West Country Walks & Legends

West Country Walks & Legends combines walking and local legend across England’s West Country, linking places, landscape and the stories attached to them. John H. N. Mason’s account treats the region as both a geographical area to be traversed and a cultural landscape shaped by inherited traditions.

Among its local details is the story that Bessie’s Cove took its name from Bessie Burrows, who was said to have kept a small ‘kiddlywink’ inn on the cliff-top. The book’s subject range includes West Country description, travel and folklore, while its bibliography points towards the sources behind the material. It offers a place-based record of regional names, walks and traditional accounts rather than a general survey of British legend.