White Horses & Cheddar Gorge (again)

Hi all,
The weeks are beginning to get long and the weekends seem too short! Declan is starting to play soccer and rugby for the school again. Billy spends one day a week at school cooking all day (hard life for some!). Kristin is working lots and Andy has one ok week and then a horror week (only 2 free periods for the whole week!!).

Anyhow, this weekend we got up early Saturday to watch the Grand Final - at 5 in the morning and no beers it just doesn't have the right atmosphere!

Sunday, we travelled to Wiltshire and went on the White Horse Trail. There are about 8 White Horses and we managed to see 6 of them. We have been to this area twice before and had only seen a glance of one of them. Some of them would be 10 metres high and 40 metres wide. The White Horses are carvings on the side of hills, the geological structure is of solid white chalk with a thin layer of topsoil. These type of carvings have been given a name, LEUCIPOTTOMY. During WWII the horses were covered to prevent enemy recognition, but since then they have been cleaned and re-cut.

Of the White horses, the best were at Cherhill, Alton Baarnes and Westbury. Early in the year we saw the Uffington White Horse which pre-dates all the Wiltshire horses by several hundred years, but these three were much more impressive. At the Westbury White Horse, we had lunch and watched para-gliders sailing off the hilltop.

Later in the day we went to Cheddar Gorge, again (we had a family pass that allowed us to visit some of the attractions left over from earlier in the year). Last time it was in January and extremely cold, this time it looked a lot different and much busier. We went into the Cox's Cave, not as good as Gough's Cave that we saw last time and then went up Jacob's ladder (274 steps almost straight up) to the Lookout Tower. There was a great view of the surrounding area, and we could even see the Glastonbury Tor from the lookout.

The trip home was terrible, as we spent an hour and twenty minutes on the 20 mile stretch of the M5 from Weston-Super-Mare to Bristol.

Another enjoyable Sunday! We may go to the South of England next weekend. Check out the Web Albums for the pictures.
Cheers!