Caves of the Mendip Hills caves are listed below Caves of the Mendip Hills The caves of the Mendip Hills are formed by the particular geology of the Mendip Hills: large areas of limestone worn away by water makes it a national centre for caving. The hills conceal the largest underground river system in Britain. The hills consist of anticlines of Carboniferous Limestone lying over Devonian Old Red Sandstone, with the sandstone exposed on the summits. When a surface stream running off the sandstone reaches the limestone it sinks below ground through a "swallet", (also known locally as a "slocker"), continuing on its way down
Cheddar Complex calcareous dry dwarf-shrub heath, semi-natural broadleaved woodland and dense and scattered scrub. Four nationally rare plants are present, including Little Robin "Geranium purpureum", Cheddar Pink "Dianthus gratianopolitanus" and Cheddar Bedstraw "Galium fleurotii", two of which are endemic to the Cheddar area, as well as fifteen nationally scarce species. This site is important for karst, caves and vertebrate palaeontology and comprises four single interest localities. Cheddar Gorge is Britain’s largest gorge and probably the country’s best known limestone feature. It is a spectacular fluvial feature with a geomorphic history extending back 2 million years and encompassing the major environmental changes of