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The name Somerset originally meant "the land of the summer people", a reference to the custom of the hill farmers moving their livestock down to summer grazing lands on the vast Somerset Levels.
The Levels, once an inland sea, were progressively drained from early medieval times and are now one of Europe's great wetlands, though only constant management of rivers and waterways keeps them dry: most of the area still lies below sea level. It's a place of huge skies and distant horizons, with rhynes, or drainage channels, forming livestock-proof field boundaries. The Levels reach from the foot of the Mendips in an arc through South Somerset, Taunton Deane and Sedgemoor where they are bounded by the first rising ground of the Quantock Hills.
In all they extend to 150,000 acres, an area now largely protected for its wildlife. More than £3 million a year is paid in conservation grants to local farmers for maintaining traditional grazing practices and, in some cases, allowing their fields to shallow flood in winter to encourage huge populations of wading and water fowl. |
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| The result is a constantly changing vista of silver lakes in winter, meadows carpeted with wild flowers in spring, cattle grazing lush summer pastures, and autumn slowly stripping away the foliage to reveal another equally beautiful landscape. |
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