Can’t afford a pad in Chelsea for the annual flower show, darling? Go camping in Taunton instead, as Somerset’s county town is so well-known among the well-heeled for its annual exhibition of blooms in the Taunton Flower Show that it’s nicknamed ‘the Chelsea of the west’. The grandness takes place in Taunton’s equally grand Vivary Park, which we are tickled to learn was once a medieval fish farm: perhaps that’s why Douglas Adams used Taunton in his book So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish...
Vivary Park is a very viewsome place to while away a Taunton day or two from a Taunton campsite: if flowers make you bloom, look for the rose garden with the Royal National Rose Society Provincial Trial Ground. More flora, and walks, and very viewsome places are around the Vale of Taunton and the Quantock, Blackdown and Brendon Hills; Exmoor and the Devon coast are close by too, and the city is less than an hour away from other Somerset days out at Wells, Weston-super-Mare, Glastonbury and Cheddar Gorge.
