Water, water everywhere...

In case you hadn't noticed, it has been a helluva winter for rain, and rain doesn't bring out the best in the Great British Countryside.

But there is one part of this land where tumes-cent rivers are a fact of life and where endless rain doesn't equate to noses pressed anxiously against the windowpane.

The onset of winter may bring peace to our mountains and render our woodlands leafless and drab, but in the Somerset Levels it heralds a makeover that fills the lowering skies with flickering life and draws great bed sheets of water up around the villages of honey-coloured limestone.

These sheets of white are stitched by marching rows of pollarded willows, decorated with coots, herons and migratory wetland birds and threaded by raised dykes bearing walkers in wellies.

At this time of year the locals of the Levels park their vehicles on high ground and resort to their tractors for the school run.

The Levels are essentially the peaty flood plains of the rivers Parrett, Huntspill, Brue and King's Sedgemoor Drain. The whole area was once a semi-permanent inland sea, stretching from Yeovil to the Bristol Channel, inhabited only by eel hunters who lived in villages built on stilts. It was drained in the 13th century by the rich and powerful abbeys on their own little islands at Glastonbury, Muchelney and Athelney, fed up with being cut off every winter.

Today, the landscape is at its most distinctive along the banks of the Parrett around Langport. Here Muchelney abbey is in ruins, its setting still essentially medieval, and still isolated by winter floods. Athelney, where King Alfred supposedly burned the cakes, is today just a grassy mound, but Burrow Mump, another medieval church-topped island, rises out of the winter water as it has always done. All are within walking distance of each other down the Parrett Trail, which runs along high dykes, past sluice gates and pumping stations.

The Levels encourage a certain independence of mind. "There's a serenity here that attracts artists," says John Leach, a jolly, shaggy Breughel-like figure who has been fashioning blushing pots at Muchelney Pottery for 36 years, and who numbers Kate Adie and David Attenborough among his customers.

Down the road at Stoke St Gregory, site of the Willows and Wetland Centre, Serena de la Hey bends the area's most traditional crop to her will, making willow geese, swans and running dogs. One of her works, a huge willow giant, stands alongside the M5 just north of Bridgwater, welcoming visitors to the South-West.

Over in Martock, one of the loveliest hamstone villages in the Levels, eccentric silversmith Michael Burford fashions chesspieces and tiepins with a cheerful disregard for anything that remotely equates to commercialism.

Eating and drinking are done differently here, too. Martock's Bakery Royal (sic) produces a lardy cake that the old gentlemen dip in sherry to sustain them through the winter. Succulent smoked eel is served in Brown and Forrest's smokery and restaurant at Hambridge, a couple of miles north of the Burrow Hill Cider Farm, which is itself a unique institution with huge barrels, rootling chickens and piles of musty apples, like a scene straight out of the pages of Thomas Hardy.

Burrow Hill's crisp, dry cider is available at most of the local hostelries, including the Wyndham Arms at nearby Kingsbury Episcopi, with a menu based on home-made pies, an open log fire ideal for walkers' toes - and a pub kitten which interpreted the emergence of socks as a declaration of war.

Free-thinkers in the Levels tend to gather at the Halfway House at Pitney, an unreconstructed flagstoned pub with huge pine tables and copies of The Spectator, Private Eye and the day's newspapers, helped down by cider, ale from the cask and a choice of six different home-made curries.

But the most idiosyncratic pub is the Rose and Crown in Huish Episcopi, still known to locals as "Eli's Place" after the man who was landlord there 50 years ago. The pub is now run by Eli's grandson and granddaughters, but without the assistance of a bar; the hand-pumps are set against the walls and regulars help themselves and are relied on to put the right money in the wooden drawer.

Joan, who is seventy-something, still does table service in The Men's Kitchen, the back room is reserved for Spoofing, a traditional drinking game of betting on coins, and one old farmer still sells his vegetables in the front room every Saturday morning.

The Rose and Crown is far too much of a throwback ever to win a pub-of-the-year competition, but it is a symbol of a community that likes to do things its own way, never mind the rain.

Way To Go

The Parrett Trail is an excellent midwinter walk for urban rats; details and brochure from South Somerset District Council (01935 462684). Being flat, this is also perfect cycling country; Bow Bridge Cycles (01458 250350) in Langport does cycle hire and has several free route maps. Two top B&Bs are well placed in Muchelney: Muchelney Ham Farm (01458 250737) has doubles for £50-£65 in an immaculate 17th century farmhouse; Gothic House (01458 250626) has huge windows from which to drink in the scenery, from £44. For something more formal try Farthings Hotel (01823 480664) at Hatch Beauchamp with doubles from £87 B&B; ask for the room with en-suite bath up a spiral staircase.

Further information: Somerset Visitor Centre (01934 750833) or Taunton Information Centre (01823 336344).