Wills Neck from Lydeard Hill, Quantocks

Wills Neck is the summit of the Quantocks and the best 360 in Somerset: heather moor rolling to the Bristol Channel one way, the Vale of Taunton Deane and distant Exmoor the other. From Lydeard Hill car park it's a gentle 20-minute walk along the ridge, and in late August the flowering heather turns the whole hilltop purple — drone gold. The complication is that Quantock Common is an SSSI, and the AONB's drone guidance asks for Natural England consent for TOAL and low-level flight within it, plus landowner consent. In practice, considerate hobby pilots launch from the car park margins and fly the ridge at height without incident, but you should know the framework: keep altitude over the open heath, absolutely avoid low passes during ground-nesting season (March to August — nightjars, skylarks and stonechats breed here), and give the free-roaming ponies and cattle a wide berth. Wind on the exposed ridge is relentless and there's no shelter, so pick a settled day. No FRZ issues anywhere close. Weekday evenings are near-deserted; the light going down over Exmoor across the Channel haze is worth the wait.