Cheddar Gorge Walk

Let me first start off saying I'm going to break down our trip into two blogs as feel it would drag on to much and also the walk and caves with the town are two separate things to do whilst down there. But last Sunday me, my wife and daughter headed down to Cheddar Gorge. Jacob did not come with us due to him being 18 and there was no way we would get him out of bed on a Sunday morning for the early start down there.

We headed out at around 9:15am and we were looking at around a one hour and forty minutes drive to get there. We are based in south Wales and the Gorge is in the South West of England. We made pretty good time as the roads were clear all the way and arrived in Cheddar at 10:50 am. Driving through Cheddar was a bit more difficult than normal villages as the roads were narrow and also there coaches and lots of people about even for this time in the morning.

But in saying that, even though Cheddar is a small village is was a beautiful place. On the main road in you could see the high cliff tops and towering hills, so we knew we were in the right place. Once coming to a round about we were in the heart of cheddar. We turned left and took the road towards the gorge that was sign posted. Along this road were all the shops selling food, ice creams, souvenir's and of course cheese, as this is the home and birth place of the famous cheddar cheese. Like Ii said before this road you had to take great care as there where motorbikes, racing bikes, tourists, coaches everywhere. We could tell it was a very popular place for people to come and even not just for the caves and gorge but also the huge amount of walking trails and long winding roads that bikes really seem to enjoy.

As we headed up the road you headed straight into the gorge as the road cut through the hill side leaving huge cliff faces all around. You would have to drive right out of Cheddar before you felt you were in the open again. Once we had passed the caves that were clearly marked on the right hand side you came to a very sharp S bend which just happened to have to parking on either side of the road. We sore a space and with a bit of worrying on my partners side we managed to reverse in leaving traffic going both ways to wait for us. Though you can see why this is pretty much the only place for parking it really is not the best.

Once we got sorted, we paid for our parking and started to walk back into Cheddar towards the cave. We felt it was best to get the walking out of the way first as it was a climb up and depending on how much we stopped on the route around we weren't sure how long it would take.

The start of the walk was at a place called Jacob's ladder just a short way down past the caves. We had to show our tickets on the way in even for the walk as it was part of the package (even though we learnt afterwards if you walked the other way round it was free lol). Even though it's called a ladder, it really is a series of 274 steps leading straight up. As it was not a particular hot day it wasn't to bad but there was stop off points with boards for you to read about the history to give you a bit of a rest.

Once at the top of the stairs you were on the main trail that would lead you around the top of the gorge and back to the other side at the village to carry on with seeing other thing. There a look out tower here but it was run down and you weren't aloud to use. So we turned left and started making our way up a hill towards the top of the cliff faces. At this point you couldn't see much due to the trees but after a short while it opened up to the right and you could see for miles and was a great sight. After taking in the views we headed off again and started to climb some more up hill but wasn't really that hard. After a short while we were pretty much as high as we would get to and it really opened out from looking back where we come from. You could see all the housing from the village below, leading out to a big lake that people were sailing on and also lots of open space. We also sore some goats and just chilling right next to the cliff edge which was great to see. After some photos we then made a short walk up and headed in a straight line away from where the village was.

We pasted through some trees and then started to head down the a hill. This hill got quite steep after awhile and we could see we were heading down to road level. After a little while we reached the bottom and sore cars parked in little spaces along the sides as there were other walks here as well that you can go off ans do. But for us we had to cross the road with care to the other side. We had now down side of the gorge and we had to head back along the other side to get back to the start again.

After walking into the woods for a few hundred yards we had a sharp turn to our right and we had to climb a fairly steep hill with uneven steeps further into the woods. This flattened off for a little way until we came into the open. We then seen steep steps leading up a hill towards the top of the gorge. This for me was okay but was a little challenging for my wife and daughter after walking for a good couple miles already with a lot of it up hill. Once we got to the brow of the hill we seen it was only half way and with this side of the gorge you had to walk to the top in a steep quick way rather than the gradual way on the other side.

At the top it was straight forward and we crossed across the top. It was a nice walk but even though you were high up there wasn't a great deal to see into the distance.

Before we started to walk down into the town I went off to a viewing point where you could see down into the gorge and where we had parked our car. I then headed back to meet my family and we made the final stretch back to the town, heading down a steep hill through the woods.

This place had lots of people here and on the way down we noticed a cave to the right. This wasn't very deep but with it in the rock face it was really nice. We stopped and had a look and doing some photos. But with that it was time to go. The town we could see just the other side of the trees with a lot of people walking towards us as they knew if you walked the other way round it was free lol.

After the short path past the trees you came out the back of some of the cafe's we seen coming in and only just down from the caves. This was a nice walk, but if came again I would walk the other way lol