He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum...

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner eating a Christmas Pie,
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum,
And said what a good boy am I.

One of the stories behind this old English nursery rhyme ( and there are a number of variants) is that it conceals a tale of political intrigue and the "plum" is in fact the manor of Mells which was intended as a bribe for the king. Concealed in a pie, the deeds were stolen by the bearer entrusted to deliver the said pie.


So over to Mells it is. This was meant to be a very muddy walk so it seemed to be sensible to chose a day when the ground was frozen. Despite this precaution, plenty of Mells mud seems to have come home with us.

The first part of the walk skirts the quarries and crosses fields - to be honest a bit dull but there were a few things to see.

Now who lives in a house like this?

Yes a quarry - possibly not what "Little Jack Horner" was after inside his pie!

Once we got down to the wooded stream it all got a lot prettier. A few small signs of spring in the clumps of snowdrops and some new nettle growth in the more sheltered areas.

Still looking very wintry. Despite the snow it was fairly warm - around 6 degrees but the snow is hanging around.

Local lore has it that it is waiting for more snow to join it before finally melting. Surprising how often that seems to be true.








And finally a couple of "impossible" sites/sights.

Firstly a water fall with no river! The water comes directly out of the hillside from one of the hidden streams that flow through the Mendips.

And finally a real oddity. The area is full of abandoned quarries but this one is really strange. Indeed so odd that we shared the site with a geological society group who had come to take their own pictures. So what is so interesting?

This is the famous De la Beche unconformity. Missing is some 90 million years.... The lower rock is grey carboniferous  ( Triassic) and the upper yellow layer which sit at a completely different angle is Jurassic inferior oolite limestone. The deposits from the intervening period lasting the 90m years are just simply not there.