Cheddar Gorge and the Mendips

Up Cheddar Gorge, the biggest in England, onto the top of the Mendips to Priddy and Charterhouse, down Burrington Combe to Blagdon and its lake, and back by Shipham to Cheddar.

The drive

The B3135 leaves Cheddar and climbs straight into the gorge, between limestone cliffs nearly 450 feet high, round tight bends under overhanging rock. Feral goats pick their way along the ledges, and in the caves at the bottom Cheddar Man was found: Britain's oldest complete skeleton, some nine thousand years old.

At the top the road comes out onto open farmland. Priddy, said to be the highest village in Somerset, keeps a thatched stack of hurdles on its green for the sheep fair, and the lead mines round Charterhouse were worked by the Romans.

Burrington Combe drops back off the hills through a smaller gorge, past the Rock of Ages, a cleft in the cliff where the Reverend Augustus Toplady is said to have sheltered from a storm and written the hymn. Below it is Blagdon, on its reservoir, and the road comes back along the foot of the hills and over by Shipham, an old mining village, to Cheddar.

Worth knowing

• The gorge is busy on summer weekends, with walkers on the road and coaches at the bottom: early or late is best.
• The bends in the gorge are tight and blind, so keep left.
• There's paid parking in the gorge, and a few laybys on the way up.