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:
“These South savannahs may yet prove battle-fields.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“All the great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping it through England for seven years made Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it through New England for twice seven trained Wendell Phillips.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)