We had arrived in the Quantocks with an eclectic assortment of literature to while away the anticipated rainy evenings huddled inside our tent. My younger son was half way through an Enid Blyton Famous Five novel, his older brother had brought with him a large tome on UFOs and I had packed a slim volume of Coleridge’s poetry.

As it happened, there was a link between our readings. We were all delving into flights of fancy, mystery and imagination. We were entering worlds where girls have boy’s names, everyday things are not what they seem and eighteenth century poets get off their heads on opium.

The second thing we did when we got to the Somerset village of Nether Stowey was to locate the cottage that Coleridge had lived in for three years from 1796, and the first thing was to buy lashings of ginger beer. It was hot and there was no sign of rain yet.

The cottage is now run by The National Trust and a leisurely amble through the four small rooms open to the public does not take long. Many changes have been made to the building since Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner were composed here. But it’s the spirit of the place that gets to a Coleridge fan like me.

Like all famous literary homes you have to imagine the ghosts of the past. Imagine William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt having a good old literary chinwag in the parlour. And the outside privy is still there. I imagined no further. Cute as the cottage is, the surrounding countryside is the place to get the real feel of what got Coleridge’s imagination going and his pen racing.

There is a small information centre attached to the public library in Nether Stowey giving a useful introduction to the Quantocks, a range of hills to the east of Exmoor. Browsing the noticeboard in the entrance hall I saw that you can book the Quantock Hillbillies Line Dance Display Team. This is irrelevant to an investigation into the landscape that inspired a romantic poet, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

We camped quite close to Alfoxton Park, a country house hotel, near Holford. When it was called Alfoxden it was the home of Wordsworth for a short time. He and Coleridge did a fair bit of striding about the lanes and hills in these parts while they were working on the seminal Lyrical Ballads.

Relaxing on a camp chair high on the after-glow of eating Pot Noodles I half saw the pair of poets striding up the lane alongside our field. They were going for a moonlit walk down to Kilve beach, while I was about to catch up with the antics of Julian and George and Timmy in that night’s torchlit book at bedtime.

Kilve beach is a good place to explore, with a chance to discover fossils, toss rocks into the Bristol Channel or merely engage in philosophical debate. It was the sight of Wordsworth and Coleridge doing a bit of the latter on frequent occasions that aroused the suspicions of the locals at a sensitive period during the Napoleonic War. Fearing a French invasion a government agent was sent to spy on the Romantic couple, suspecting that they were up to no good.

Kilve is also a place associated with smuggling and, therefore, full of interest for one of my walking companions whose mind was more on Enid Blyton than Biographia Literaria. Hungry young adventurers can get a cream tea at The Chantry Tea Rooms just up from the beach.

Coleridge and Wordsworth would walk for miles across the north Somerset countryside. It was on one such long walk up to Watchet on the coast that Coleridge thought up the idea for The Ancient Mariner. We cheated and drove to the small port of Watchet. The tide was out and we were struck by the height of the harbour walls. So this was the place from where that mariner set sail.

You do not have to add yet another car to Watchet’s narrow streets, as the West Somerset Steam Railway stops here on its way north to Minehead. This sea side resort is the line’s terminus, but it is not far over the headland to Porlock and Kubla Khan country.

Porlock Weir is the small harbour that sits about a mile west from its larger namesake. A couple of hotels, a pub and a tea shop bring visitors like us down for lunch. The beach is a repository for large pebbles. And these are serious pebbles. You don’t toss pebbles into the Bristol Channel in these parts; you shot putt them.

Beyond a few artisanal-type shops, including a glass blower, set into what must have been the lock ups where local fisherman did things to their nets in days gone by, is the start of the path eastwards to Culbone Wood. No enigmatic old one eyed sea dogs we noted as we left Porlock Weir. It was all very nineties credit card shopping opportunity. Very post Blyton.

Culbone Church is said to be the smallest church still in use in the country. The sign that claims that it is two miles away is lying. Even so, it is an essential walk to complete the Coleridge perambulations.

What feels like four miles of beautifully undulating wooded walking with frequent glimpses of a blue sea takes you through the landscape that inspired Kubla Khan. Coleridge broke his journey here from Lynton back to Alfoxton owing to illness and rested at a nearby farm. Under the influence of laudanum he conjured up a beguilingly famous piece of poetry.

The church sits in a narrow valley on a bend in the coast path. Romantic words like “verdant”, “bower” and “tranquility” came to mind. I embarrassed my young travelling companions by pulling out the bookmarked edition of Coleridge verse:

“ And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

So this was Xanadu perhaps. The journey back seemed shorter. The rain swept in. It was when we were back in Minehead that I realised that Coleridge had been so prophetic. What have they gone and erected at Butlin’s? Why it’s nothing other than “a stately pleasure dome”. I know they have a similar mini-millennium dome in Bognor Regis as well, but here in Kubla country this seemed particularly appropriate.