Where does Cheddar cheese come from?  切達起司出自哪裏?

Where does Cheddar cheese come from? 切達起司出自哪裏?

28th August 2018 0 By livinguktaiwan

If you’re a cheese lover, you would have probably heard of Cheddar cheese, but do you know where it comes from? Ok, Cheddar is the obvious answer, but where exactly is Cheddar? Let me take you there today, or more specifically to Cheddar Gorge. Cheddar is located at Somerset in South West England about 240km away from London, and half an hour away from yours truly’s home town. Cheddar Gorge was created some 1.2 million years ago from the ice age, when the melting ice gushed up from the limestone caves nearby cutting into the surface. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than this but this is the TLTR version. The gorge goes up to as high as up to 122m in some parts and is 4.8km long making it England’s largest gorge. Today there is a road at the bottom of the gorge which makes a fascinating drive through history and nature.

喜愛吃起司的朋友應該都會聽過。但你又知道切達在哪裏嗎?今天帶大家去位於英國西南部,離開倫敦二百四十公里的切達 峽谷。 峽谷在超過一百萬年前的冰河時期形成,最高有1 2 2米,長4.8公里,是全英格蘭最大的峽谷。 峽谷中間大概有一條行車路的闊,就算在早上都不太採光,可以見到峽谷崖頂的倒映像將巨人般照在另一邊。 要看峽谷的全景最好是到崖邊的頂部, 那裏有一條步道可以沿著峽谷兩邊走。

Cheddar is one of the places on my doorstep that I always meant to go, but as usual it became one of those “I’ll go one day because it’s so near” places that I never went. When I went back to the UK in February this year, and my sisters suggested going, of course I said yes. It was a bit surreal driving along the road which was created over a million years ago. At some places, the cliffs faces were pretty much vertical and the road was quite dark even in the morning, as the gorge isn’t very wide. You can see the shade of the cliff falling in the opposite side.

It’s actually quite difficult to grasp how mighty the gorge is when you don’t have anything to put it into perspective, that’s why I’ve included this photo with our car in it.

 

The best place to see the gorge is of course from high up. Jacobs Ladder was the place to go, I’m told this was called after the biblical description of the ladder to heaven. This is the entrance to Jacobs Ladder, there are 247 steps that will take you to heaven the cliff top. My sister’s weren’t too keen to do the walk on a winter’s day, and decided to go for a coffee instead so hubby and I headed off.

After a bit of huff and puff we made it to the top of the staircase at last. The view was stunning. I haven’t been to heaven before, but if it looks anything like this, I’m fine with it. I promise I’ll be a good girl from now on.

There was a route of the 6.4km cliff top walk which takes you from the south cliff across the north cliff. I started at the orange point at the bottom left of the map.

 

The first part of the terrain is quite steep as I continue to go uphill towards the cliff top There was still a touch of overnight frost and the fact I didn’t have my walking shoes on didn’t help. Things got a bit messy after a little while on the muddy path, but luckily I didn’t slip or fall down.

Once I got further up, the cliff top started to plateau out and the view opened up in front of me. This is the north cliff on the other side of the gorge.  Isn’t the scenery just amazing?  The trail is positioned quite far away from the cliff edge but you can still get a great view of the surroundings. To be honest you wouldn’t want to, and didn’t need to go anywhere near the cliff edge for a better view especially when you know there’s a 122m cliff drop below.

Next time, I’m going to show you the rest of my cliff top walk, how I tried to get near to the edge of the cliff and tried to chase sheep on the cliff top.  Stay tuned!!