[1] With the church gate on your left, follow a path (signed ‘Lullington 2 miles’) between walls to a kissing gate, then walk down to the bottom left corner of the field to a footbridge then head out diagonally left over the field, passing close to the lone tree and aiming for the far left corner. Here, go ahead along a short track into a further field. Climb a stile by a wooden gate, then walk to the top left corner of the field, over a stile and into woodland.
[2] Walk ahead on an obvious track, crossing a junction with farm buildings to the right. Keep in the same direction to enter parkland and a road joining from the right. Follow this over a cattle grid onto a golf course and keep to the tarmac until you reach a turning to the right before a house, signed to the church. Take this turn and follow the driveway, leaving the golf course and descending to a cottage (The drive bends left here and leads to Orchardleigh church in a pretty setting that you may want to visit). The route now goes right just beyond the bend, climbing into woodland. Pick up a track that follows the right boundary, eventually reaching an open area cleared to make way for another golf course – until the money ran out.
[3] Cross this, veering a little to the left to keep another boundary on your right and continue to a strip of woodland ahead. Pass an old stile and descend through the trees to climb a stile, then walk down two fields separated by another stile. At the bottom of the second field climb a stile, cross the track and go over another stile, then walk down the field, boundary left. Leave the field via another stile and follow a path, eventually climbing another stile to join a tarmac driveway passing houses. Follow this, crossing the Mells River, then bear right at a junction.
[4] A few yards further, opposite ‘Fern Villa’, climb a stile on the right into a field. Cross to a further stile with a large house, once a dye works, to your right. Go over a driveway, climb another stile, then head towards the next stile. Beyond this, follow the obvious path to the far right corner of the field, cross an embankment carrying a driveway, then continue, boundary right. On reaching a bridge on the right, cross and walk ahead to cross a further bridge with a cottage beyond. You now reach a farm drive, follow this left to the main road.
Turn left along this busy road, keeping to the left verge and watching your back! In a short distance, you cross the river and reach a railway bridge. Now cross with care to a footpath on the right and follow this with the railway on your right. At the riverbank, climb a stile and walk with the river on your right to reach a stone parapet.
(A) This was Murtry Aqueduct that should have carried the short-lived Dorset & Somerset Canal over the Mells River in the early 1800s. There is no water, just a grassy top, because this aqueduct – like the rest of the canal – never saw a boat, the money running out before completion.
Continue ahead, crossing a stile beyond the parapet, and keep the river to your right, eventually climbing left to reach a road. Cross to the road opposite (signed No Unauthorised Vehicles’) and follow the tarmac into a commercial area. Go through the metal kissing gate into the lorry compound and walk on, over a bridge and ahead between buildings, then following a footpath sign directing you left. Walk, river left, to exit through a high kissing gate, from where you follow a broader path to an open area. Keep to the right here, picking up the path again and crossing a metal footbridge.
(B) Note Vallis Vale contains the famous 'De La Beche' unconformity, described in the world's first Geological Survey memoir in 1846. Here, an old quarry clearly shows the unconformity between the yellow-coloured, horizontally bedded Jurassic Inferior Oolite limestone and the underlying grey, massively bedded and steeply dipping Carboniferous Vallis Limestone. There should be Penarth Group sediments between these but they have somehow disappeared.
[5] The route now takes you through a cutting beneath an iron bridge. Continue, passing redundant kissing gates on the right with river beyond, then walk beneath a railway bridge and on via a kissing gate to reach a road at Great Elm. Go right, over the bridge with an old millpond on the right, then follow the road uphill to a right bend. Here, go ahead and over a stile, then descend to a clear riverside path that you follow to a surfaced driveway. Follow this until it starts to climb, then keep left with the river. The path eventually leads you alongside the ruined walls of Fussell’s ironworks.
(C) The ironworks of James and John Fussell produced a vast array of tools for the agricultural industry, including scythes, reaphooks, spades, shovels and axes. They also manufactured water wheels, anvils, forges, hammers and bellows. The business was a large local employer and the tools produced were exported to the far corners of the Empire. The works closed about 100 years ago and now the site is reverting back to nature, but amongst the ruins, pits where the steel was forged, hearths and kilns, as well as lengths of rail track can be discovered.
Follow the riverside path to reach a road, walk left for a few yards, then cross with care and climb a stile on the right into a field. Walk half-left across the grass, aiming to the right of the row of houses ahead. Here, join a road and walk ahead, turning left with it to reach the war memorial. Turn right and walk through the village to the 15th century Talbot Inn.
(D) A noted Mells family – the Horners – are claimed to be the descendants of Jack Horner, the nursery rhyme ‘good boy’ who ‘stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum’. According to legend, Jack Horner was the steward of the last Abbot of Glastonbury who helped himself to the deeds of Mells Manor after the Abbot had hidden them in a pie intended for King Henry VIII.
[6] Your walk continues right, along New Street (before the pub) towards the church. Leave the churchyard at the opposite side, via an avenue of yew trees and a gate, to reach a pasture. Go left, climb a stile, then walk with the wall of the manor house on your left. Climb the stile ahead, then cross the following field half-right, entering another mid-way on the far boundary. Now go half-right again, and as the ground levels, gradually head toward the right boundary, joining it by a short stretch of wall and a farm drive. In the next field, veer a little more to the right, aiming for the stile on the far side. Cross a double stile and unsafe footbridge here, then cross the next field to a further stile. Now veer slightly left and cross under telegraph wires to a wooden gate in the fence by a telegraph pole. Go through the gate and turn left along the farm drive for a few yards, before going right through a small gate.
Walk ahead with a pond on your right and through a gate on the right, into the next field. Climb ahead, boundary left, and through a further field gate, continuing to a stile in the top left corner of the field. Now keep in the same direction to another stile, with an industrial area beyond. Proceed, keeping to the left until you find yourself carefully guided towards office buildings that you pass on your left.
[7] Now pick up the roadway that will lead you out of the site. At a road junction, turn right, signed Hemington and Buckland Dinham. Walk for a short distance, then just beyond the railway bridge go right along a road that eventually gives access to the railway path.
[8] Here was Mells Siding, on the Frome to Radstock GWR line. Turn left along the railway and walk for about a mile, passing beneath one bridge, then going up to join a road at the second. Turn left here and cross the bridge. A short distance beyond the railway bridge take a signed footpath to the right and follow the left boundary of the field. At the far end cross a pair of stiles, then go diagonally right across the field towards the trees and the right boundary, which you follow to a stile in a hedge. Cross, and continue to a further stile, and beyond, along a grassy track, passing Hill House Farm on the right.
[9] This bridleway takes you back to Buckland Dinham, passing the ivy-mantled shaft of Oxley’s Colliery on the right.
(E) The shaft was sunk in 1874 but soon became waterlogged and abandoned. Another attempt to open the pit was made in 1910, but again, the level of water was more than the pumps could handle, so the venture was abandoned.
When you reach a road, turn left and walk for a short distance to the main road. Cross to the Bell Inn, passing it on your left, then follow the pavement to reach a set of steps on the left, just before a bus shelter. Climb these and walk ahead (ignoring path going left) behind the shelter to a residential cul-de-sac. Follow this to the church and your starting point.