Early August

Once the family had all left and we had recovered, it was back to more theatre visits and we managed a visit to Emmetts Garden, which we had visited earlier in the year for the Bluebells. This time, we appreciated the roses. Though it was rather late in the year for roses, they were still blooming well in the rose garden.

The rockery was also full of flowers.


In mid August, I was lucky enough to be able to go to the V&A for the Dior exhibition.

Some of this exhibition took me back to my childhood. This outfit, from 1955, was something of an icon. I think I can remember a drawing like this on a Butterick dress pattern in our house, so presumably my mother must have contemplated making the jacket. She and I certainly both had skirts just like this.

This was a time when few women could afford to buy many clothes, and my mother was a champion dress-maker. She made all our clothes, and really favoured floral patterned material. I had a dress with material not unlike this, though the neck was somewhat higher!



I suppose I must have looked a bit like a pair of curtains or a chair cover - how fashions have changed!

These two above are designs by Dior himself. There were later designs by Yves St Laurent, which I recognised, though I had nothing like them. I remember seeing this one, from 1958, but it was a coat. We had no need of long coats in Nairobi!

There were plenty of examples of clothes by later designers for the house of Dior, but I had left home by 1962 and my mother was no longer making my clothes so I don’t remember so many of the designs. 

I enjoyed the exhibition very much - apart from the fact that I didn’t like most of the strange designs of John Galliano, none of which looked very wearable to me, and many of which I found quite strange.

Later in the month, we set off for Cheshire where we had agreed to babysit for my son, and then cat-sit while the whole family went away for a few days. We set off by heading west, as I wanted to see Cheddar Gorge. 

The first interesting place we passed was Stonehenge.

I can remember going there years ago, probably 50 years ago or so, when people were allowed to walk about between the stones, which might well have been a comment on how few people actually visited them. Nowadays, you have to stay on the perimeter, which I am sure must interfere with your appreciation of the size of the stones and the powerful atmosphere of which I’m sure you are more aware when you walk among them. On the other hand, I’m sure it helps prevent damage to them, as well as thwarting the mindless vandals and would-be graffiti artists and name carvers!

Later in the day, we arrived at Cheddar Gorge, a gorge on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills, a bit south of places like Bath and Bristol. It was formed by meltwater floods during and after the ice ages. During the ice ages the caves in the limestone were all blocked with ice and frozen mud and this made the limestone impermeable. When everything melted during the summers, water was forced to flow on the surface, and carved out the gorge. During warmer periods the water flowed underground through the limestone (which was permeable if there was no ice), creating the caves and leaving the gorge dry, so that today much of the gorge has no river until the underground river emerges in the lower part of one of the caves. 

The maximum height of the cliffs in the gorge is 449 ft (137 m) and it is nearly 3 miles long. It has a near-vertical cliff-face to the south, and steep grassy and rocky slopes to the north. The B3135 road runs along the bottom.

This is one of my better photos. The steep cliff-face is on the left of my photo.

The eastern end of the gorge, where we started, has a few stopping places, so it is just possible to find a place to stop and take photos, but most of mine had to be taken out of the car windscreen as it was so hard to find a place to stop, as everywhere is so crowded.

It gets even more crowded as you approach the village, and there are walking trails up the slopes and even facilities for visitors to experience climbing and abseiling.

This is the less steep north side, still high and very rocky.

As you approach the village, it becomes even more crowded and highly commercial. The south side of the gorge (with the steep cliffs) is owned and administered by the Longleat Estate, so most of the commercial visitor activity in the gorge is on the Longleat-owned south side. This includes access to the two main commercial show caves and the visitor centre, which is operated by Longleat-owned company. The photo below shows the start of the commercial area.

There are  two main caves open to the public, both owned by Longleat Estate. The extensive Gough’s Cave and the smaller Cox’s Cave are both named after their respective discoverers. Gough's cave, which apparently leads around 400 metres into the rock-face, is said to contain a variety of large rock chambers and formations, but I wouldn’t know as we didn’t go in. I understand Cox's Cave is smaller but in 2016 It was turned into "Dreamhunters", a multimedia walk-through experience with theatrical lighting and video projection, so we didn’t go into that either!

It has apparently been suggested that the caves were used for maturing cheese in prehistoric times, and you certainly get plenty of chances to buy cheese all round the village, and you can even see it being made. We has intended to buy some, but they shut very promptly at 5.

The less steep north side of the gorge is owned by the National Trust, who maintain a small visitor centre which has lots of information and guides to several walks. As it was after 4 and my back wasn’t exactly pain-free, we decided on one of the shorter walks, around the back of the village and up the less steep slopes for views over the village and further away to the Somerset Levels.

Parts of the village were very pretty, and at the lower end, the river can be seen after if flows out from underground. This is an adjacent pond at the end of the village.



The views over the Somerset Levels didn’t photograph very well, unfortunately, or I would have posted them here. After our walk, all the shops were shut so we had no opportunity to buy any cheddar or anything else for that matter.

As there were fewer around people as visitors drove off, so we drove back through the gorge for final views. 

This shows the wonderful weathered crags and pinnacles on the north side of the gorge.

After all this, we made our way to our overnight hotel, almost 2 hours away. 

I had booked a Travelodge in Droitwich, of all places, but the hotel was comfortable, with a nice pub almost opposite for a very nice supper, and an adjacent Starbucks for breakfast. Then we drove up to Cheshire for our family visit.