There's an apt mixture of military history, political anecdote, and radicalism to be found on the route of Paddy Ashdown's favourite walk, a four-mile loop that starts and finishes in the Somerset village of Norton Sub Hamdon, near Yeovil, where he has had his constituency home for the past 30 years.
The military history emerges almost the moment the former Liberal-Democrat leader leaves the village, usually accompanied by his wife Jane and their dog Luke. They pass the beautiful church of St Mary's - which has a bell but no clockface because the squire didn't want his labourers to waste time clock-watching - and cross two fields called Shootalong and the Butts. The fields are reminders of the 13th-century law that required the men of every village to practise archery in preparation for war against the French.
Then comes a sharp climb up Ham Hill to what Ashdown calls "one of the great views of Britain".
Ham Hill is an ancient, steep-sided neolithic earthwork, later used as a Roman garrison and an important location in Arthur's Britain. From here, in one sweep, you can see the lowland of the Somerset Levels, the Mendip Hills, Glastonbury Tor, Cadbury Castle and the distant Alfred's Tower, marking the site where Alfred the Great defeated the Danes.
"Ask me to choose the best time," says Ashdown, "and I would say a late November evening when there's a frost and the mist is gathering down on the levels and you've got that slightly orange but steely light."
There is an amphitheatre, believed to be Roman in origin and known locally as "the frying pans". Here, Gladstone and Lloyd-George addressed open-air meetings, and here, in 1997, Ashdown and his campaign manager, Lord Holme, decided they would work towards abandoning the long-established policy of "equidistance" between the two main parties.
The route passes the northern point of the flat-topped hill where a tall obelisk commemorates the dead of the first world war. From there, it skirts the disused quarries which supplied the honey-coloured Ham stone for many local villages, and along the edge of Hedgecock Hill Wood to look down on the elegant chimneys and gardens of Montacute House.
Its many claims to fame include a visit from Ashdown's favourite poet John Donne, a connection with the Gunpowder Plot, and a starring role in the recent film version of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
One of his favourite political anecdotes concerns the Conservative foreign secretary Lord Curzon spending the weekend at Montacute in the 1920s when he was called for on the occasion of the dissolution of the previous government. "He was kept waiting at Yeovil station - not an unusual experience - and arrived at Waterloo expecting to be summoned to the King. Instead, he was met by the King's messenger who said, more or less, you took such a long time coming that we've asked Baldwin to do it instead. It wasn't quite like that, but that's the story."
St Michael's Hill at the side of Montacute is believed to be the site of the last Saxon rebellion against the Normans, which was bloodily repressed: now it bears nothing more dramatic than an architectural folly. From here, the Ashdown route resolutely bypasses the King's Arms and turns south past the site of a Roman villa and the traces of the medieval village of Whitcombe.
More political history lurks nearby in Pit Plain and Pit Wood, where you still find the rides and avenues designed by William Pitt the Younger, prime minister from 1783, when he lived at Montacute. Freshwater oysters, originally cultivated by the Romans, can still be found in a pond in the woods.
Next comes the radicalism and Norton Covert, where Ashdown pauses to pay his respects to the Bubblers, a new-age community set up about seven years ago with the permission of South Somerset District Council: "I made myself, I'm afraid, very unpopular with some in my village by supporting their application, and now they live in structures called yurts in the woods.
"People said they'd lower the price of property - absolute nonsense. Their kids go to the local schools, and I think it's given a quality to the village it wouldn't otherwise have had."
The community takes its name from the Bubble, a natural spring on the way from Norton Covert to Little Norton. The Ashdown party might stop for a drink at the spring before pressing on to finish the walk with something a little stronger at the Lord Nelson.
"This really is one of the most glorious pieces of countryside in England," he says. "I sometimes stand on Ham Hill and watch people on the A303 hurtling down to Cornwall, and I'm glad they're missing us out.
"Walking used not to be much of a pastime, and I can remember in 1970 we had to more or less cut the paths as we went. Now half the world seems to be walking. The change is phenomenal."
The Ashdown Diaries: Volume One 1988-1997 is published by Penguin at £20.
The practicals
South West Trains to Yeovil Junction on the London Waterloo to Exeter line: national rail enquiries 0345 484950. For coaches to Yeovil, ring National Express Enquiry Line 08705 808080 (www.nationalexpress.co.uk). For general information about Yeovil and surrounding area, including accommodation, phone the tourist information centre on 01935 471279 (www.southsomerset.gov.uk). The website has details of short and long walks including Ham Hill Country Park, the Leland Trail (28 miles from Alfred's Tower to Ham Hill), and the Liberty Trail (28 miles from Ham Hill to Lyme Regis). Best walking map is OS Explorer map (approx 2 inches to 1 mile), no 129 (Yeovil and Sherbourne).
