Best Places to Visit in Somerset
Written by UK Hidden Gems Editorial
Updated 5 August 2026
The best places to visit in Somerset are West Lydford, Blue Anchor Beach, Brean Down Fort, St Audries Bay Waterfall, Kilve Beach, Burton Pynsent Monument, Trull Waterfall and Lilstock Beach.
Somerset runs from the Bristol Channel coast back to the Levels and the Quantocks, rich in fossil beaches, coastal forts and hilltop landmarks. The great sight is Brean Down Fort, a Victorian coastal fort at the tip of its limestone headland south of Weston, reached on a long walk out along the ridge.
The west Somerset coast is fossil country: the red gypsum-streaked cliffs and alabaster of Blue Anchor near Watchet, the grey lias ledges of Kilve and remote Lilstock, and the cliff-top waterfall at St Audries Bay. Inland stand two landmarks, the tall Burton Pynsent Monument over the Levels near Curry Rivel and the little Trull Waterfall near Taunton, while the River Brue runs quietly by the bridge at West Lydford.
The Quantock Hills rise green behind much of the coast. Some are grand coastal set pieces, others quiet inland corners.
Here are eight places to visit across Somerset.
West Lydford
Photo: Neil Owen via Geograph.org.uk
West Lydford is a small village in Somerset where the River Brue runs under a seventeenth-century road bridge on the High Street, with weirs close by. St Peter's Church stands near the river, and the setting is quiet countryside rather than a developed attraction.
People sometimes swim or paddle in the Brue by the bridge, though it is an informal spot rather than a recognised bathing place.
Blue Anchor Beach
Photo: John C via Geograph.org.uk
Blue Anchor Beach is a long, flat sandy beach on the Somerset coast near Watchet, opening out wide at low tide beneath low cliffs of soft red rock. The cliffs are made of crumbling red Triassic mudstone, streaked with pale seams of gypsum and alabaster, and it is this coloured stone that gave rise to the old name Watchet Blue.
Scattered across the sand are lumps of the same alabaster, washed from the cliffs. A promenade runs behind the beach, and the little station of the West Somerset Railway, a heritage steam line, sits just above the shore, so steam trains pass close by.
It is an easygoing beach with wide views across the Bristol Channel toward the Welsh coast.
Brean Down Fort
Photo: Neil Owen via Geograph.org.uk
Brean Down Fort stands at the far seaward tip of Brean Down, a long finger of limestone reaching out into the Bristol Channel south of Weston-super-Mare. It is a Victorian coastal fort, built in the eighteen-sixties against a feared French invasion, with barracks, gun positions and a powder magazine behind a ditch across the neck.
You reach it on a walk the length of the down, with the sea on both sides and huge views to Wales. Around 1900 it was wrecked by a magazine explosion, and later rearmed in the Second World War, whose concrete remains stand among the older stone.
The National Trust now cares for it, an atmospheric ruin in a fine position.
St Audries Bay Waterfall
Photo: Roger Cornfoot via Geograph.org.uk
St Audries Bay Waterfall is a coastal fall where a stream drops straight down the cliff onto the beach at St Audries Bay, near Watchet on the Somerset coast. The base of the falls can be reached on foot along the shore only when the tide is out.
The bay is a well-known spot for fossils, its layered cliffs from the very end of the Triassic and start of the Jurassic yielding ammonites and other remains to those who search the fallen rock. It is a quiet stretch of coast reached down from the cliffs, with the Quantock hills rising behind.
Kilve Beach
Photo: Chris Gunns via Geograph.org.uk
Kilve Beach A lone ruined brick building stands near the shore, all that survives of a doomed 1920s plan to squeeze oil from the shale here. The scheme failed, but the fossils it hoped to profit from remain: grey lias ledges reach out beneath the low cliffs below the Quantock Hills, and ammonites weather loose from the flat stones and shale onto the beach.
A car park and path bring you down to this rocky stretch of the west Somerset coast, where the Bristol Channel does the collecting for you. Leave the hammer at home, though, since this is protected ground and the rock must not be struck.
Burton Pynsent Monument
Photo: Roger Cornfoot via Geograph.org.uk
Burton Pynsent Monument William Pitt the Elder raised this column in the seventeen-sixties to remember Sir William Pynsent, a squire who so admired the statesman that he left him his entire estate. Some hundred and forty feet of slender Doric stone on a square base, capped by a domed cupola and an urn, it stands alone in the fields near Curry Rivel and carries a spiral stair up the inside.
The design has been credited to Capability Brown, usually known for his landscapes. Rising from private farmland above the Somerset Levels, it can be seen from the surrounding lanes and paths, a spike of pale stone over wide green country.
Trull Waterfall
Photo: Shazz via Geograph.org.uk
Trull Waterfall is a small fall on the Sherford Brook, just east of the village of Trull a couple of miles south of Taunton in Somerset. It is a modest local feature rather than a big natural cascade, and it appears on a short circular walk with a viewing bridge over the stream.
The Winchester Arms pub stands nearby on Church Road. Some accounts say the fall began as a weir built to feed a mill, though that is not firmly confirmed.
Lilstock Beach
Photo: Neil Owen via Geograph.org.uk
Lilstock Beach Ammonites, belemnites and even the bones of marine reptiles have come out of the rock here, weathered from beds laid down some two hundred million years ago at the turn from Triassic to Jurassic. The shore is a wave-cut platform of dark shale and pale limestone ledges, broken up with shingle, sand and mud below low, crumbling cliffs, with the island of Steep Holm out across the water.
This is a protected geological site on the Somerset side of the Bristol Channel, west of Kilve and Watchet. A small car park waits back in the hamlet, and a short track drops down to the foreshore.
FAQs
Where can you find fossils in Somerset?
Kilve and remote Lilstock on the west Somerset coast are the best fossil spots, their grey lias ledges yielding ammonites, belemnites and even marine reptile bones, and the layered cliffs at St Audries Bay near Watchet give up ammonites too. These are protected sites, so at Kilve the rock cannot be hammered, and finds are searched from the fallen rock on the beach.
What is Brean Down Fort?
Brean Down Fort is a Victorian coastal fort at the seaward tip of Brean Down, a limestone finger reaching into the Bristol Channel south of Weston-super-Mare, built in the eighteen-sixties against a feared French invasion. Reached on a long walk along the down, it was wrecked by a magazine explosion around 1900, rearmed in the Second World War, and is now a National Trust ruin.
Which places in Somerset make good landmarks and views?
The Burton Pynsent Monument, a hundred-and-forty-foot Doric column near Curry Rivel, is a landmark for miles over the flat Somerset Levels, and Brean Down gives huge views over the Bristol Channel to Wales from its ridge. Blue Anchor Beach also looks across the Channel toward the Welsh coast.
Conclusion
Somerset runs from the Bristol Channel coast to the Levels and the Quantocks. Brean Down Fort crowns its limestone finger south of Weston, reached on a long walk out along the ridge, and the west Somerset coast is fossil country: the red alabaster cliffs of Blue Anchor near Watchet, the grey lias ledges of Kilve and remote Lilstock, and the cliff-top waterfall at St Audries Bay.
Inland stand the tall Burton Pynsent Monument over the Levels near Curry Rivel and the little Trull Waterfall near Taunton, while the Brue runs quietly by the bridge at West Lydford. From clifftop fort to fossil beach, these are the places to seek out across Somerset.
