Thirsty Work

If you’re walking all day, you’ll be needing refreshment and these hills have long been famed for the purity of their water. Rain and melting snow slowly filter through the granite and limestone – some of the oldest and hardest rocks in Britain – and by the time it springs out it’s nigh on as pure as distilled water, described by Dr John Wall in 1756 as ‘containing just nothing at all’. The flow varies from 350 litres a minute after wet weather to 36 litres in dry, but it has never yet dried up.

The aqua’s healing properties were first noted in a song of the early 17th century, but it was the Victorians who flocked here and the village grew to a town to accommodate the influx. Schweppes bottled it commercially from 1850 to 2010, introducing it to millions at the Great Exhibition of 1851, but it can be drunk freely from any of the 70 springs in the hills, and also from Malvhina, a sculptured spout in town named after the Gaelic goddess which a Victorian historian surmised lent her name to the town, although it in fact comes from the old Welsh moel-bryn, meaning bare hill.