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Today’s little jaunt is around the Forest of Dean, one of the best kept secrets in the UK as it covers some amazing places and some ever better roads.
We had the pleasure of our Welsh friends today and after meeting up at in Malvern and the customary breakfast stop we headed out of Malvern towards our first stop Clearwell Caves.
Clearwell Caves are located just outside the village of Clearwell which itself is not far from Coleford. The caves were part of the last remaining working iron mines and are over 5,000 years old (almost as old as Bonzo) and are part of a very large natural cave system that contains hundreds of caverns of which 9 are open to the public.
When we arrived at Clearwell Caves after riding some great roads through Ledbury and Ross-on-Wye we parked the bikes in the gravel stricken hill side car park decided that we would have to have some refreshments at the tea room before entering that dark, damp and unfriendly place (I mean the caves, not Bonzo’s under pants)
After paying our £4 entrance fee we had a wonder around the caverns, following the marked route. The ground has been flattened making it easy to walk and for the most part there’s enough head room with only a few places where you need to duck your head to prevent contact with rock.
The caverns are quite large and roomy and one of them even has a 'lake' with water dripping down from the roof.
All in all it was a very interesting 50 minutes or so under ground, it was also very nice and cool (10 degrees Celsius I believe) after having around the compulsory gift shop that these sort of place have it was back to the bikes to head out towards out next destination Tintern Abbey.
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