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Cheddar Gorge
Cheddar Gorge is a limestone gorge in the Mendip Hills, near the village of Cheddar, Somerset, England. The gorge is the site of the Cheddar show caves, where Great Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, Cheddar Man, estimated to be 9,000 years old, was found in 1903. Older remains from the Upper Late Palaeolithic era (12,000–13,000 years ago) have been found. The caves, produced by the activity of an underground river, contain stalactites and stalagmites. The gorge is part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest called Cheddar Complex.
Cheddar Gorge, including the caves and other attractions, has become a tourist destination. In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, following its appearance on the television programme Seven Natural Wonders (2005), Cheddar Gorge was named as the second greatest natural wonder in Great Britain, surpassed only by Dan yr Ogof caves. The gorge attracts about 500,000 visitors per year.
Cheddar Gorge is on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills, with a maximum depth of 137 m (449 ft). The area is underlain by Black Rock slate, Burrington Oolite and Clifton Down Limestone of the Carboniferous Limestone Series, which contain ooliths and fossil debris, on top of Old Red Sandstone and by dolomitic conglomerate of the Keuper. Evidence for Variscan orogeny is seen in the sheared rock and cleaved shales. In many places weathering of these strata has resulted in the formation of immature calcareous soils.
The gorge was formed 225 million years ago, during the Triassic Period, when the Mendip Carboniferous limestone stood as a series of "whalebacked" hills. At that time Britain had a warm arid climate, not dissimilar to northern Africa today. Occasionally flash floods cause huge volumes of water to run off the hills, forming wadis — an Arabic term for the steep-sided ravines characteristic of intermittent streams. Cheddar Gorge and its near neighbour, Burrington Combe, are exhumed wadis. They were originally filled with Triassic rocks that may have been eroded out by glacial meltwaters at the end of the last Ice Age. Parts of Burrington Combe still have these Triassic rocks, forming an unconformity with the Carboniferous limestones along their sides and bottom.
During the Ice Ages, permafrost blocked the caves with ice and frozen mud, making the limestone impermeable. When this melted during the summers, water was forced to flow on the surface, carving out the softer Triassic rocks, exhuming the wadi. During warmer periods, the water flowed underground through the permeable limestone, creating the caves and leaving the gorge dry, so that today much of the gorge has no river until the underground Cheddar Yeo river emerges in the lower part from Gough's Cave. The river is used by Bristol Water, which maintains a series of dams and ponds supplying the nearby Cheddar Reservoir, via a 137-centimetre (54 in) diameter pipe that takes water just upstream of the Rotary Club Sensory Garden, a public park in the Gorge opposite Jacob's Ladder.
The gorge is susceptible to flooding. In the Chew Stoke flood of 1968, the flow of water washed large boulders down the gorge, damaging the café, the entrance to Gough's Cave and washing away cars. In the cave itself, the flooding lasted for three days. In 2012 the B3135 road through Cheddar Gorge was closed for several weeks following damage to the road surface as a result of extensive flooding.
The south side of the gorge is owned and administered by the Marquess of Bath's Longleat Estate. The cliffs on the north side of the gorge are owned by The National Trust. Every year, both of the gorge's owners contribute funds towards the clearance of scrub, bush and trees from the area.
Most of the commercial visitor activity in the gorge is on the Longleat-owned south side, including access to the two main commercial show caves and the visitor centre, which is operated by Longleat-owned company Cheddar Gorge and Caves Ltd.[citation needed]. Because visitors to the show caves have decreased from 400,000 a year in the 1980s to 150,000 in 2013, Ceawlin Thynn, Viscount Weymouth, who runs the Longleat estate on behalf of the family trust, proposed the installation of a 600-metre (2,000 ft) 18-gondola cable car at an estimated cost of £10m, which would take visitors from the entrance area to the caves directly to the top of the southside cliffs. The National Trust opposed the proposed development, stating that it would spoil the view and cheapen the experience, creating a "fairground ride" that would make the area feel more like an amusement park. Planning permission was planned in Spring 2014, which would have meant that operations would start in Spring 2016. In 2015 the financial feasibility was still being investigated.
