, which lie on either side of the track, and smaller pieces which form scree at the crag foot.

‘Adventure climbing’

Goblin Combe's rocks provide short but entertaining climbs. Notices forbidding climbing are to some extent a legal fiction. The law as it stands doesn't understand the self-reliant ethos of rock-climbing; and the landowner could, in theory, be sued by a fallen climber. Nevertheless, venturing on to the rocks without the proper skill and equipment is both stupid and dangerous. Unlike many limestone cliffs in Somerset you will not – or at least should not – see bolt anchors drilled into Goblin's rocks. Rock climbers and the British Mountaineering Council have designated this an 'adventure climbing' area, where such aids to easier and safer climbing are not seen as sporting.

Limestone heath paradox

Above the crags and treetops is limestone meadow with many wild flowers. Here is also limestone heath – a paradox to gardeners, who know that heathers hate lime. Once again, the answer lies in the ice age, when acidic, sandy soil from elsewhere blew in on the sub-zero winds. Sadly, the airy openness of the crag-top meadow is spoilt by the procession of aircraft taking off from Bristol International Airport. Most of the woodland in Goblin Combe is of ash trees – typical in the Mendips, but relatively rare in Britain as a whole, where the natural succession arrives at oak, birch or (in the mountains) Scots pine. The ash, however, wins out over its rivals on this thin limestone soil; though now threatened by ash dieback disease arriving from continental Europe. Later in the walk, Corporation Wood is of beeches. Climax woodland (that is a wood that has no further tendency to evolve into some other sort of wood) is composed of a tree species that throws sufficient shade to suppress others. Beeches are particularly good at this, and so Corporation Wood is open and spacious between the smooth tree trunks. Below, there's an occasional 'etiolated' (made pale for want of light) evergreen such as holly, yew or ivy. Also, of course, the young seedlings of the beech wood itself, specially adapted to the heavy shade of their parents.

From the parking area turn right into Plunder Street and bear left past the Goblin Combe Environmental Centre to pass through a gate with estate signboard 'Footpath to Wrington only'. An earth track leads up the combe bottom, with grey crags above on the left.

After 0.75 miles (1.2km) the track passes through a wall gap. Here, turn left up steep wooden steps. At the slope top the path bends right, and runs alongside a broken wall. On the right, yew trees conceal the drop beyond, but after 100yds (91m) the path bears right, through a gap in the wall, to reach the open crag top. Turn left for 330yds (300m) through a gate and along a clearing to another gate. Through this gate a green track leads down to a noticeboard near outbuildings of Warren Farm. (The noticeboard indicates 'You are here' but actually you're slightly further to the south…)

Turn right on a green track gently uphill. As it bends right, keep ahead down a smaller track to the floor of a shallow combe. Turn right for 110yds (100m) to a junction of combes and tracks.

Turn sharp left on a wide path in the bottom of a new combe. With the wood edge visible ahead, bear left up a short, leafy path and turn right in the rough track beyond. This runs along the wood edge. Sudden loud noises here may be jays in the wood (or aeroplanes taking off!). After the corner of Spying Copse the track runs into open pasture. It turns right and then left, and after another 100yds (91m) watch out for a kissing gate on the right-hand side; a grassy way leads across a field to a lane (Wrington Hill).

Turn right for 0.75 miles (1.2km), and, just after the road leaves the beeches of Corporation Woods, turn back left on a track through a gate marked 'Congresbury Woodlands'. The house on the left has an unusual twisty hedge in topiary (tree-clipping). After a bungalow on the right-hand side the track descends to Woolmers House.

After the house but before the final outbuilding, the main track turns right (waymarked), to go through two gates into King's Wood. The broad path ahead leads to a waymarked footbridge. After another 35yds (32m) bear left with the waymarkers. The path runs down to reach a stile at the foot of the wood. Bear slightly left to a gate. Ignore the track just beyond, but turn right into a fenced path along the foot of the field. A gate down on the left leads to a tarred lane and the car park.