JANUARY 2024 · GROUNDED
Cheddar Gorge
Mendip Hills, Somerset, England
The gorge is 137 metres at its deepest. I climbed to the rim and found a limestone outcrop with a clear view south across the village and the Somerset Levels beyond. Moss in the crevices of the rock. The limestone surface weathered into textures that the lichen has been mapping for decades, grey and gold and black.
From up there, the village below is quiet. The show caves are closed or not yet open. The roads are empty. The rolling country spreads out past the rooftops toward the levels, the scale of the place doing what it does when you've earned the height to see it.
Then the boy racers came up the pass road. Consecutive, loud, deliberate. The kind of noise that's about the noise — the whole point being to hear the engine bouncing off the gorge walls, to use the geology as an amplifier. They came in groups, revving through the corners, and then they were gone and the silence came back gradually, the way silence does when it's been disturbed rather than absent.
The silence came back gradually, the way silence does when it's been disturbed rather than absent.
Cheddar Gorge — January 2024
The limestone cliff face up close shows deep cave openings where the rock has been hollowed out over millennia, moss-covered strata tilting at angles that record the original deposition. Sheer columns of rock catching what January light there was.
Two images from this series. The limestone is the point: its surface, its scale, its patience. The noise was temporary.
Solitary figure on mossy limestone outcrop overlooking Cheddar village and rolling Somerset countryside
Weathered limestone cliffs with moss and lichen growth in deep crevices, Cheddar Gorge