Cheddar Gorge
[6] The maximum depth of the gorge is 137 m (449 ft),[7][8] with a near-vertical cliff-face to the south, and steep grassy slopes to the north.
Occasionally 'flash floods' cause huge volumes of water to run off the hills and form Wadis - steep sided gorges.
Parts of Burrington Combe still have these Triassic rocks, forming an unconformity with the Carboniferous limestones, along their sides and bottom.
When this melted during the summers, water was forced to flow on the surface, and carved out the softer Triassic rocks, exhuming the wadi.
[9] 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, who maintain a series of dams and ponds which supply the nearby Cheddar Reservoir,[10][11] 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.
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.
[19] Notable species at the gorge include dormice, yellow-necked mice, slowworms and adders and the rare large blue butterfly (Maculinea arion),[20] and small pearl-bordered fritillary (Boloria selene).
[3] A wide variety of wild birds may be seen in Cheddar Gorge including peregrine falcon, buzzard, kestrel, raven[21] and grasshopper warbler.
[23] The nationally rare little robin geranium (Geranium purpureum), and Cheddar bedstraw (Galium fleurotii) and the nationally scarce species include slender tare (Vicia tenuissima), dwarf mouse-ear (Cerastium pumilum) and rock stonecrop (Sedum forsteranum) also occur in the gorge.
[24] It is one of the very few areas in southern Britain where the lichens Solorina saccata, Squamaria cartilaginea and Caloplaca cirrochroa can be found.
[29] Gough's cave, which was discovered in 1903,[30] leads around 400 m (437 yd) into the rock-face, and contains a variety of large rock chambers and formations.
In 2016 Cox's cave was turned into "Dreamhunters", a multimedia walk-through experience with theatrical lighting and video projection.
[33] In 1999, the Channel 4 television programme Time Team investigated Cooper's Hole in an attempt to find evidence of Palaeolithic human activity.
[42] There are about 590 graded rock climbing routes on the South side of the gorge,[43] which are generally open to climbers between 1 October and 15 March each year.
In the 1960s, the glass roof to the restaurant, and the pool set above it, were removed to increase seating capacity, and it has since been re-clad in poor quality materials.
Michael Spens, in his comprehensive study, The Complete Landscape Designs and Gardens of Geoffrey Jellicoe, writes that it is "now barely recognizable as a pioneer construction of the modern period".
