Hiking: 6.2 mi / 300 ft. climbing
Home: Ubley Farm AirBNB

Days 2-3

The heat wave was due to only last two days, so after sheltering in our cool stone cave to avoid the 92F high of the second day, we would have been able to ride out into a much cooler morning afterward. But, our cool stone cave was a rather luxurious cave, and we wanted to explore more of the Cheddar Gorge than we would see by just riding out of the Mendip Hills, so maybe we could add another day? The problem was that we’d only brought enough food with us for two days, but that’s what made all the parts of my idea fit together: we could do a long hike down the Gorge’s north rim into the town of Cheddar, get lunch and groceries, and hike back up the south rim (and then we’d ride down the road in the bottom of the Gorge the next day). It would also give us a chance to try out walking in the UK, which seems like a popular traditional activity.

There was a bit of a smoky smell in the air when I cracked the door in the morning, and then some weird haziness/clouds on the horizon. Had some of the dried-out grass in the area combusted?

Our walk began back down the narrow access road that brought us to the farm, but then crossed over to a pedestrian-only gate nearly-hidden by roadside brush grown around it. The UK is criss-crossed by public byways, bridleways, and footpaths, that grant some sort of rights over what otherwise might seem like private property. I had a map showing me that the route was public, but the cows that we were sharing the pasture with seemed as unsure about that as I suddenly was. A barely-visible path through the tall grass suggested that very few people walked this way, but at least it was more than zero!

After crossing a couple more fences, we reached a proper trail (and even benches!), though we were still the only ones out walking this far from the Gorge in the morning. The path went gradually downhill, thanks to ancient water beginning to slice a groove in the plateau, but then kicked steeply upwards in order to leave the early-stage of the gorge-bottom and bump us back up to the flat rim. Stairs and a nice stainless railing had been installed to make it easier on us.

After seeing a dozen new snow-capped mountains each day on the Carretera Austral in Patagonia, you might think that even the wildest topography of much-tamer England would be essentially unnoticeable to our jaded eyes. However, through all of our travels, I’ve learned that landscape-impressiveness is heavily-dependent on context and recent experience. A molehill is genuinely nothing if it’s surrounded by actual mountains, but in the absence of such mountains, its perceived stature can increase significantly. All that is to say that even if the Cheddar Gorge was dropped directly into the mountains of Patagonia, it would still be noticeable! Probably not a highlight that would draw particular focus, but it’s a much-more impressive bit of topography than I was expecting to see in England, and it’s something we almost just stumbled across, mostly because hot weather directed us to an AirBNB nearby.

And unlike Patagonia, we could then descend from the rim into a town so charming that Rett repeatedly declared she wanted to move to Cheddar. We wound our way to the grocery store, largely avoiding the extremely-tourist arm that runs into the base of the Gorge (for people not adapted to Patagonia, it’s understandably a really big attraction!) Even though the day was significantly cooler, it was still plenty warm in the sun, and hunger/heat/6-miles-of-hiking had Rett exhausted enough to see if Ubers existed out here. They do, so we got some lunch in a cafe, and then in the interests of making tomorrow’s ride out more-enjoyable, decided to save ourselves the next 5 miles of (hotter, more-uphill, carrying groceries) hiking.

Yes, Cheddar is the home of the cheese, and although it’s ubiquitous in this area (and likely the rest of the UK, seeming to comprise 50% of the cheese in grocery stores), apparently only one maker remains near the town, and we didn’t see any Wisconsin-like “CHEDDAR CHEESE BARN!!” tourist attractions. But some of the tourist attractions in the Gorge are various caves, which were presumably used for aging the cheese at some point. So that made it even more-appropriate to return to our own cool cave in the hills above Cheddar. Even through the second day of heat, the temperature inside never got higher than 70°F. And the stone floor was always 65°F or less, so walking in bare feet was like walking in a refrigerator!