Sommerset: The land of Brunel, cheddar & the Wookey Witch
It was holiday time again. Our third this year, but who’s counting!
With Covid restrictions lifted in the UK we could have perhaps ventured further afield but not wanting to sit in the confined space of a plane for hours with dozens of other people, we opted for another staycation, this time in Sommerset.
It has been about 14 years since I traversed the county’s tourist spots, so it was nice to return and see some of them again.
This time we opted to stay in the slightly busier coastal town of Burnham-on-Sea, not somewhere I’d ever stayed before, but it was good to have a few more amenities on the doorstep as opposed to Brean where I’d stayed in my childhood.
On the way down we encountered a lot of traffic and crawled most the way down the M5. Hence, we decided to stop off at the Michaelwood services for some food and a cache, just a few miles from our destination. It was the first cache of the holiday and it didn’t take long to spot.
The following day we headed out to one of the counties top tourist destinations - Cheddar Gorge.
We decided to take a more scenic route in order to grab a few caches and dashes along the way, including some church micros. I struggled to find a couple, but the rest were pretty straightforward finds.
Cheddar Gorge was slightly quieter than my previous visits, possibly because the stunning caves - which are the main attraction here - were sadly still closed due to Covid. However, all the quaint little shops lining the meandering road up the steep gorge were all open, so we decided to have a wander around them.
After purchasing the obligatory cheddar cheese - the village’s world famous product - we headed further up the gorge, away from shops and people to do the Earthcache.
Called Cheddar Gorge, it’s one of the older caches in the county and unsurprisingly, one of the most popular.
The cache required us to make some estimated measurements of the height of the gorge and of course take a selfie at GZ. It had just started to rain so it wasn’t the greatest snap of me, hiding under my hood, but it did the job.
The next day we headed off to the much busier resort of Weston-Super-Mare. With its famous pier, amusements, giant Ferris wheel and huge hotels lining the front, it was quite a contrast to Burnham.
Whilst the other half headed off to the pier to try his luck on some of the amusements, I headed into the town centre to pick up some traditional caches on the great ‘Love Weston Trail’ and some of the lab caches too.
The sun was out again, and I really enjoyed the walk, picking up five caches in the Weston series and several lab caches in the ‘Look Up’ and ‘Blue Plaques of Weston’ series’.
Number two in the Love Weston series was a great hide - behind a huge ice cream sign near the beach. We had to be a bit stealthy retrieving it, as there were a few people walking on and off the beach.
Most of the others in the series were found quite quickly, only one evaded me for a while – number 8 - which was a tricky little hide.
After almost 20 minutes of looking at the extensive metal railings around the Old Hospital, I finally sat down on the wall and seconds later spotted the tiny magnetic cache…so that’s where it is!
Back on the seafront, I had the opportunity to do the nice ‘By the seaside’ Earthcache at the giant granite arch – really nice to see this.
I also stopped off in the garden of the historic Winter Gardens Pavilion to grab the little bridges cache, before being reunited with the other half who was smiling despite failing to win a single toy - but he had a lot of fun trying, apparently.
The third day of our holiday was largely spent wandering around Burnham itself and picking up a few bargains in the local shops.
The walk down to the town and back, along the wide promenade, yielded a few geocaches including some of the labs in the nice ‘Burnham and Berrow Walk’ series. Plus the great ‘Burnham-on-sea promenade’ earthcache, which we soon had all the info for.
The next day started a little wet so we decided to head to the county’s other famous caves, ‘Wookey Hole’.
It is one of my favourite places in the UK, the caves really are stunning. At the moment you can also just wander round them at your own speed as the guided tours don’t seem to be running - well they weren’t whilst we were there.
It was great to see the huge stalagmites and stalactites and the stunning witch’s parlour cave, with its huge domed ceiling. It really is well worth the entry fee in itself.
After an enjoyable wander around the caves, which are at the southern end of the Mendip Hills, we then spent a few hours seeing the brilliant water wheel, 4D cinema and paper mill. We finished with a few games on the old penny machines, including getting a tarot card reading.
I had checked out what was needed to complete the Earthcache just outside the attraction, so whilst I was walking around the museum reading about the history of the caves and the local geology, I was able to find the name of the priest who was sent to kill the witch who lived in the caves, as well as the geological info needed for the cache.
Once we were outside again and back in the car park I took a quick selfie by the Wookey Hole sign to complete the Earthcache tasks. I was also able to pick up the Wookey Hole Church Micro traditional cache, which was a quick find, just a few metres away.
