Monday 2 May 2011

Wookey Hole Caves

We recently had a ton of days off over Easter so my friend Helen and I took advantage of one of those days by going to Wookey Hole Caves! As you might imagine from the name it's a series of about 25 caverns although only a handful of them are possible to visit without diving. I'm afraid the pictures don't do it justice as it's just amazing, but here are some images I took:

View of one of the caverns, it even has a real boat on the subterranean lake!

Personally I think the coloured lights make it look a bit tacky

Inside another cavern and the camera REALLY does not do it justice!

They have cheese maturing in the caves as it's always 11 degrees C

After the tour finishes you come back outside and for some reason there are a series of models/statues which seem rather out of place for a cave attraction. However it's hard to be critical when the first one you come to is...

Most awesome picture... EVER?

WOW right? It's been my Facebook profile picture for like a week now and I don't want to change it cause I think it looks so cool! After this there are some other ones, but first is the coolest sign ever and then the things described on the sign:

Beats any "Keep off the grass" sign anyday!

Dinosaurs! (which you guessed were coming from the sign!)

Triceratops!

Again I have no idea why these things are in Wookey Hole, but hey... :) Then you go around the corner and just when you think it couldn't get any weirder...

The Incredible Hulk!

I have NO IDEA about this one...

The Hulk one was just cool, but the giant rabbit?! Erm? What's that even from?! Well anyway, moving on, there's then lots of information about the caves (back on topic then!) and diagrams showing how they're connected which is really amazing and then there's a sort of replica old circus sideshow (you can walk around the "carriages" and look at the model of what would have been attractions etc) and then we found...

An old Space Invaders machine!

Some of this stuff seems really random, but I didn't really care, I had to play it! Space Invaders first came out in 1978 (the year I was born) and although I obviously didn't play it when it was first released, because it's such a cult game on the few times I've seen an actual machine I always play on it! I also do the same for Street Fighter 2 as well because obviously that's much newer, but these days that's a classic as well! :) After this totally random arcade game there was a penny arcade where you could "buy" 25 pre-decimal Pennies for £2 and then use them in the old "arcade" machines that they had!

Penny Arcade

We went through our coins first looking for the oldest ones (we had one from 1897 which was very heavily worn!) and I think Helen kept one as a souvenir and we spent the other 24 in the machines. Most of the machines were on a similar theme with balls dropping and have to get them in the right hole or things to a similar effect (Helen was REALLY good at these!), but there were different ones like fortune card reading ones and measure your strength ones. Actually the fortune card one was really good because I'd earlier commented to Helen about her shoes and walking round in them all day couldn't be comfortable and her fortune card said that she'd go far in life, but she needed to pick more sensible shoes - OMG!

There was a demonstration of making paper

The paper making demonstration was interesting although to be fair I've seen that quite a few times before (and done it myself too) so we watched once and moved on, but this was the end of the "official" attractions so we grabbed some lunch. After this I dragged Helen onto the mini golf, partly because she'd never played before (how???), but also because I thought it'd be fun.

Pirate themed mini golf!

To be honest the golf was actually pretty rubbish and the courses weren't very exciting or even well designed. There weren't any proper borders to the course and it was all too easy to hit your ball into the next course and/or the goal was so hard it was quite tricky to actually do it without using a million shots... but still, it was amusing at least although I think by the last few holes we were both wishing it was already over :P

After the golf we panned for gold!

I think the above picture says it all, once again I dragged her onto this as well (seriously don't ever come out with me for a day I will drag you around so much random stuff!) and even the attendant looked amused as I bought two "pans" for us to have a go (since it's for kids really!) but we sieved for some gold and after about 10 minutes we got bored and handed in what we had and they melted it down, shaped it like a medal, turned it into plastic and stuck a ribbon on it before they gave it back to us! :P And they did this all in about 3 seconds that it took to reach under the desk to give us the medal... :)

A fun day out! :)

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