South West England
South of Bristol and Bath, the Mendip Hills (Black Down: 325 m) are the first group of hills in South West England. The Purbeck Hills line the South Coast, and a number of other groups of hills are also present in the area: the Quantock Hills (Will's Neck: 384 m), Blackdown Hills, Dorset Downs, Salisbury Plain and Cranborne Chase. Glastonbury Tor, although of only modest height (158 m), is significant for its claimed association with Arthurian legend.
The highest and largest upland areas in the south-west are, however, the moors of the South-west Peninsula. Exmoor, in northern Somerset, and abutting the Bristol Channel, reaches 519 m at Dunkery Beacon, and is famous as the setting of Lorna Doone. Dartmoor, in Devon, reaches over 2,000 ft (High Willhays: 621 m), and was the landscape for The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Bodmin Moor, further to the south-west, is smaller (Brown Willy: 420 m), and is perhaps best known for the Beast of Bodmin Moor. Like Dartmoor, it is a granite plateau, whereas Exmoor is Old Red Sandstone.
Read more about this topic: Mountains And Hills Of England
Famous quotes containing the words south, west and/or england:
“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
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—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)