He said I could walk along the leafy green banks of the River Lym, starting on Combe Street and, following its inland route, continue all of the way to the Devon border a few miles away near the Black Dog Inn and some pretty mill cottages converted from a long in-active mill. He told me the story of the hidden treasure found in the inn's loft. The ghost of a black dog was supposed to have guided his master to its hiding place. I had fun following the course of this walk back and forth across the river on a series of interesting little bridges, some wooden and some stone, most of them very old. One led to a tidy little garden and the Leper's Well.
Authentic sources verify that there was a leper hospital here in medieval times.
Richard Fox and his friends were responsible for creating the pretty garden that surrounds the well. On Gosling Bridge, said to have originated in 1584, I stood for a while and talked with a woman who was, appropriately enough, concerned about a mother goose who kept calling for her lost gosling. She said the mother had been plaintively calling all day without success. She was afraid the young gosling had been washed out to sea during the recent rain storm. I could hear the melancholy call for a long while as I continued on my walk.