We collected a few caches and dashes on our way back to the holiday home, including another Wookey church micro.
The following day we decided to head a little further afield towards Minehead, to explore a little more of the county.
Our first stop was at Dunster Castle, owned by the National Trust. We had hoped to have a wander around it, but it was so busy! It was literally one in one out of the car park and dozens upon dozens of people were making there way up and down the hill to and from the castle.
Being a little mindful that we are still in the midst of a pandemic, we decided to give it a miss and parked up around the corner in the village itself. It was much quieter and we decided to do the nearby Wherigo ‘The winding charm’.
I do enjoy Wherigos and try to do them whenever I come across one, especially as they often have some particularly inventive stories and ideas behind them.
This one was a more straightforward tour of the village and it took us to some interesting places in and around Dunster. However, neither of us had quite realised just how long it was going to take to complete or quite how far we would have to walk – we certainly saw most of the village’s quaint streets by the time we had finished.
The final cache was great though. It was a small Tupperware box cleverly hidden in the rocky flower bed outside the big hotel. It really was a secret hidey hole and we felt like undercover detectives on a secret mission trying to extract it without anyone seeing us, which I’m pleased to say we did!
We also picked up the nice custom ‘Creatures from the crypt’ and the ‘O&A’ traditional caches during the walk, which was great.
Our next stop was the pretty, out of the way, coastal hamlet of Porlock Weir. It is a very beautiful place and has a vast raised beach covered in huge pebbles.
It was a bit tricky to walk across the pebbles but we managed to get to GZ for the Earthcache and then realised we needed to be a bit further along to estimate the width of the raised beach. A bit of guesstimating and a quick selfie and we were done.
We also picked up the nearby Porlock fine pair letterbox, after doing a little bit of calculating at the first stage. And had time to grab the five great lab caches in the ‘Porlock old and new’ series.
The series of labs took us to some interesting places around the large village including The Old School, which had an impressive, huge apple press within its grounds. Well worth stopping off to see.
Our destination was the historical Brean Fort located at the far end, famous for being the test site of the bouncing bomb!
It was pretty busy on the trails today, in fact when I’d hiked up it in the past I’d barely seen a soul, but it’s clearly a popular tourist spot these days.
As I walked I had the Wherigo running on my phone so I could get through the stages and hopefully find the final cache at some point on our walk. It was great fun and took us to lots of interesting things. I do enjoy a Wherigo more than any other cache type.
Arriving at the fort I set about collecting information for the lab caches and finished off the Wherigo. I also collected all the information for the brilliant Brean Down Earthcache.
After a good wander about and lots of photo snapping, we headed back towards the car, taking a slightly different route so that we could pick up the Wherigo cache. It was a really lovely walk, and well worth doing if you have a few hours spare.
We actually ended up spending the day learning an awful lot about Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Starting at his impressive suspension bridge we collected info for some of the nearby lab caches and completed the brilliant virtual with a walk across the bridge and back again. We were also able to gather the info needed for the Gorgeous Earthcache.
The bridge itself was incredible, what a feat of engineering! And the views of the steep sided gorge and river way below were just stunning.
We then decided to visit the Brunel museum and I’m so glad we did, it really was brilliant and well worth the entry fee.
Aside from the fantastic exhibition which had lots of interactive games and displays for the young and older visitor, we also got to see his huge ship the SS Great Britain up close, from hull to deck and inside!
Inside has been restored to how it would have been and the huge amount of attention to detail in every exhibit in every room and quarter, really does bring it to life. You really do feel like you are a traveller onboard 150 years ago!
Outside the museum we collected even more lab caches and the traditional cache, ‘Nuts about Bristol’, which was a great custom bolt container under a bench.
The last day of our holiday had arrived and after packing up the car we set off for Longleat Safari Park, just across the county border in Wiltshire.
On the way we stopped to collect a few caches and dashes - picking up some much needed caches in the county of Wiltshire, to help us complete an England counties challenge cache we’ve been working on for a while.
The Safari Park was great fun and I highly recommend a visit. The drive through Safari kept us busy for a good 4 hours, we got to see so many fantastic animals, including the very naughty car riding monkeys and a huge pride of lions.
After a fun day we had just enough time to collect a few more caches by car, including ‘Which Way Darling’ just outside the park, which was a brilliantly disguised custom cache that looked like bubble gum stuck to a sign.
It was a great end to another great holiday and we returned home with a large amount of cheese, and lots of stories about witches, caves, forts, monkeys and Brunel’s achievements.
Until next time happy caching.
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