Cheddar Gorge

It's a place completely honeycombed with subterranean rivers, hidden caverns, and deep, lightless sinkholes.

Places like Cheddar Gorge and Wookey Hole have been steeped in myth and human occupation since the Paleolithic era.

Now, when a landscape is this porous, the local folklore naturally reflects the geography.

The earth, it's not solid here.

But I will never forget where Cheddar Man comes from.

Yeah, they named him that because he was discovered in a cave in Cheddar Gorge, England.

And in the 1990s, researchers compared mitochondrial DNA with the remains of residents around the world.

And bizarrely, they found a match with Adrian Target.

It's very cosy.

And he's got a half a football, which really reminded me of those recent discoveries of, I think it's Goff's Cave or Cheddar Gorge, somewhere they've got skull caps that have been turned into drinking vessels.

In this show, they've got half a kind of abandoned football that's been used as a cup.

And he's got a teapot for a lamp.

Have

you ever been to Cheddar Gorge? Cheddar Gorge.

Yeah, how far away from the sea is that? Cheddar Gorge is in Devon.

Somerset.

It's in Somerset, that's right.

Cheddar Gorge is in Somerset.

Nice place.

It's a series of underground caves, some of the biggest in Europe.

It's not nice.

But when you're 14 years old and the only place you can go up is Cheddar Gorge with some woodpecker cider.

When you're 14, anything goes.

It does.

And I think they have a long history, like even pre-electromechanical, just mechanical claw cranes that you would see in sort of penny arcades.

So, I guess another experience I used to have as a kid, other than the sort of electrical arcades, was used to go to a place in Cheddar, Cheddar Gorge, which is where the cheese comes from, Wayne, which is not far from Bristol.

It is, yeah.

And it has a great potholing cave as well.

It's a place completely honeycombed with subterranean rivers, hidden caverns, and deep, lightless sinkholes.

Places like Cheddar Gorge and Wookie Hole have been steeped in myth and human occupation since the Paleolithic era.

Now, when a landscape is this porous, the local folklore naturally reflects the geography.

The earth, it's not solid here.

It's going to be longer days.

But I would say, knowing your place of work, like I used to live in Somerset, like Cheddar Gorge, those types of things, the Mendips.

perfect like it was perfect place to train and get some yeah it was basically no traffic there i'll say that no traffic but minimal traffic in comparison so if you if you get

a red light in the middle of an interval

But no, favourite climb.

Favourite climb of all time.

What was it for you? Cheddar Gorge.

So yeah,