I’ll never forget the drive to Exmoor View near Shepton Mallet – a proper Somerset jaunt that started with me taking a wrong turn onto a lane so narrow it felt like the hedges were giving my little hatchback a disapproving clip. “Blimey,” I muttered, reversing into a ditch with all the grace of a drunk hedgehog. No harm done, just a muddy tyre and a reminder that SatNavs don’t account for Somerset’s labyrinth of single-track roads. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up to the cottage, its stone walls glowing in the late afternoon sun, with views stretching out like a postcard of rolling Mendip Hills. First impressions? Pure bliss. Cosy, with a wood burner begging to be lit and French doors opening onto a patio that screamed “put your feet up, lad.”

But it was the locals who turned my three-day getaway into a proper character parade. No sooner had I lugged my bag inside than old Bert from the neighbouring farm trundled over, leaning on his crook like he’d stepped out of a Thomas Hardy novel. “You the city folk in Exmoor View?” he barked, eyeing my wellies with suspicion. Turned out Bert’s been tending sheep here since the war – the Second one, mind. Over a cuppa he’d insisted on brewing (“None of that leaf tea rubbish, proper builder’s”), he regaled me with tales of the time a fox nicked his best hen right under his nose. “Sly as a politician, that one,” he chuckled, his laugh like gravel in a tin. I couldn’t help but grin – here I was, knackered from London traffic, chatting with a man whose idea of excitement was spotting a rare Exmoor pony on the horizon.

Next morning, as I wandered down to the village shop – a five-minute stroll through dew-kissed lanes – I bumped into Madge behind the counter. She’s the queen of gossip, with a perm that defies gravity and opinions on everything from the price of pasties to the council’s latest pothole fiasco. “Staying at that posh View, are ya? Don’t let the views fool ya – it’s the midges that’ll have ya dancing!” she cackled, handing over a pint of milk and a freshly baked scone the size of a saucer. We got chatting about the annual Shepton Mallet scarecrow festival (did you know they’ve got one? Blokes dressing up sheaves of straw as everything from Boris Johnson to a rogue tractor). Madge reckoned her entry last year – a scarecrow of the local butcher with a comically oversized sausage – nearly won. “Should’ve done, but the judge was biased. Lives next to the butcher!” Proper Somerset gold.

By lunchtime, I’d met Terry the postie, cycling up with a parcel that wasn’t even mine. “Wrong house, but since you’re here, fancy a yarn?” He plonked his bike against the fence and launched into how the Mendips used to be crawling with cheese smugglers back in the day – apparently, locals hid truckles of Cheddar in caves to dodge the taxman. “My grandad swore by it; said it funded his first tractor.” Terry’s got this infectious wheeze of a laugh, and before I knew it, we were swapping stories about city life versus country calm. “You lot in London think rush hour’s bad? Try milking cows in a thunderstorm,” he winked.

Sitting on the patio that evening, pint in hand, watching the sun dip behind the hills, I had one of those quiet moments. Amid all the quirky chatter – Bert’s fox woes, Madge’s scone wisdom, Terry’s smuggler lore – I realised how rare it is to just talk without agendas. No LinkedIn profiles, no small talk for show; just proper humans sharing the absurdities of life. Exmoor View didn’t just give me a cracking first impression of Somerset – it reminded me why escaping the grind feels so blooming good. If you’re after a spot where the locals are the real view, this is it.