North Somerset doesn't get much credit as walking county. Overshadowed by the Mendips to the and Bristol's sprawl, this administrative construction of a county stretching between the Avon Gorge and the Severn estuary is laced with quieter paths — over the Failand ridge, through the wooded Gordano valley, and along routes that open suddenly onto wide views across the Bristol Channel to the Welsh coast.

It's pub country too, if you know where to look. The Black Horse at Clapton-in-Gordano has barely changed in a generation. The Miners Rest in Long Ashton catches walkers coming off Ashton Court. The Royal in Portishead sits a stone's throw from the marina, and out at West End, Nailsea, the Blue Flame holds one of only a handful of CAMRA-listed historic pub interiors left anywhere in the county.

Below are the walks built around each one — short, doable in an afternoon, and worth doing before the pub at the end of them isn't there anymore.