Went to Somerset this weekend. Set off on Saturday at 12.10am and got there over three hours later. I had copied the directions from theaa.com, but I got confused at Bristol and ended up on the A4 heading towards Bath. This was a veritable u-turn as the destination was Cheddar Gorge followed by a little village called Loxton about eight clicks from the Gorge. I thought Bath was on the way but I was proven wrong when I stopped at a garage and purchased a map. It no matter though, we weren’t in any hurry.

We checked into the Webbington Hotel, it's the Best Western way, in Loxton and went to our room. The hotel had a gym, steam room and sauna, so I went on the rowing machine for 45 mins and did ten clicks whilst Tash made use of the steam room and sauna. We then went back to the room and I watched the football on the television whilst Tash got ready. I was ecstatic to discover Liverpool had been dumped out and enjoyed watching Manchester United give Arsenal a drubbing, Forest won as well so I was well happy. Here is my view of the TV from the bed:

We then went and had a few drinks in the bar and had a meal in the hotel restaurant, very nice to. I had a fillet steak wrapped in bacon with chips followed by crème Brule for 13 English pounds which I considered to be quite reasonable indeed. After this we went back to the bar and had a couple more drinks. We then took a bottle of wine back up to the room, but we fell asleep and didn't even drink half the bottle.

Before leaving the next day we took full advantage of the breakfast and then took a couple of photo opportunities outside the facia of the hotel:

Our destination was the Cheddar Gorge. I parked up and we got a couple of tickets for the full experience. First up was an open top bus tour of the Gorge:

The bus dropped us at Gough's Cave and we cordially entered the cave, but not before taking the following snap:

Inside we were given an audio guide, which is visible in some of these shots. See the cave, see the people:

Next stop was the museum. This wasn't the best museum I've ever been in, I'll be honest, and the following picture of the guestbook at the end of the museum should give you some idea of what it was like, you may need to click and enlarge to see properly:

We then went to Cox's Cave and experienced the Crystal Quest, some of the kids who attended saved the world by 'touching the crystal' and destroying the strange skelator type character and dragon. It was quite funny because it was so bloody weird. This is the cave in pictures:

After the cave sight seeing we were peckish so we went for luncheon. In the end we opted from Trackers, a fish and chip shop. It was very nice and I had sausage, egg and chips. It brought my total of fried eggs for the day to a nice round four. When we went to pay at the cash register we were delighted to find they had not charged us for our milkshakes... freebie!

After such a feast we went up Jacob's Ladder, two hundred and seventy something steps to the summit where there is a watch tower you can climb. We did climb and enjoyed some charming views of the surrounding area, we then decended the tower and plodded down the steps. I said that it was a good way to kick start the old metabolism after eating so many eggs. That was just what I thought at the time.

Before heading back we went to some shops and got some authentic Cheddar Cheese and also a framed picture of the Gorge for the wall. I have since put up the picture in the living room where is it sitting pretty.

The journey back was more fortuitous than the journey there. We didn't get lost once and we elected to take the A303 rather than the M4 so Tash could see Stone Henge. Made it back in 2 hours 30 mins, which I thought was jolly good. When we got in we watched The Decent, it's a film about some women who get trapped in a cave and consequently get attacked by some very strange creatures which have taken up residence in these caves. I'd decided I wanted to watch it whilst going round the caves. This is just something I do, for example after visiting the Natural History Museum last year I found I must watch Jurassic Park.