NATURE RECOVERY & SUSTAINABILITY WITH MENDIP ADVENTURE

They stay at around 11°C the whole year round. That means on a hot summers day a cave is a cool place to adventure - whilst in the winter it is often warmer underground! This is because the ground a few metres down acts like a thermal buffer, keeping things nice and stable. This also makes caving a great all-weather adventure rain, shine, or snow!

One day a milkmaid stored a bucket of milk in a cave (https://www.icysedgwick.com/folklore-of-british-caves/)in Cheddar Gorge to keep it cool. It must have been a busy day for her, because she soon forgot about that bucket of milk and when she finally returned she had accidently created one of the finest things introduced to this world - Cheddar cheese!

The caves of the Mendip Hills in Somerset provide shelter for diverse species, including the rare Lesser and Greater Horseshoe bats. If you’re lucky you might spot one or two spending a bit of down-time in a cave while they wait for dusk to fall and meal time to begin. Both species are protected, so if you come across one please do not disturb them, and avoid shining your light at them.

The oldest near-complete skeleton found in Britain, known as Cheddar Man, was discovered in Gough’s Cave in 1903. According to radiocarbon dating, Cheddar Man would have walked the rugged Mendip landscape during the Mesolithic period, a transitional time when humans started to shift from hunting and gathering and basic chipped-stone tool-making to agriculture and smooth-tool making. In addition, Aveline’s Hole,(https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1010297?section=official-list-entry) located in Somerset on the northern edge of the Mendip Hills near Burrington Combe, is one of Britain’s most significant caves. Discovered in 1797, it contained numerous human remains and tools dating from the Mesolithic Period. Radiocarbon dating has identified it as the largest known Mesolithic Cemetery in Britain, and ongoing research continues to provide valuable insights into human prehistory.

Cave tourism boomed in the 1800s and, like today, the Mendip Hills were the perfect place to go for an adventure. Show caves like Cox’s and Gough’s Caves and Wookey Hole became popular destinations, showcasing local myths and stunning natural features. Other sites like the Banwell Bone and Stalactite Caves revealed hundreds of prehistoric animal bones. They were believed to be evidence of the Great Flood from the Book of Genesis, inspiring the Bishop of Bath and Wells to create a unique display using the bones to tell the story of the Flood.

In very old buildings, you may see traces of a roughly carved mark resembling two overlapping V’s, forming a W or M shape. These are known as witches marks, believed to ward off bad intentions. Usually placed at entry points to a building, these carvings have also been discovered in caves throughout the Mendips, (https://rakinglight.co.uk/uk/ritual-protection-marks-in-caves-under-the-mendips/)like Goatchurch Cavern, suggesting that people who lived in the caves also practised this method of supernatural boundary-marking.