Naquada

Today we headed down to Somerset, first to Cheddar Gorge caves, and then onto Wookey Hole. It’s been years since I’ve been down there, and I thought it would be nice to take some more photos, and play with some more HDR shots as well.

The nice thing was we were down then pretty much out of season, so although it was quite cold, it was very quiet and easy to get round. I managed to get some pretty good shots in the caves. Although I think in that lighting condition I’d have better been using a mono-pod or tri-pod for some of the HDR’s, but the results on the whole were pretty OK, especially as they were all non-flashed in the caves.

The Longleat Estate, who own the caves really have spoilt the museum that was there.. replacing it with ‘Cheddar Man & the Cannibals Museum’ which basically tells you nothing about the caves themselves, just about live and death in the stone age..

I also seriously hope that Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton in Britain really isnt the one in the freaky flower power display case.. at rest in the middle of a flower bed with Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin playing 24 hours in his head, surrounded by flowers, astro turf, and signs that threw the hole cave thing off on a weird tangent about materialism in society and Einsteins thoughts on the argument of creationism versus evolution.. dead weird.. I have spoken to Bob Smart, who runs the exhibition (more on his views in another post) but like he said “This isn’t a ‘traditional’ museum experience.” which is quite an understatement!!

But.. back out in the day light, Derricks Cafe served one of the best Cream Teas so far this week!!!

We then headed onto Wookey Hole, which again being out of season meant that we almost had a personal tour of the caves with our guide. I do prefer Wookey to Cheddar caves. I think its because you’re personally guided round, and the caves are a lot more impressive..

We headed off at closing time to Shepton Mallet, to stay at The Thatched Cottage Inn a Grade II listed building. Which although a little expensive, really was a fantastically great place to stop over the night.

The building is in fact three cottages that have been merged into a single Inn. The thatched portion of the building is at least 330 years old. On the grounds is Turnpike Cottage, another listed building, which extracted fees for using the road to and from Frome in the 18th century. We stayed in their best room Aldhelm, reputed to have two ghosts; The Grey Lady, believed to be the wife of one of the Head brewers of Charlton Brewery, which was at the back of the building, and another, a lady said to have been ravaged by passing Roman centurions as they passed up the Roman Fosse Way.. We slept quietly after three Guinness’s and a filling meal!!

Technorati Tags: caves, cheddar gorge, food, ghosts, HDR, paranormal, photography, places to stay, public places, haunted inns, somerset, wookey hole

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Doing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.