Brean Down, that huge, almost islanded hill—a sort of miniature Gibraltar—that rises from the Axe marshes and the sand-flats opposite Uphill, to a height of 321 feet, looks from Weston, and from Uphill itself a place quite easy to arrive at, but, as sheer matter of fact, no one can reach it by road under nine miles, by way of Bleadon and Brean village. In a direct line from Uphill, across the river Axe, Brean Down is only about a mile and a half away. The readiest method of reaching this spot is by the ferry across the Axe at the end of Weston sands, a threepenny passage, generally, at low water, the matter of walking along planks laid in the mud, and a pull of three or four boat’s lengths. And then you have the breezy isolation of all Brean Down before you; and you will have it very much to yourself. Wild birds and wild flowers are the only habitants of the Down, once you have left the farmhouse on the flats behind, but the place has been the subject of not a few ambitious schemes. The summit was fortified in 1867, but suddenly ceased to be so in July 1900, when the magazine was blown up by a soldier firing his rifle into it. Whether he did this by accident, as a novel way of committing suicide, or as an ill-advised joke, does not appear, because there was nothing left of him from which to seek an explanation. A grand scheme was formulated in 1864, which a fine harbour was to be built under the lee of the Down, with piers, quays, and all the usual appurtenances of a steam-packet station, together with a railway from the Great Western. The huge sum of £365,000 was expended upon the pier, but the scheme eventually came to nothing, and the derelict works were finally destroyed in the storms of December 1872. So those far-distant merchants, the pre-Roman Phœnicians, who are said to have used this spot as a commercial port, are not immediately likely to have any successors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI BLEADON—BREAN—BRENT KNOLL TO reach the village of Brean and to come in touch again with the coast on leaving Weston-super-Mare, Uphill village is passed, with a choice of roads then presenting itself: a short road with a penny toll to pay, or a slightly longer one, free. Either one of these brings you down into the flat lands under the scarred and quarried sides of Bleadon Hill, some 550 feet high. The handsome Perpendicular tower of Bleadon church groups beautifully with a fine fifteenth-century village cross.