The Best Summer Picnic Spots in Somerset

Eight places to spread a blanket, stay far too long, and remember exactly what summer is for.

There's a particular kind of summer afternoon that Somerset does better than anywhere else. It starts in the mid-afternoon — later than you intended, as always — when someone finally says right, let's go, and you pack the blanket and the children and something cold to drink and you leave. And you don't come back until the light has gone golden and low and soft, and the air is still warm on your skin, and the children are tired in that good, heavy way that only comes from a day fully spent outdoors.

That's the summer picnic at its best. Not rushed. Not over-planned. Not a race to eat before it rains. A slow afternoon that stretches into early evening, with nowhere to be and no reason to hurry. Laughter carrying across the grass. A playlist that becomes the soundtrack to a memory. Someone doing handstands by the lake while somebody else tops up the glasses and wonders how it got to be nearly eight o'clock already.

Somerset in summer is extraordinary, and not just because the sun occasionally does what it's supposed to. The gardens are at their peak, the rivers are warm enough to paddle in, the village fetes are in full swing, and the evenings go on so long they feel like a small act of generosity from the universe. These are the eight spots worth making the most of.

Pack your best blanket. Bring something worth drinking. Stay until the light tells you it's time to go home.

1. Stourhead, Stourton

This is what summer looks like when it's showing off.

I've written about Stourhead in the autumn guide — the lake reflecting copper and gold, the trees on fire. But summer Stourhead is an entirely different experience, and the two shouldn't be confused. In summer, the canopy is fully out: deep, lush, impossibly green, reflected in the lake below in long shimmering columns. The temples peep through the trees. The hydrangeas up near the house put on a display so spectacular it stops you mid-sentence. And the whole thing — on the right day, in the right light — looks quite honestly like a scene from Bridgerton.

This is the picnic you plan. The one where you bring a proper blanket, something genuinely nice to eat, something cold and sparkling to drink. You find a spot on the grass alongside the lake, the children race ahead and practice handstands on the slope, and you sit in one of the most beautiful man-made landscapes in England and feel very pleased indeed that you live within driving distance of it.

Go late afternoon. The day-trippers thin out, the light softens, and suddenly it's just you and the geese and the long golden reflections on the water. Stay for the golden hour. You won't regret it.

What I'd pack: This warrants the effort. A proper cheese board — Godminster cheddar, something creamy, something sharp. Good bread, grapes, charcuterie if you're feeling ambitious. Something cold and sparkling. Strawberries, obviously. A blanket worth lying on. This is a lingering picnic, not a grab-and-go.

Practical tip: Stourhead is National Trust — free for members, entry fee otherwise. The car park fills quickly on summer weekends so arrive before noon or after 3pm. The hydrangea walk near the house is at its best from late July into August - worth the short detour before you find your picnic spot by the lake.

2. Barrington Court, Ilminster

Roses, warm stone, and the particular peace of a walled garden in full summer bloom.

I've been saving Barrington Court for summer since the beginning of this series, and here's why: it earns it. The walled garden at Barrington — designed by Gertrude Jekyll, which tells you something about the level of intention behind it — reaches its absolute peak in summer. Roses climbing every wall, lavender humming with bees, the cutting garden in full riot, the warm Ham stone of the house glowing in afternoon light. It's the kind of garden that makes you want to sit very still and just look.

The grounds are generous and the atmosphere is unhurried in a way that bigger National Trust properties sometimes aren't. Families spread out across the lawns, children explore freely, and there's enough space to find a quiet corner and feel like you have it to yourself. The kitchen garden is particularly wonderful in summer — the kind of vegetable growing that makes you briefly believe you could do it yourself at home. You couldn't. But it's a pleasant thought.

This is a summer afternoon picnic - long, slow, accompanied by something good to eat and nothing in particular to do afterwards.

