THE LEVELS
At the heart of Somerset, lies a beautiful area called the 'Levels and Moors' which has international status as one of the most important wetlands of its type in the world.
This unique landscape is one of the lowest, flattest areas in the country. In ancient times it was known as the summerlands... because it was too wet to use in the winter... and it is thought this is where the county of Somerset got its name.
The Somerset Levels and Moors is the largest area of lowland wet grassland and wetland habitats in Britain covering 35,000 hectares.
They stretch across the lowlands between the Mendip and Quantock Hills and are what is left of a once wider area of flooded fenland. The Somerset Levels have eight rivers and drains running through it: the Kenn, Yeo, Axe, Brue, Huntspill, King's Sedgemoor Drain, Parrett and Tone. The land here is only a few metres above sea level and is criss-crossed with ditches, rhynes (pronounced reens) and rivers that take the huge amounts of water through the landscape. Glastonbury Tor is the most prominent landmark in the Levels rising up 521 feet. In days gone by this was actually an island surrounded by sea and later inaccessible marsh hence it becoming known as the Isle of Avalon. The marshes that lie all around Glastonbury and as far west as the coast are collectively called The Avalon Marshes.
Today these wetlands are renowned for internationally important numbers of waterfowl who come here to feed and roost in winter. In summer waders come here to breed and it is one of the best places in lowland England to see breeding waders. Cattle grazing, hay and silage production maintain these large areas of countryside.
Until a thousand years ago, the whole area from Yeovil to the Bristol Channel was a permanent infiltration of sea. The local high tides - the second highest in the world - surged at will across these flats, creating salt marshes and lakes.
In those days the inhabitants were lake dwellers, catching eels from dug-out canoes, living in villages raised on platforms, and making summer tracks from wood and willow to lay through the marshes.
Then, in the 13th century, the land started to be reclaimed, funded by the powerful abbeys at Glastonbury, Muchelney and Athelney. Sea walls were built, drainage ditches dug, and primitive wind pumps began work amongst a tessellation of rhynes (ditches) and droves (tracks) broken by marching rows of pollarded willows, interrupted occasionally by clusters of houses on rising swirls of land - the basic skeleton of the Levels today.
The legacy of the past and the need to preserve the environment for the future has combined to produce today's beautiful landscape.
In a few places, isolated outcrops of higher land rise abruptly from the flat land and were once islands in the flooded plains.The most dramatic of these are: Glastonbury Tor, Brent Knoll and Burrow Mump. Villages with "zoy" in their name were also once islands such as Chedzoy, Middlezoy and Westonzoyland.
Westonzoyland is still a small village, most famous as the setting for the last battle fought on English soil, the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685.
An interpretation trail allows the visitor to follow in the footsteps of the Duke of Monmouth and his rebels as they took up the attack against the Royal Army.
The battlefield site and memorial are just on the outskirts of the village.
Paws on the Levels train in a field just a few hundred yards along the track from this famous battlefield, in a secluded yet accessible spot.
