The Three Melburies

1 Walk down the street through this lovely village of thatched houses. Cross the watersplash at the bottom via the pavement and packhorse bridge. Pass the Old Chapel on the right and Townsend Dairy House then continue up the road. Cross a stile by a cattle grid and take the straight estate road down a newly planted avenue of trees. Follow this for almost a mile (1.6km) to Melbury House (private), which is part of the Ilchester Estate. The famous glazed tower, with windows all round the upper level, pokes above a roof punctuated by tall chimney stacks and pointed gables.

2 Turn right along the road just before the house and follow it round the outbuildings and left through a gate. Look out for the fallow deer, for whom the gates and fences were built. Continue on this road for another ¾ mile (1.2km) through the park, up and over a hill. Cross a stile by a gateway. With Evershot in sight ahead, hook back up to the left on a bridleway, passing a house on the right. Follow this up the hill. Where it divides, keep straight ahead downhill. Pass a plantation on the right. At a junction near the bottom turn right. Follow the track as it curves left and starts to rise. Where the wood on your right runs out, bear left up the field, towards a small gate. Go through this and follow the path ahead and left through a young plantation, to the A37 by a milestone. Cross over with care and take the bridleway ahead.

3 Go through the gate and turn left through another gate. Follow the field edge round to the right below the woods. In the far corner turn right through a gate and bear left down the track through woodland. At the other side go through a gate and straight ahead over the field, keeping right of the trig point, and turning right along the hedge. Go through a gate and turn down towards Melbury Bubb. Use two gates to go through a farmyard, passing a wooden granary on staddle stones to the left.

4 Follow the lane right to explore the church. It has a barrel roof, fragments of old glass and some good windows, and is heated by a wood-burning stove and lit by oil lamps. Look for the font to the left of the door, it's strongly carved with deer, hounds and other beasts intertwined with foliage. Oddly, it's upside down and tapers the wrong way - it is believed to be part of a recycled 11th-century Anglo-Saxon cross, hollowed out at one end to make a font, and shows creatures from the Bestiary laden with Christian symbolism.

5 Retrace your route back up to the trig point, passing it on the left this time. Bear diagonally left down over the field from here, passing above two steep combes. Bear right to cross a stile in the far corner. Walk along duckboards through boggy woodland, cross a stile into a field and bear left, joining a gravel farm track. Pass Church Farm to the left. Beside it is St Edwold's Church, the second smallest church in England (with an outsize belfry).

6 Bear right up the farm road. At the top turn right, and soon left, through a gate into a field by a fingerpost. Turn right and walk along the hedge. Cross a stile and bear left down the next field. About half-way down bear left through a gate (yellow marker) and continue right along this line, meeting a hedge at a corner. Ignore a bridge down to the right and continue diagonally left to the far end of the field, to cross a stile, footbridge and another stile. Head diagonally left across the next field, to emerge through a gate on to the A37 beside the Rest And Welcome Inn.

7 Turn left and walk along the verge. Cross with care, to take the footpath over a stile just before a car sales yard. Follow this straight ahead down the hedge. Go through a gate and turn left to cross a stile, footbridge and a further stile. Go straight across the field towards a stone house. Bear left through the gate and walk on to the road by the watersplash. Turn right to return to