What I'd pack: Something that matches the occasion — smoked salmon, cucumber sandwiches, something involving strawberries and cream. A bottle of something cold and English. A good book you probably won't read because the garden will keep distracting you. That's fine.

Practical tip: National Trust — free for members. Barrington Court is less well-known than some NT properties which means quieter car parks and easier access on summer weekends. Worth combining with a walk through the village of Barrington itself — genuinely one of the prettiest in Somerset.

3. Tarr Steps, Exmoor

The devil built it. He still has sunbathing rights on the stones. The children have the river.

Tarr Steps is one of those Somerset places that sounds like it ought to be fictional. An ancient clapper bridge on Exmoor, seventeen stone slabs spanning the River Barle, built — according to local legend — by the devil himself, who apparently still holds the sunbathing rights on the central stones. It's Bronze Age. It's been there for around three thousand years. It floods, gets dismantled, gets put back together again, and carries on.

In summer, the river is warm enough for paddling — and the children will. They always do. There are deeper pools upstream where brave adults have been known to swim, and rope swings, and the particular summer joy of cold river water on hot feet. The circular walk through ancient oak woodland takes about two miles and brings you back to the bridge having seen several different kinds of spectacular.

There's a pub right next to the bridge — the Tarr Farm Inn — with a summer terrace, which means the logistics of a Tarr Steps afternoon are extremely well catered for. Picnic by the river, pub for a drink, walk, river again, drive home with damp children and very happy adults.

What I'd pack: Something portable and unfussy — good sandwiches, fruit, something for the children. You'll be walking and paddling, so keep it packable. The pub handles the rest if you need it to.

Practical tip: The narrow lane to Tarr Steps has a small car park that fills up fast on summer days — arrive early or be prepared to walk a little further. Bring river shoes or old trainers for the paddling. The walk is suitable for children but the paths are uneven — proper footwear for everyone.

4. Stockhill Wood, Priddy

When the summer is too hot for everything except a Mendip woodland and a very long game of dens.

There are days in July and August when what you actually want is shade. Not beach, not open hillside, not anywhere the sun can find you directly — just deep, cool, green woodland with wide paths and children who've been given permission to disappear for a while. Stockhill Wood near Priddy is exactly that.

It's in the Mendip Hills AONB, it's free, it's crisscrossed with broad forest paths wide enough to walk abreast, and it has that particular ancient woodland atmosphere — foxgloves in the clearings, deer you might glimpse between the trees, dragonflies near the pools, a silence that isn't quiet so much as full of small sounds. The children can build dens in the undergrowth, follow paths that might go somewhere or might loop back to where they started, and generally have the kind of free-range woodland afternoon that feels increasingly rare and precious.

Pack a proper picnic, find a clearing, and let the afternoon take its time. Nobody needs to be anywhere. The Mendips will handle the rest.

What I'd pack: Proper picnic food that travels well in a rucksack — substantial sandwiches, cheese, fruit, something sweet for halfway through the walk. A flask of something cold. A groundsheet if the forest floor looks damp. Den-building requires both hands, so nothing that needs a table.

Practical tip: Stockhill Wood is freely accessible, managed by Forestry England, with a car park on the B3135 between Priddy and Chewton Mendip. Combine with a visit to Priddy village — the green is one of Somerset's loveliest, and the Queen Victoria pub does a very decent summer lunch.

5. Stanton Drew Stone Circles

Four thousand years old. £1 in an honesty box. Beer garden next door. Genuinely one of Somerset's most overlooked treasures.

Most people in Somerset have heard of Stanton Drew. Most people have never been. This is a mistake they should correct immediately.

The stone circles at Stanton Drew are the third largest megalithic site in Britain — larger than Avebury in terms of the number of stones, older than Stonehenge in parts, and almost entirely free of the queues, the coach trips and the gift shops that follow their more famous counterparts. You park in a small field, pay a pound into an honesty box, and walk into a meadow where eight-tonne standing stones have been arranged in three circles by people who were doing this four thousand years ago and clearly knew what they were about.