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Cheddar Gorge
Cheddar Gorge is a limestone gorge in the Mendip Hills, near the village of Cheddar, Somerset, England. The gorge is the site of the Cheddar show caves, where Great Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, Cheddar Man, estimated to be 9,000 years old, was found in 1903. Older remains from the Upper Late Palaeolithic era (12,000–13,000 years ago) have been found. The caves, produced by the activity of an underground river, contain stalactites and stalagmites. The gorge is part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest called Cheddar Complex.
Cheddar Gorge, including the caves and other attractions, has become a tourist destination. In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, following its appearance on the television programme Seven Natural Wonders (2005), Cheddar Gorge was named as the second greatest natural wonder in Great Britain, surpassed only by Dan yr Ogof caves. The gorge attracts about 500,000 visitors per year.
Cheddar Gorge is on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills, with a maximum depth of 137 m (449 ft). The area is underlain by Black Rock slate, Burrington Oolite and Clifton Down Limestone of the Carboniferous Limestone Series, which contain ooliths and fossil debris, on top of Old Red Sandstone and by dolomitic conglomerate of the Keuper. Evidence for Variscan orogeny is seen in the sheared rock and cleaved shales. In many places weathering of these strata has resulted in the formation of immature calcareous soils.
The gorge was formed 225 million years ago, during the Triassic Period, when the Mendip Carboniferous limestone stood as a series of "whalebacked" hills. At that time Britain had a warm arid climate, not dissimilar to northern Africa today. Occasionally flash floods cause huge volumes of water to run off the hills, forming wadis — an Arabic term for the steep-sided ravines characteristic of intermittent streams. Cheddar Gorge and its near neighbour, Burrington Combe, are exhumed wadis. They were originally filled with Triassic rocks that may have been eroded out by glacial meltwaters at the end of the last Ice Age. Parts of Burrington Combe still have these Triassic rocks, forming an unconformity with the Carboniferous limestones along their sides and bottom.
During the Ice Ages, permafrost blocked the caves with ice and frozen mud, making the limestone impermeable. When this melted during the summers, water was forced to flow on the surface, carving out the softer Triassic rocks, exhuming the wadi. During warmer periods, the water flowed underground through the permeable limestone, creating the caves and leaving the gorge dry, so that today much of the gorge has no river until the underground Cheddar Yeo river emerges in the lower part from Gough's Cave. The river is used by Bristol Water, which maintains a series of dams and ponds supplying the nearby Cheddar Reservoir, via a 137-centimetre (54 in) diameter pipe that takes water just upstream of the Rotary Club Sensory Garden, a public park in the Gorge opposite Jacob's Ladder.
The gorge is susceptible to flooding. In the Chew Stoke flood of 1968, the flow of water washed large boulders down the gorge, damaging the café, the entrance to Gough's Cave and washing away cars. In the cave itself, the flooding lasted for three days. In 2012 the B3135 road through Cheddar Gorge was closed for several weeks following damage to the road surface as a result of extensive flooding.
The south side of the gorge is owned and administered by the Marquess of Bath's Longleat Estate. The cliffs on the north side of the gorge are owned by The National Trust. Every year, both of the gorge's owners contribute funds towards the clearance of scrub, bush and trees from the area.
Most of the commercial visitor activity in the gorge is on the Longleat-owned south side, including access to the two main commercial show caves and the visitor centre, which is operated by Longleat-owned company Cheddar Gorge and Caves Ltd.[citation needed]. Because visitors to the show caves have decreased from 400,000 a year in the 1980s to 150,000 in 2013, Ceawlin Thynn, Viscount Weymouth, who runs the Longleat estate on behalf of the family trust, proposed the installation of a 600-metre (2,000 ft) 18-gondola cable car at an estimated cost of £10m, which would take visitors from the entrance area to the caves directly to the top of the southside cliffs. The National Trust opposed the proposed development, stating that it would spoil the view and cheapen the experience, creating a "fairground ride" that would make the area feel more like an amusement park. Planning permission was planned in Spring 2014, which would have meant that operations would start in Spring 2016. In 2015 the financial feasibility was still being investigated.