This post is dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of the Flintstones and the passing of Stoney Curtis last week.
Cheddar, England is NOT easy to get to unless you have a car. The nearest train station is about 10 miles away. Trips to Bath and Bristol didn’t offer any easy alternatives – a complicated route of trains and public buses seemed to be the primary option.
My friend Joy and I decided to take the more challenging route of riding bikes. It was about 25 miles away from the place we were staying in Bradford-on-Avon, so not a particularly long ride, even though I was on the world’s heaviest rental mountain bike.
After the first 23 miles, we barreled down into Cheddar Gorge, realizing halfway down that we were going to have to climb back up a lovely 16% grade. A beautiful descent, but getting out again was going to hurt a bit.
In addition to being the birthplace of the cheese, Cheddar is famous for its gorge, underground river, massive caves and Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton discovered in Britain.
Cheddar Man dates back over 9000 years and lived in the caves with his pals. At some point, he pissed one of them off because his skull has a nasty hole in it, indicating he met a violent end of some sort.
More astonishing, through DNA analysis, scientists were able to connect Cheddar Man to 3 current residents of Cheddar. This discovery helped to re-define the origins of the British people, who had previously been believed to be comprised of migratory farmers from other territories and not the more settled hunter-gatherers. There’s a rumor that he may have actually been a cylon-human hybrid, but I think that’s pushing it.
The major attraction in Cheddar is the caves. Formed by the underground river and flowing water, they extend for hundreds of yards into the hillside. As you descend, you enter a different world. Rocky cliffwork gives way to crystalline structures – translucent, smooth and appearing to flow like water. That flow, however, is solid rock and was millions of years in the making.
The cave’s tourist center offers an extensive audio tour, outlining details of the subterranean discovery and the millions of years they took to form. In an effort to simulate the time the caves took to form, the audio tour seems to take just as long. It’s filled with character voices akin to the annoying sidekick in old Western movies. Every once in a while, an interesting fact is tossed out.
In one chamber, there’s supposedly a cave drawing of a bull or mastadon or dinosaur or something. I’m no expert, but it looked like a random Rorshach ink blot to me. If you had told me it was a fluffy bunny in a meadow, I’d have been just as baffled by it.
There are a number of attractions in the city, all related to the caves and their past residents. You can fill a day with gorge tours, cave walk-throughs, rock climbing, spelunking and ascending a mountaintop tower offering a beautiful view of the valley. It’s akin to a visit to the Wisconsin Dells, albeit without the cheesy “made-for-tourists” roadside attractions. In Cheddar, the caves, the views and the history are all real.
