Anna''s Outing To The Wellington Monument
A Memory of Wellington.
I have driven up and down the M5 so many times and seen a monument on top of the Blackdown Hills. Each time I passed I wondered what it was and so eventually I got hold of an Ordnance Survey map and identified it as the Wellingotn Monument. I promised myself that one day I would actually NOT drive past but I would make an outing specifically to go and see it. And so today I took my wife Elizabeth and granddaughter Anna for a picnic to Somerset.
We found a small muddy National Trust car park which was filled with half a dozen cars, then tramped along a bumpy puddle strewn track for half a mile between neglected woods towards the unseen monument. What a disappointment! Not only was the monument surrounded by bracken and trees which obscured the hoped for viewpoint over the valley to the north but the monument itself was totally enclosed within a stockade of ten feet high garishly painted steel fencing. The stone obelisk was covered in scaffolding and we were not impressed. Its only when I look at this Francis Frith view taken almost one hundred years ago that I realise just how magnificent the monument could be - an imposing stone folly on the highest land around reached by a climb through woodland.
Today's outing makes a sad contrast with past splendour.
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