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Not too stiff from the cycling surprisingly, though the couple of shorter bike rides we went on today were a little hard work and I am not really looking forward to the return journey to the bike shop tomorrow. Well I sort of am, but I think it might be more of a challenge.
This afternoon we took the kids and their grandparents up the gorge for lunch and then I dropped mum and dad at home and the rest of us went to look round the caves. In the old days you could buy tickets to each of the attractions separately -as well as a ticket for all attractions- (it was 50p to go up Jacob’s Ladder and when I was on the desk there I would occasionally not issue a ticket and keep the 50p for myself. I must have made £1.50 that way) but now you can only buy the ticket to everything and you can only use that ticket on the day of purchase. So even though we got there at 3pm we had to pay £80 for the four of us.
I told the girl on the check out that I had worked here back in the 80s (but she still didn’t offer a discount) and she asked if I’d taken tours - my brother had a few years before me, but they had audio points in the caves by the time I got there. Another employee then came in and was very excited to see me. I guess my cave guide skills have been passed down from generation to generation. Neither of these people were alive when I first worked here in 1986 and it’s possible that their parents hadn’t been either.
I was interested to see what the Caves were currently doing with Pavey’s Cave - the man made cavern that Rowland Pavey had created when blasting to try and find his own cave which has been connected to the end of Cox’s cave and had all sorts of rubbish in it, like a pseudo Lord of the Rings adventure and one of those globes that when you touch it the static electricity makes your hair stand on end. I was quite disappointed to see that the entirety of Cox’s cave has been turned into an audio visual adventure as you follow the lives of cavemen, narrated by some kind of ancient spirit. The video projected on the walls is impressively done, but Cox’s cave has some pretty formations that are almost entirely ignored. Also no cavemen ever lived in this cave as far as I know. It was even more disappointing as Ernie had freaked out the minute we’d entered the outer part of the cave and the video had started so him and Catie had had to go outside.
Similarly when we got up to Gough’s Cave Ernie was too scared to go in, so this time I stayed out with him, taking him to the museum where he got freaked out by various skeletons (though he liked the flints and weapons) and I told him there would be no more skeletons, only for a surprise one of a bear or something to appear at the end. Phoebe meanwhile had got scared in the cave because the audioguide had said it could flood and they’d come out too. So that was £80 well spent. Good to give something back to the caves though. I have come close, at various times, to getting sitcoms or comedy dramas about the caves on to TV and have been paid for those rejected scripts, so I do owe Cheddar. But I’d rather have paid them back by creating a successful franchise that would have brought more tourists here and meant there was a museum dedicated to me. Is that too much to ask, people of Cheddar? After all I’ve tried, but failed, to do for you.
We played Viking Kubb back at my folks. Boys versus girls. Ernie wasn’t really interested and my dad is not the sportsman he once was and the girls quickly dominated. I think spurred on by me questioning if the teams were fair, my dad rose to the occasion and after a round or two of weak throws found his form. I was about as much use as Ernie, but we turned things around quite impressively before the match was abandoned by one of the competitive Herring family having a meltdown because they were losing. It doesn’t really matter which one of us it was, it could have been any of us, apart from Catie who only has the name and not the DNA. It was great to see my dad up and at em though (and I’d like to pretend that my trash talking of his abilities was a tactic to get him on his feet, but it wasn’t - it was just rudeness and ingratitude from a son to his father).
He is a remarkable man and the Cheddar end of the Strawberry Line is all down to him and his relentless desire to get stuff done for the community and raise funds and enthusiasm. Even at nearly 87 he can still throw some sticks at some blocks of wood and knock them over and there’s not greater skill than that.
RHLSTP with my first (apart from the blonde one from Abba) and true love (no offence to my wife, but we are living a sham), Janet Ellis is now up
wherever you get your pods
