Geography
West Somerset benefits from one of the most scenic landscapes in England. Nearly two thirds of the western land area of the district forms part of Exmoor National Park designated in 1954 while on the eastern edge of the district are the Quantock Hills which, in 1956, became the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty created in the UK. Large areas of Exmoor and the Quantock Hills are also designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest because of their value for wildlife.
The West Somerset Railway runs through most of the district, from Bishop's Lydeard in the south east, to Minehead in the north west. Operated mainly as a tourist attraction, the railway runs mostly steam and some diesel locomotives.
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Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)