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On The 31st of May 2019 the family and I set off to visit Cheddar Gorge, after a bit of a drive we arrive and park up at The Cheddar Gorge and caves car park. Not cheap parking but I had the good luck of a ticket left in the machine saving about a fiver! The plan was to walk about the village and then do the Gorge walk.
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| A heron standing in the Cheddar Yeo |
The Cheddar Yeo is a small river in Somerset, England. Beneath the limestone of the Mendip Hills it forms the largest underground river system in Britain. After emerging into Cheddar Gorge it flows through the village of Cheddar, where it has been used in the past to power mills. From the Middle Ages until the 19th century the river had ports for seagoing vessels but is no longer navigable. Some of the water, which is of good quality, is diverted into Cheddar Reservoir to provide drinking water for Bristol.
Cheddar Gorge is a limestone gorge in the Mendip Hills, near the village of Cheddar, Somerset. The gorge is the site of the Cheddar show caves, where Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, Cheddar Man, estimated to be over 9,000 years old, was found in 1903. Older remains from the Upper Late Palaeolithic era (12,000–13,000 years ago) have been found. The caves, produced by the activity of an underground river, contain stalactites and stalagmites. The gorge is part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest called Cheddar Complex.
Cheddar Gorge, including the caves and other attractions, has become a tourist destination. In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, following its appearance on the 2005 television programme Seven Natural Wonders, Cheddar Gorge was named as the second greatest natural wonder in Britain, surpassed only by Dan yr Ogofcaves. The gorge attracts about 500,000 visitors per year.
We of course had to visit the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company and try their delicious cheese!
My wife Mel and I left the family to look about whilst we set off to walk the Gorge Walk. I planned to do this in reverse as we had no plans to visit the caves and wasn't paying to go up Jacobs Ladder when you can do it all for free in the opposite direction!
We walked up the road called The Cliffs.
We walked too far up and I resorted to asking a ice cream man in a shop where the path started. It was opposite the Gorge Cafe on the other side of the road to Jacobs Ladder. Its just before the blue building in the pic below. Its called Cuffic Lane and has the smallest of footpath markers ever.
So we walk up Cuffic Lane and take the footpath.
Half way up note the large cave off to your left.
It started to climb steeply, my wife doesn't really walk so I was worried how she'd cope, but she fought on without any grumbling.
After much steep climbing we made the top.
Iconic Cheddar Gorge walk with magnificent views of the gorge and beyond. At almost 400ft (122m) deep and 3 miles long, this is England’s largest gorge, and with its weathered crags and pinnacles.
We are on the official West Mendip Way route at this stage. Keeping the stone wall to our right as we ascend. This was the site of many of the cliff scenes from the film “Jack the Giant Slayer”.
Follow the path to the top, through the kissing gate marked with the gorge walk sign. Look back from this point for magnificent views of Cheddar, Glastonbury Tor, the Somerset levels and Bridgwater Bay. The following section is rocky in places and can become very muddy in wet weather. Follow the obvious path along the side of the Gorge before descending via a long set of steps to a deep valley.
We down go down some steep steps, glad we not doing this in reverse, these look brutal.
At the bottom of the steps we go through the wooden kissing gate straight ahead of us. Once through the gate, the path leads through a wooded area and descends to meet the “Black Rock” stony path.
Where the path joins the stony track (the common route with the West Mendip Way ends here) we turn immediately right through a farm type gate and onto another gate to join the main Gorge road.
Crossing the road we turn slightly diagonally to our right to join the path which rises to the other side of the Gorge (signposted Draycott). This path is steep, rocky and uneven as it rises through the woods.
The area is underlain by Black Rock slate, Burrington Oolite and Clifton Down Limestone of the Carboniferous LimestoneSeries, which contain ooliths and fossil debris, on top of Old Red Sandstone and by dolomitic conglomerate of the Keuper. Evidence for Variscan orogeny is seen in the sheared rock and cleaved shales. In many places weathering of these strata has resulted in the formation of immature calcareous soils.
At the top the path levels out and passes through a gate to join a wide grassy path. We keep to the right. Follow the path through a set of high gates with a wooded area to our right with glimpses of the other side of the Gorge beyond. We rise to the brow of the hill before starting to gradually descend. Keeping the wire fence to our left . At this point we have fantastic 180-degree views. Towards the bottom of this section keep your eye out for a rocky outcrop to your right which offers excellent views of the lower Gorge. However, exercise caution – there’s a sheer drop off on the Gorge side.
