There’s a song, ‘breakfast at Tiffanies’, now having never been to Tiffanies I can’t comment on that, but I can tell you that breakfast at Dauncey’s was gorgeous! We came down to breakfast around 8.30 am, knowing that we were meeting the other conventioneers in the lobby for the coach to Cheddar Gorge at ten.
The dining room was so pretty, actually in the same colours as my lounge at home, dusky pink, mint green and white.
I do have photographs but since I need a scanner to load them I will have to try and describe the dining room to you until I can ‘nick’ someone else’s digital photos.

The tables were covered with white tablecloths with pink ones on top except for the conventioneers’ tables that had pale blue cloths on top positioned in triangles over each table. The tables were positioned between pillars that were wallpapered like the rest of the room, half in mint green and half in dusky pink with a flowered border running through the centre. The pillars conveniently secluded one table full of diners from another and lent shadows to the room. One wall was made up of windows that overlooked a balcony and beyond that a sheer drop to the sea below. This crashed against the rocks and sent up a filmy spray when the wind was particularly strong in that direction.

The conventioneer’s tables were near this window so we had lots of light to see one another and take photographs. Each table seated between six and eight people.
Along another wall and going toward the kitchen there was a long table upon which one could choose between, yogurt, cereal, musli, fresh fruit and various fruit juices.
On top of this one could order a full English breakfast consisting of either kippers or scrambled egg, fried egg, tomatoes, bacon and sausage or toast with jam and butter, some people had both. This was washed down with hot coffee or tea.
Behind the wall of the breakfast table was another room, similar to the dining room in décor but smaller and it was in here that Amy and Lesley held the convention.
Once we were stuffed again, we made our way back to our room, remember this is 57 steps now, and the corridors were like a rabbit warren, stairs everywhere and rooms leading off. We'd walk a little way go through a fire door, turn a corner go up a flight of steps, along another corridor, through another fire door, up another flight of stairs and then another and another and finally aha! Our rooms! David, (and Jo I might add on occasion) took great delight in the shortest route down via the banisters!
Back at our rooms that morning we collapsed onto the beds and then we got ready for our day out at Cheddar Gorge.

Now when I was a little girl I used to be enchanted by a neighbour coming to tell my parents of her annual holiday at the Cheddar Gorge. I really believed it was made from cheese and I so wanted to go there. As it happens I can’t eat cheddar cheese now as it irritates my arthritis so at the cheese shop I could not partake of samples but it smelt delicious in there!

Anyway, we waited for the coach alongside a low stone wall outside of the one hundred and fifty year old Dauncey’s hotel and after some time it turned up. It was a cold day, threatening rain with its sullen grey clouds but we all prayed for a bit of blue sky and I am happy to say that we got it. We even had a bit of warm sunshine and though it did eventually rain sometime during the day it soon cleared up again.

Amy had purchased tickets for our entrance into the Gorge and that was included in our convention fee, so all we had to do was sail through Cheddar Gorge village and get off and do as we pleased while there.

Now I’d seen leaflets of the village through Cheddar but it was different to how I’d presumed it to be. In fact it took me the whole day there to realise that it was just a village within Cheddar Gorge and not a national park with gates at either end as I’d first imagined.

The hills were magnificent and goat clad. These could be seen trotting aimlessly along the tiny paths around the rocky hills, and the saying as surefooted as a goat sprung to mind more at that time than at any other I’ve known, not even when I went to Austria. How those creatures could balance up there intrigued me. It looked like a sheer drop.

By the end of the day I’d also renamed the village the land that time forgot. You know how most of these tourist places charge the earth? Well this one didn’t. In fact it was completely the other way. Prices were reminiscent of the sixties and I purchased a leather wallet, purse and bum bag for under £17, but what I was really chuffed about was the wind chime that I found. You see for years - ever since I saw the movie ‘Twister’ in fact I’ve been searching for a wind chime to hang in the garden. I had selected one that I found especially enchanting its haunting sound delightfully like water playing over rocks but the cheapest I had ever seen it was earlier this year at Centerparcs for £25. BUT…guess how much it was at the Cheddar Gorge! FOUR POUNDS! Actually THREE POUNDS NINETY FIVE!!! Oh how could I not buy it? It now hangs proudly outside my conservatory door here at home where its music delights me every time I go into the garden and reminds me of the convention.

Talking of which…

Our first port of call was the tourist shop preceding Gough’s cave. We all filed into here while Amy and Lesley sorted out our entrance fee to the caves. In here were the usual, beautiful items that are associated with the place we were visiting of brochures, books, tee-shirts, key rings, postcards, nick-knacks, puzzles, fudge and toffee, jewellery and crystals, mineral stones, ornamental dragons and grow-your-own crystals, candles, pot pouri and things like that. We enjoyed ourselves looking round and I selected all these items that I intended to buy only to put them all back and buy three recipe books on farmhouse cooking – yeah home from home!

When Amy came to find us we all filed down into Gough’s cave. Now I personally adore caves, ever since my 1976 trip to the British Museum’s newly discovered grotto in the Dolomite Mountains where they had unearthed a mummified family of three people and a bear. The stalagmites and stalactites in the Dolomites were superb, so I greatly looked forward to going into Gough’s cave and I was not disappointed! Maybe the stalagmites & stalactites were not so huge as those in the Dolomites but the rock formations, the chambers and the subterranean pools with the clear as glass reflections were so beautiful.
Here I can provide photographs – please see:

Cheddar Pictures