Six Somerset day trips within an hour of Glastonbury
Glastonbury sits almost exactly in the middle of Somerset, which makes it an unusually good base for a short break. Cathedral city, limestone gorge, wetland reserves and a long flat coastline are all within an hour, most of them within half of one, and none of them require a motorway.
Six worth the drive, roughly in order of how close they are.
1. Street — about 10 minutes
The next town along, and the closest thing to an errand on this list. Street grew up around the Clarks shoe company, and Clarks Village — one of the earliest factory outlet centres in Britain — is still the main draw, alongside a shoe museum that is better than it sounds. It is also home to the Strode Theatre.
Half a day. Useful on a wet afternoon, and the obvious answer if one of you wants shopping and the other wants the Tor.
2. Wells — about 20 minutes
The smallest city in England, and the one everyone should see. Wells Cathedral is extraordinary — the scissor arches alone justify the trip — and next to it sits the moated Bishop's Palace with its gardens and its swans. Vicars' Close, just behind the cathedral, is claimed as the oldest purely residential street in Europe still intact.
The market square holds a market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the whole centre is walkable in an afternoon.
A full day if you take the cathedral slowly, half if you don't. The single best day trip from Glastonbury.
3. The Somerset Levels — 10 to 30 minutes
Not a destination so much as a landscape: flat, drained wetland stretching north and west of Glastonbury, cut through with rhynes and droves and old peat workings, with the Tor rising out of it like an island — which, historically, it more or less was.
The reserves out here are nationally important for birds. Ham Wall and Shapwick Heath, both a short drive west, are the best known, and in autumn and winter they host the starling murmurations that draw people from across the country: hundreds of thousands of birds turning over the reedbeds at dusk. Check the reserves' own updates before you go — the roosts move, and the birds are not obliged to perform.
Half a day, or an hour at dusk. Free. Bring boots and binoculars; check each reserve's guidance on dogs before you set out.
4. Wookey Hole — about 25 minutes
A show cave system in the Mendips, carved out by the River Axe, with a long history of human use and a famous resident witch of legend. It has been developed into a family attraction with a good deal built around the caves themselves, which some visitors love and others find beside the point — go knowing which of those you are.
Half a day. Best with children; book ahead in school holidays.
5. Cheddar Gorge — about 30 minutes
The largest gorge in Britain, a limestone canyon with cliffs running up to around 450 feet, and the road through it is one of the great short drives in England. The caves at the bottom — Gough's Cave among them, where Britain's oldest complete human skeleton was found — are the ticketed attraction, and the clifftop walk above the gorge is free and arguably better.
The village at the foot is touristy in the classic English way, cheese included. Take the walk anyway; the views from the top are worth every step.
A full day with the caves, half with just the walk. Parking fills early in summer.
6. The coast: Burnham-on-Sea and Brean — about 40 minutes
West across the Levels to the Bristol Channel, where the beaches are enormous, flat and sandy, and the tide goes out a very long way. Burnham-on-Sea has a proper seaside front and a famously photogenic wooden lighthouse standing on the sand; Brean, just north, gives you miles of open beach and Brean Down beyond it — a limestone headland running out into the Channel with a Victorian fort at the end and one of the best short coastal walks in the region.
A caution worth taking seriously: the mudflats and the tidal range on this stretch of coast are genuinely dangerous, and the warning signs are not decorative. Stay on the sand.
A full day. Note that many beaches here carry seasonal dog restrictions roughly between May and September.
Further, if you have the appetite
Bath is around an hour and Bristol a little more; both are entirely doable as a day, though both deserve better than one. Longleat, Stourhead and Montacute House all sit within an hour too, in different directions.
A base in the middle of it: No. 48 Magdalene Street is a one-bedroom cottage in central Glastonbury with free on-street parking — useful when the day starts with a drive. Sleeps two, pets welcome, self check-in.
How to spread them over a short break
- Two nights. Keep one day for Glastonbury itself — the Abbey, Chalice Well and the Tor — and give the other to Wells.
- Three nights. Add Cheddar Gorge, and finish with an hour on the Levels at dusk.
- A week. The coast, Bath, and enough repeat visits to the Tor to see it in three different weathers, which is the correct number.
Driving times above are typical rather than promised — check them for your day, particularly in summer and during festival week, when the roads around Glastonbury behave quite differently.