Cheddar Gorge, England - September 1, 2010

Perhaps the most well known cheese in the entire world is that English cheese named after the small Somerset village of Cheddar. The name also refers to a part of the production process known as cheddaring. Henry II's Royal Accounts record the purchase of 10,000 pounds of Cheddar in 1170. In reality, cheese was a way of using up excess milk and one great advantage of hard cheeses over soft, is that they keep better.
For centuries however, cheese remained something of a luxury item for most people until Joseph Harding invented the cheese mill in the 19th century and industrialized the overall process. Harding was a vigorous promoter of Cheddar and helped to introduce Cheddar-making into Scotland as well as training American cheesemakers.
The Village of Cheddar has a long and ancient history, having been an important Roman and later Saxon center. Popular tourism began with the opening of Cheddar Valley Railway in 1869/1870 which became known as the Strawberry Line, because it passed by many strawberry-growing fields on the Cheddar side of the valley. The railroad line was closed in 1965.
Cheddar Gorge is a limestone canyon to the east of the village and is the site of the Cheddar show caves where, in 1903, Britain's oldest complete human skeleton was found. The caves, produced by underground river activity, contain stalactites and stalagmites. The gorge has become a tourist destination attracting about 1/2 million visitors each year. The maximum depth of the gorge is about 450' with a near-vertical cliff-face to the south, and steep grassy slopes to the north. Formed by meltwater floods within the last 1.2 million years, the gorge remains susceptible to occasional flooding and in 1968 water flow washed large boulders down the gorge damaging the Cheddar Cafe and washing away some cars.

More pictures here.

The Mendip Hills, England - August 30, 2010

Priddy, a village with a population of less than 1,000, is in the county of Somerset and is situated in a small hollow close to the high point of the Mendip hills at nearly 1,000 feet above sea-level. The Mendip Hills are classified as one of 35 AONBs - area of outstanding natural beauty - in England. Each year since 1348 the annual Folk Festival  and Sheep Fair has been held on the village green and from the 1920s, the Mendip Farmers' Hunt fox hounds have been based there. It does sound exciting, doesn't it?
Lead mining developed in the area between 300 to 200 BCE and the relatively easy opencast extraction became an attraction for the Romans, evidenced by lead ingots found in the neighbourhood that have been dated to 49 CE. Remnants of St Cuthbert's Leadworks, which closed in 1908, are still visible.
The village church, St Lawrence, dates from the 13th century and underwent some rebuilding in the 15th century with a major restoration in the 1880s. In 1997 the three original bells were augmented to five.
In the surrounding area are the Priddy Circles, a Neolithic stone circle from around 2180 BCE making it a contemporary of Stonehenge. A further characteristic of the area are the dry stone walls bounding the fields constructed from local limestone and containing no mortar.
Other historic features in the vicinity include evidence of more than 250 round barrows, or burial mounds. Much less ancient are vestiges of a WWII bombing decoy constructed on top of Black Down at Beacon Batch intended to confuse bombers targeting the city of Bristol, and piles of stones (known as cairns) that were built around the same time to discourage enemy aircraft using the hilltop as a landing site. Less romantic than one might otherwise have surmised.
More views of the area here.