Greater Horseshoe Bat Roost — Cheddar Gorge

The Cheddar Gorge cave system in Somerset hosts England's largest greater horseshoe bat maternity roost, with up to 3,000 bats emerging from the cave mouth at dusk between May and September in one of England's most accessible and dramatic bat emergence spectacles — the bats streaming in a continuous river of fluttering wings low over the visitor's heads, the echolocation clicks of thousands of animals audible to younger ears as a crackling curtain of sound in the cool air of the gorge. The greater horseshoe bat — Britain's largest bat, with a wingspan of 35 centimetres and the largest nose-leaf of any British species — has declined by 90% in the 20th century and the Cheddar roost represents a significant proportion of the remaining English population, making each emergence both a wildlife spectacle and a conservation event of national significance. The gorge's dramatic limestone cliffs rising 138 metres above the road frame the emergence against the darkening sky in a geological setting that adds considerable drama to the event. The same caves host the skeleton of Cheddar Man — the oldest complete human skeleton in Britain at 10,000 years — creating a site where deep human and natural history overlap in a single Somerset gorge. Guided bat emergence walks are operated by the Somerset Wildlife Trust on summer evenings.