Easter in Somerset: Wookey Hole Caves

Wednesday of Easter Week saw us taking a trip to the caverns at Wookey Hole, just outside of Wells.  This was on the to-do list, as I (Ben) had visited there back when I was a kid.  I had some hazy memories of a walk through a cave, and a slightly mad jumble of stuff up on the surface from penny arcades to old tinplate signs, so at nearly thirty years distance, I was intrigued to revisit the place.

We went in first thing in the morning, straight down the caves.

Interesting lighting inside.  Very good and dramatic, though made photography a touch tricky.

One of the options was for boating through the cave, and a climbing course too, neither of which appealed.

Probably the most interesting -certainly the most dramatic- was a new bit compared to the last time we'd visited, the underground waterfall.

Bit of a play with the long-exposure and zooms.

Some interesting greenery down the caves, but we didn't see any of the other wildlife... mindyou, if we wanted to see bats, we could just go up the loft back home.

The cheese cave.  I'd have loved to get inside there, and die a happy, cholesterol-overdosed man.

Back outside, things were rather more eccentric than I'd remembered.  OK, fair enough the witch-themed stuff (the legends of the Witch who lived in the caverns meant lot's of cosplay opportunities for the locals employed here).  Less sure about the giant fairies, but possibly related thematically.

No, the slightly mad stuff started with the giant gorilla, and continued via dinosaur sculptures, a 4D cinema (haunted by a 4ft animatronic bat) rather randomly showing a heavily cut-down 'Scooby Doo' CGI film, a rather dusty cave-diving display, a collection of ancient paper-making machinery (the bread and butter of the site back in the day), preserved penny-arcade machines, a recreation of a Pier amusements complete with carousel, and pirate-themed crazy golf.  Actually too bonkers to commit to photography, if we're honest, and the rain was lashing it down, so we ate lunch sheltering under an archway, and repaired back to Glastonbury before Elder Child and I headed out for a visit to a preserved railway, because -as even a cursory glance at this blog will show- of course we did.