Banwell

Banwell is the sort of village most people experience through a windscreen, stationary, watching the same cottage for twenty minutes while they wait for the bypass that has been promised roughly since the invention of the car. It has a castle, though not a real one, built by a London solicitor who fancied living like a baron and left behind a hotel where you can now have lunch inside one man's midlife crisis. There is also the local history of a chap who dug up an ancient skeleton, reburied it, and marked the spot with a poem, which tells you everything about the pace of excitement round here. Handsome, ancient, and permanently gridlocked, Banwell is a lovely place to be from and a testing one to drive through.