The village itself was quite quaint and we enjoyed just being in this small village.
We, of course, went on the guided tour of how they are still making Cheddar in Cheddar Gorge and learned the process for making and aging Cheddar cheese, which was quite interesting. I had no idea the amount of steps and preparation the cheese goes through before it's cheese and I definately was unaware of how long it took to age it to an edible state! I have a new appreciation of the hard work and dedication it takes. At the end of our tour came the best part . . the taste test.
What to try, what to try? Of course you have to try the Cheddar that has been aged in the gorge itself in lieu of the climate controlled facility that everyone is using now-a-days and that had a very different and amusing flavor. After that, there were so many to choose from and the more we tested the more we wanted to purchase. We finally made it out of there after selecting 6 different types of cheese ranging from gorge aged, hickory smoked, ewe cheese, buffalo cheese, port cheese and garlic cheese . . and these were only 1/2 the selections we could have made.
All that cheese tasting made us hungry and on our walk back toward the truck with our bags of cheese, we saw a little cafe that offered scones, clotted cream and jam . . what a perfect way to end our trip to this location is by enjoying one of the English delicacies that we'd been told we had to try. I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Clotted cream is not what I expected but instead is a REALLY creamy butter. And scones are not those dried up things that we get in the US but instead are almost like a sweet buttermilk bisquit (not the cookie). Spectacular!!
On our way back to the truck we passed the "original cheddar gorge cottage" and so Lisa photographed it
For all the pictures taken in this breathtaking village, please click on the slideshow below:
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