In summer, the grass is long and the circles sit in it quietly, each one a different size, the Great Circle stretching further than you expect. There's no visitor centre telling you what to think. There's no audio guide. There's just the stones, the meadow, the summer sky, and you. It's the kind of place that asks you to be still for a moment and genuinely think about time.

And then there's the Druid's Arms pub immediately next door, with a summer beer garden, which strikes me as an ideal arrangement.

What I'd pack: Something worth the occasion — good food, something properly cold to drink, a blanket big enough to lie on and look up at the sky. This is a contemplative summer picnic. Let it be slow. Let it be quiet. That's the whole point.

Practical tip: Stanton Drew village is between Bristol and Wells on the B3130. The stones are managed by English Heritage — £1 honesty box at the field gate, cash only, access at the landowner's discretion. The Druids Arms next door has a summer beer garden that deserves to be used before or after. Go on a weekday for the best chance of having the circles largely to yourself.

6. Burnham-on-Sea

For the days when only a proper British seaside summer will do.

Not every summer picnic needs to be elegant. Some of them need to be loud, slightly sandy, accompanied by the smell of sun cream and vinegar, with children running at the water's edge and everyone slightly disbelieving that the sun is actually doing this. Those days need Burnham-on-Sea.

Somerset isn't known for its beaches — it's not Cornwall, it doesn't pretend to be — but Burnham on a good summer day delivers something that feels equally good in a completely different way. The sands are wide and flat, the seafront is cheerful rather than chic, the fish and chips are exactly what you came for, and there's a particular wholesome, unironic British seaside energy that I find deeply comforting. We've been going since the children were tiny. They know exactly where they want to go. We've never once come home wishing we'd done something different.

This is the spontaneous one. No planning required. Pack the bag, check the forecast, be prepared for the forecast to be wrong, go anyway. That's the British summer experience in full.

What I'd pack: Honestly? The Co-op on the way. Sandwiches, crisps, something cold, fruit for the children. Then fish and chips from the seafront later. Some days the picnic is the snack that gets you to the fish and chips. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.

Practical tip: Check the tide times before you go — the Somerset coast has significant tidal movement and low tide gives you considerably more beach. Summer weekends fill the car park quickly — the seafront car park is convenient but there are cheaper options a short walk back. Bring a windbreak regardless of how calm it looks at home.

7. The Newt in Somerset, Bruton

Where I go to remember what slow actually feels like. A note about the rules, and why you should go anyway.

I'm at The Newt most weeks. I should probably declare this upfront before I tell you it's one of my favourite places in all of Somerset, which might otherwise sound like something I was paid to say. I wasn't. I just love it there.

The Newt is a private estate near Bruton — hotel, spa, gardens, farm — and it operates on a membership model for the gardens. I mention this not to put you off but to be completely honest: you can't bring your own picnic into the grounds, and food is purchased on site. Those are the rules, they're reasonable ones, and the food is genuinely good enough that this doesn't feel like a hardship.

What The Newt does, especially in summer, is give you something increasingly difficult to find: the feeling of being almost alone in somewhere extraordinarily beautiful. We always go later in the day, when the tours have moved on and the gardens start to exhale. We wander slowly. We find a spot in the parabola garden or alongside the cyder barn orchard and we sit and read and don't talk very much. The children explore. The garden does its thing. The summer light moves across it in long golden stripes and I think, not for the first time, that living in Somerset is an extraordinary privilege.

It's not a traditional picnic destination. But it is, in the truest sense, a gathering place — somewhere to come together, slow down, and notice where you are. That counts.

What I'd pack: Leave the hamper at home. The Newt's café and food offering is the point — seasonal, local, beautifully done. Come with appetite and an unhurried afternoon. That's everything you need.

