As seen from this survey c.1934, the caverns are vast and on a visit you just see a small section

When you first enter the caves you are shown a colourful lightshow & 'caverns' introduction with audio - very impressive!

Myself, four others and the tour guide start our tour of the caverns

Example of the equipment used to excavate the caverns around 1865

This spot had a very '127 Hours' movie feel about it!

'The Face' - when this was discovered they also found Roman coins from 2,000 years ago left under it...

A close-up of 'The Face' - early excavators believed this to be some kind of omen and carved 'Witchmarks' in the walls to warn off evil spirits

One of the many 'Witchmarks' carved into the walls - the 'M' kind of looking one

Our tour guide for the caverns shines a torch onto the 500,000 years old cave ceilings - you can't enter the caverns on your own due to safety reasons

The 'Neanderthal' skull - not totally extinct from the population as can be seen wandering around Torquay on a Friday & Saturday evening... (tour guides joke! brilliant!)

I took this photo looking up through the cavern ceilings, otherworldly...

Could this have been the inspiration for Jabba the Hutt from the Star Wars movie series?

...and these wall stalactites remind me of the creature from the Alien films...

Formed from the drops of mineral deposits from a stalactite above, the stalagmite in front is thousands of years old and the two in the back will probably join together in thousands of years to come!

Close-up of those two stalactite & stalagmite that are destined to join sometime thousands of years from now and behind safety glass casing

This actual setting of stalacites & stalagmites was photographed and used as a backdrop for the Doctor Who TV series in the 1960's

Close-up of a stalactite, formed of dripping minerals, protruding from the ceiling

As demonstrated by our tour guide, water minerals drop slowly off the stalacites on the ceiling and onto the ground forming stalagmites (the one he is touching for example)

These lines in the cavern walls show how deep the cavern has been dug out for exploration over the years since 1951. The caverns have also been visited by no other than Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia!

Early man used to light up the caverns using this same system of clam shells and some dried foliage as demonstrated by our tour guide (he also blew these out and we were left in complete darkness for a few minutes!)

As there was only a few of us on this tour we got to see an extra part of the caverns that is not normally seen by the public, this is actually an prehistoric animal bone buried in the cavern ceiling

The caverns have been a shelter for humans as far back as 350,000 years...

Modern Humans 'Homo Sapien Sapiens' lived just beneath the entrances of the caverns, animals such as 'cave bears' lived more deeper in

Excavator Arthur Ogilvy, seen here, found a human jawbone in the caverns in 1927 which has been dated to be 41-44,000 years old

The jawbone that was radiocarbon dated to be 31,000 years old

South Devon 2018 Cycle Touring Trip: Part 11 of 12

South Devon Cycle Touring Trip: Kents Cavern, Torquay

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Note: click on any photo to start a cool manual slideshow without the annotations!

The following photos chronicle my nine day South Devon cycle touring trip in September 2018 which was a double-first for me as I’ve never taken my bicycle on a long trip with me before and I had also not been camping for many, many years, needless to say there was a lot of planning involved! From getting a proper lightweight suitable tent and sleeping bag to fixing up my old (but trusty) hybrid mountain bike to cope with carrying the weight of my camping gear whilst on the road and traversing the trains.

The journey started by taking a train from Surbiton to Totnes via Woking, which took about roughly 6 hours (including an hour’s delay at Exeter St. Davids), then it took a good couple of hours to ride from Totnes to Ashbourne Woods in the rain, the misty stuff which actually helped because of the crazy hills I was sweating like a pig! And once I arrived it was dark, raining and I had to set up my tent…

…and so the adventure begins…

In this set of photos I cycle from my campsite in Paignton to Torquay and visit the awesome Kent’s Cavern