Cheddar is a village in the south-west of England in an area threaded with deep gorges. This popular travel wonder is famous for being the original home for a tasty hard cheese and for its limestone caves. The unremarkable photo is part of Jacob’s Ladder (named after the stairway to heaven), an ordinary set of 274 concrete steps through light forest, which take visitors from the gorge floor to a view over the expanse of county Somerset. To give an idea of the huge passage of time, it gets visitors to imagine that each step represents one million years. On that basis, the dinosaurs roamed the Earth for around 160 steps, dying out about 65 stairs ago while the caves were carved by flowing waters over a comparatively recent single stair.
All of human history is represented by a single sheet of paper resting on the very top step of this calf-burning climb. Makes you think about the fleeting nature of life.
Other British and Irish Posts
Soaking Up Culture (Bath)
A Bit of British (Gibraltar)
The Illuminated Manuscript (Dublin, Ireland)
Half-Timbered Houses (Lavenham)