Practical tip: Membership for garden access is available via The Newt website — worth it if you're Somerset-based and likely to visit more than once or twice. Day visitor tickets are also available. Book in advance in summer. Go later in the afternoon — from around 4pm the gardens feel genuinely peaceful in a way that earlier in the day they sometimes don't.

8. A Somerset Village Fete

Not a postcode. A feeling. The most Somerset thing on this list and possibly the most important.

This one doesn't have a single location because it doesn't need one. Somerset village fetes happen throughout the summer — June through September, tucked into paddocks and church fields and the grounds of manor houses across the county — and they are, I would argue, one of the finest expressions of British summer life currently available to us.

I grew up with them. Morris dancers and hog roasts and tombola and that particular brand of raffle where the prizes are a bottle of Advocaat and a spa voucher and somehow both feel equally exciting. The cake stall with its slightly uneven Victoria sponges and its beautifully written labels in old-fashioned handwriting. The plant sale where you'll buy something you have no room for and be glad you did. The beer tent that turns into the social event of the village summer. Pimm's in a plastic cup, obviously — warm, slightly more fruit than drink, absolutely perfect.

And now I bring my children to them. And they queue for face painting and win small stuffed animals on the hook-a-duck and eat overloaded plates of food and run around on the grass with other children they've never met but are immediately friends with. These are the same fields I ran around in. The same brass band. The same slightly chaotic energy of a community having a genuine good time together.

That's the gathering thread that runs through everything I believe about picnics and outdoor life: it's not about the food, and it's not about the location, and it's not about getting the blanket right. It's about being together. Properly together. Old memories sitting alongside new ones, the children becoming the story they'll tell their own children one day.

Find your local fete. Go. Take the children. Win something on the tombola. Have the Pimm's. Stay until the very end.

What I'd pack: Nothing. That's the whole point. The fete provides. You just have to show up.

Practical tip: Somerset village fetes aren't always easy to find in advance — the best ones are discovered via local Facebook groups, village noticeboards, parish newsletters, and the Somerset Life events calendar. Keep an eye out from June onwards. The best ones are never the most advertised.

A few things worth knowing about summer picnics

Summer is the season everyone thinks they've mastered. Here's what a few years of getting it slightly wrong before getting it right has taught me.

The afternoon picnic beats the lunchtime picnic every time: Arrive at 2pm instead of noon and everything is better. The car parks are freer. The crowds are thinner. The light is more beautiful. And you get the golden hour, which turns every Somerset view into something worth remembering. Start late. Stay late. That's the formula.

A playlist is not optional: I'm serious about this. A summer picnic with a good playlist is a completely different experience to one without. It doesn't need to be elaborate — something warm and unhurried, something that feels like summer and somewhere. Make it in advance. It will become the soundtrack to a memory you'll reference for years.

The weather will do what it wants: Pack a layer. Pack a light waterproof. Pack sunscreen and also the layer. Somerset summer weather operates on its own schedule and the forecast is more of a suggestion than a commitment. Go anyway. Some of the best picnics I've ever had have started under a cloud and ended in golden sunshine. The opposite is also true, and the opposite makes for excellent stories.

Go to the village fete: Whatever else is on the list — go to the fete. There will be one near you. It will be exactly as wonderful as you remember and also somehow better. Don't miss it.

The summer is long. Use it.

British summer gets a bad reputation, mostly from people who've been let down by a Bank Holiday Monday. But Somerset summer — the long evenings, the warm air, the gardens at their peak, the rivers and the fetes and the stone circles sitting quietly in their meadows — is one of the finest things about living here.

You don't need a destination. You need a blanket, something worth eating, someone worth spending the afternoon with, and the willingness to stay until the light tells you it's time to go.

The light will tell you. You'll know when.

Love Gemma xx

p.s. The full seasonal guide — all four seasons, all the spots, one complete Somerset adventure — is over here: -> The Best Picnic Spots in Somerset: A Local's Complete Seasonal Guide

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