Britain's most scenic drives: The Cheddar Gorge, Somerset
On a quest to find the country's most glorious roads, Annunciata Elwes explores Somerset's Cheddar Gorge.
The jaw-dropping Cliff Road — less romantically, the B3135 — presents about as much drama as one can take when travelling on four wheels.
Starting at Cheddar, this road — unquestionably one of Britain's most scenic drives — weaves through England’s deepest natural canyon like a tangled shoelace, in a tight sandwich between limestone cliffs as tall as 453ft.
After a few slow, careful miles, rocks start to be replaced by trees and, soon enough, the rolling Mendip Hills open up beneath the road as it sweeps more gently over contours in the landscape towards the village of Ashwick.
Should you stop to walk along the gorge’s rocky footpaths or the West Mendip way, watch out for resident feral goats, Soay sheep so nimble they can cling to clifftops and the famous Cheddar pinks and rock stonecrop flowering in summer.
Credit: Joe Dick / Rolls-Royce
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Annunciata is director of contemporary art gallery TIN MAN ART and an award-winning journalist specialising in art, culture and property. Previously, she was Country Life’s News & Property Editor. Before that, she worked at The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, researched for a historical biographer and co-founded a literary, art and music festival in Oxfordshire. Lancashire-born, she lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and a mischievous pug.
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