We started our day with a big milestone: the first included-with-the-room hotel breakfast of the year. We’ve spent the last 4 years teaching Millie to eat when she’s hungry and stop when she’s full, but today she learned a new lesson: if the breakfast is free, you eat until you are stuffed. Then you take a break until you can eat some more. On your way out, you pocket something for the road. In this family, we get our money’s worth.

Once we were appropriately stuffed (Nick ate a full English breakfast, a buttered croissant, a bowl of cereal, and had three cups of coffee) we packed up and headed back to the beach for more fossil hunting. This search was a bit more fruitful and Nick found many ammonites on rocks. Millie and I were more interested in transforming into mermaids with sand tails.

With the armchair paleontologist satisfied, we got in the car and headed to Cheddar. Home of… you guessed it… cheddar cheese. Cheddar also has England’s largest gorge and a cave with ideal conditions for aging cheese. The gorge has great rock climbing and the cave provided many archaeological finds, like oldest full skeleton ever found in England, aptly named “Cheddar Man”.

We went to the Cheddar Museum of Prehistory which was small and had a strange section about evidence of cannibalism in the area. The exhibit read as if it was defending and maybe even selling cannibalism. Cheddar: come for the cheese and stay for the detailed instructions on how to eat a human tongue.

The detail about it being a member of your family feels excessive here. Has nothing to do with nutritional value?

Millie was none the wiser and we exited the museum to find what we came for. We sat in the sun and had local cheddar cheese (A+) and a famous scrumpy cider (also A+).

From Cheddar we drove an hour to the Airbnb that will be our home for the weekend. The roads were terrifying as usual. Blind turns, single lane, and tractors going 60mph because they know they will win in a head-on collision.

We ended our day how we’ve ended every other day this week: at a pub. After going in to order dinner and two pints, Nick came out in a panic. He said, “How do you pronounce this word? Because I just ordered two pints of butt cum”