Somerset Without the Guesswork: Where to Base Yourself and What to Plan Around

Somerset is cider orchards, moorland, limestone gorge and a great deal of flat, wet ground that produces very good sunsets. Where you put your base decides which of those you actually see, so it pays to choose before you book rather than after.

Pick your corner before you pick your cottage

The county pulls in three directions. West is Exmoor and the coast: high ground, long drives, proper walking weather even in July. The middle is the Levels, Glastonbury and Wells, where distances are short and the roads are slow for reasons that become obvious the first time you meet a tractor on a bend. The north-east edge tips towards Bath and Bristol, which suits anyone who wants a city day without committing to a city holiday.

None of these is wrong. They are just different holidays. A family with small children and one driver will have a better week in the middle, with everything within half an hour. Walkers and dog owners should go west and accept the mileage. If you want restaurants, galleries and a bed you can fall into afterwards, the north-east is the sensible call, and somewhere like Winston Manor Hotel in Bristol makes a reasonable anchor for that kind of trip. Settle the corner first. Every other decision gets easier after that.

Match the house to the group, not the photos

Self-catering in Somerset splits fairly neatly by headcount, and the price gaps are large enough to matter.

• Two to four people: Apple Cottage sleeps four, from £567 per break. Small groups tend to over-book on space and then spend the week in one room anyway.
• Five or six: The Coach House sleeps six, from £607 per break. That is a shade over £100 a head, the lowest on this list, with The Stables close behind, so it is worth checking dates for early.
• Seven: Hollies Cottage 7 sleeps seven, from £3,165 per break, and sits near a bus stop — genuinely useful if you have more adults than cars, or anyone who fancies a pub evening without drawing straws for the driving.
• Ten or eleven: The Stables sleeps ten from £1,057 per break, and Dronefield Lodge sleeps eleven from £1,316. For two families sharing, the maths on these is hard to argue with.

A word on the big houses: book them for groups who already holiday well together. Eleven beds is a lot of kitchen negotiation. If specifics matter more than size, start from the filtered lists instead — dog-friendly places to stay in Somerset, or the hot tub and pool pages if that is the deciding factor for your crowd.

Days out worth building the week around

Plan two or three fixed days and leave the rest loose. Somerset weather rewards flexibility.

For children, Foxdown Childrens Farm is the easy win: playground, cafe, toilets, baby changing and disabled access, which covers most of the things that end a day out early. Axe Valley Wildlife Park is the other one to pencil in, with parking, a cafe, a picnic area and a gift shop for the inevitable negotiation on the way out. Bring a packed lunch and use the picnic area — it turns a two-hour visit into a whole afternoon.

For grown-up rainy days, the small museums do more than you would expect. Axminster Museum has a gift shop and WiFi, Allhallows Museum and Colyton Heritage Centre both have gift shops, and Beaminster Museum and Budlake Old Post Office are the sort of quiet, specific places you remember longer than the famous ones. Whimple Heritage Centre has disabled access, a gift shop and a bar, which is more than most local history collections manage.

The small decisions that make the week

Three things, learned the hard way. First, check whether your stay has any kind of food on site — a bar or restaurant on the premises saves at least one grim evening drive, and it is worth confirming before you book rather than hoping. Second, do a big shop on arrival day; rural Somerset shops keep rural Somerset hours. Third, allow more driving time than the map suggests. The lanes are narrow, the hedges are high, and nobody has ever reversed half a mile with good grace.

Get the base right and Somerset does the rest. Get it wrong and you will spend the week on the A38.