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| View down to the Cheddar Reservoir. |
Dating from the 1930s, Cheddar Reservoir has a capacity of 135 million gallons. The reservoir is supplied with water taken from the Cheddar Yeo river in Cheddar Gorge.
The gorge was formed by meltwater floods during the cold periglacial periods which have occurred over the last 1.2 million years. During the ice ages permafrost blocked the caves with ice and frozen mud and made the limestone impermeable. When this melted during the summers, water was forced to flow on the surface, and carved out the gorge. During warmer periods the water flowed underground through the permeable limestone, creating the caves and leaving the gorge dry, so that today much of the gorge has no river until the underground Cheddar Yeo river emerges in the lower part from Gough's Cave. The river is used by Bristol Water, who maintain a series of dams and ponds which supply the nearby Cheddar Reservoir, via a 137-centimetre (54 in) diameter pipe that takes water just upstream of the Rotary Club Sensory Garden, a public park in the gorge opposite Jacob's Ladder.
The gorge is susceptible to flooding. In the Chew Stoke flood of 1968 the flow of water washed large boulders down the gorge, damaging the cafe and entrance to Gough's Cave and washing away cars. In the cave itself the flooding lasted for three days. In 2012 the B3135, the road through the gorge, was closed for several weeks following damage to the road surface during extensive flooding.
Some superb views down into the gorge, but take care on the cliff edge , not for those with fear of heights!
The B3135 road runs along the bottom of the gorge.
We now start the descent down towards Jacobs Ladder.
We follow the rocky path downwards through the woods
passing through another tall gate with Pavey’s lookout tower in
front of us.
Please note Pavey’s lookout tower and Jacob’s Ladder steps are
only open to Cheddar Gorge and Caves Explorer Ticket holders.
But to be fair there is nothing to stop non ticket users and we knew no different so we walked down Jacobs Ladder.
Jacobs Ladder is a path of 275 steps, built up the side of the gorge, named after the Biblical description of a ladder to the heavens.
We exit back out onto the road and after just over 4 miles and about 407 metres of ascent. I was very proud of my wife completing this walk, to be fair I thought I would be walking alone.
We walked over to meet the family who were in the crazy golf so we waited by the waterfall.
We walked around the rest of the shops the family had missed as they didnt realise there were more further up the road.
We passed the caves but didnt visit, we had done Wookey Holes Caves a few days previously.
The two main caves open to the public are on the southside of the Gorge, owned by Longleat Estate. The extensive Gough's Cave and the smaller Cox's Cave are both named after their respective discoverers. Both are known for their geology, and it has been suggested that the caves were used for maturing cheese in prehistoric times. Gough's cave, which was discovered in 1903, leads around 400 m (437 yd) into the rock-face, and contains a variety of large rock chambers and formations. Cox's Cave, discovered in 1837, is smaller but contains many intricate formations. In 2016 Cox's cave was turned into "Dreamhunters", a multimedia walk-through experience with theatrical lighting and video projection.
In 1999 the Channel 4 television programme Time Team investigated Cooper's Hole in an attempt to find evidence of Palaeolithic human activity.
These caves are the inspirations for the caves behind Helm's Deep in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers.
Several of the caves have been scheduled as ancient monuments as nationally important archaeological sites including: Gough's Old Cave, Great Oone's Hole,Saye's Hole, Soldier's Hole and Sun Hole.
UK 1960s Garage Rock band The Troggs used Cheddar Caves as the backdrop for the band photo on their debut album From Nowhere – The Troggs, which included the US Billboard no.1 hit single (no.2 UK), "Wild Thing".
Cheddar Gorge was the setting for Peter Nichols' 1968 comedy The Gorge, in the BBC's Wednesday Play series.
Cheddar Gorge is a panel game played on the BBC Radio 4 series I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
The gorge was used as a location for a Chimeran Tower in the Resistance: Fall of Man, a science fiction first-person shooter video game for the PlayStation 3, developed by Insomniac Games.
Cheddar Gorge was the site of Into the Labyrinth starring Ron Moody and Pamela Salem.
Cheddar George was the name of a mouse in The Beano Comic.
We visited the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company again to go behind the scenes and see the cheese being made. A very smelly experience!
So Cheddar was a great day out, well worth a visit!