Yat's the way to do it!

Sorry - couldn't resist ( and of course showing my age!).

Symonds Yat today. It's not an area we have ever visited before and now I'm wondering why! The weather was perfect, the sun was out and as usual the crowds tend to stay close to the beaten track so it's easy to find some lovely quiet  unspoiled areas.

So I lovely day to day starting with King Arthur's cave. This was our objective and I was reminding myself that we needed to take a torch. It was halfway over the Severn Bridge that I remembered it was still on the hall table. Whoops. Fortunately the mobile phone has a helpful "assistive light" so that would have to do!

 King Arthur's cave shows evidence of long occupation by man. Certainly since the upper Palaeolithic time. Discoveries inside the cave show hyena bones, woolly mammoth and lots of flint tools.





The cave of course has plenty of local Arthur superstition around it. Vortigern is said to have made his last stand nearby


The cave clearly  goes far back. Lacking a torch of course it was hard to see but the camera flash gives some tantalising glimpses into the recesses. This was the first  of many caves we saw today. The limestone cliffs are riddled with them, some are fenced off presumably as too dangerous to enter and the hillside is pockmarked with sink holes ( depressions left where underlying cavern roofs have collapsed.


So after the cave comes the hill fort. This was a steep climb up the hillside to the Little Doward Hill fort but well worth it for the views. I wasn't quite so keen on having to pass through a small herd of  cattle - they looked like Charolais but they had some mighty big horns...

The views from the top are spectacular. Is this the  'Castle of Gwrtheyrnion'? It seems a good candidate

Archaeologically speaking, recent excavations have shown that the inhabitants lived in round houses within the enclosure. Many of the ditches and ramparts are still visible and it was well worth the effort of the climb.

Time now to go down to the River Wye itself. passing some spectacular rock cliffs. The cliffs bear the scars of blasting as this was a centre for the production of lime.



 
 The resultant cliffs though are a wonderful habitat for rare plants and a lesson in how when left to itself, nature can erase the damage caused by man.



 Where there is limestone and plenty of wood there are likely to be lime kilns, This is the remains of the 17CE one just above the river.

 Time now to go down to the river itself - in fact to cross it by the footpath over the suspension bridge. Great fun - but now the crowds begin. Lots of families out enjoying the sun and hordes of cyclists. Yes time to head to the pub for some lunch.

After a quick run up Symonds Yat rock to admire the view it was time to cross back over the river - this time by the Hand Ferry. Bargain at £1.20 pp. This is an ancient crossing point but I think the rope wouldn't originally have been a steel cable.

Hard work for our ferryman though.

An unexpected Cat Hole

IT housekeeping all done - so plenty of space for lots more pictures! This week's blog was intended to be a couple of castles but a trip out on Monday led to Parc Cwm in the Gower and on to  the Cathole cave.

 The cave is well hidden but some kind soul left a clue..... The (fairly well trodden) earth path leaves the main tarmac park through Parc Cwm and disappears into the trees and undergrowth.






A second leaf arrow indicated the even more well hidden path to the right which leads to the cave. The cave entrance forms a narrow cleft, wider at the base, which goes deep into the rock.

It is (of course) pitch dark in there and not having planned this find I was lacking a torch. However the camera flash came to the rescue, disclosing an intriguing interior with some dark passages leading even further back. There were a couple of bays, both seem to have passages.

The cave is well known for Late Glacial finds ( approx 10,000BCE). Some finds may be even earlier - 26000BCE. The cave appears to have been inhabited by  a variety of creatures, red fox, arctic fox and brown bear.  Other animal finds include   mammoth, woolly rhino, red deer and giant deer.

Later in it's history the cave was used by Mesolithic hunters and later still by Bronze Age peoples who left remains of burial urns. Personally I'd have found those dark passageways behind me very unnerving!

As I mentioned, the visit to the cave was unplanned ( didn't even know it was there) but it overshadowed the intended objective - the Parc le Breos  long barrow which was rather an anti- climax. Heavily restored it is a chambered long barrow dating from around 3800BCE.

Some 40 human remains were found within, some of which appeared to be excarnated, some not. It does seem possible that the rituals surrounding the burials may have incorporated the use of the cave. This theory is strengthened by the discovery of late  ice age animal bones - gathered up with the exposed human remains from the cave perhaps?