Caves
Heath Bunting
Heath is mapping out everything underground in Bristol, and believes the cave network underneath the Avon Gorge is a wonderful place to experience living outdoors.
He’ll often come and have breakfast in the gorge’s Skeleton Cave, which he’s restoring so people can come and live there.
He and his friends often come with their families to spend weekends in the caves, and he’s organising a national live outdoors week.
“I believe the Gorge is under-imagined, people only aspire to rare plants, to have rare people would be really good.”
Transcript
My name’s Heath Bunting. I live in St Werburghs in Bristol and my favourite place in Bristol are the caves in the Avon Gorge.
[Sound of people scrambling over loose rocks]
We’ve just come across the Bridge, we’re on the western side of the Gorge. We’re sitting in a cave called Skeleton Cave which was excavated and human remains were found here during the 1970s, so I’ve always thought they’d be a good place to live here. In the recent past Avon Gorge has been inhabited by humans. Certainly up to last year there was a couple of people living here but, you go further back, maybe ten fifteen years ago, there were about twenty people living in the gorge.
Even just coming to] the cave for no reason and just sitting in here, for instance I had my breakfast in this one the other week, you don’t necessarily have to live it in it but you just have to maybe go to it and do something different, is quite a radical step.
Fantastic. You know, people move to Bristol to do their thing. They don’t come here to… earn a lot of money or get up the career ladder.
Bristol is considered to be a bit nutty all round, I think. It’s quite a liberal city and that’s really good.
So this is everybody’s cave anyway. It’s just that I’ve decided, or we’ve decided, that it needs a bit of restoration. It needs to be nice for people to come and sleep in here.
I know there are some people that sleep in the Gorge, just occasionally and they’re interested in coming. My friend Hoggy, for instance, he’s going to come and stay in this cave with his kids. I was saying “Well, wait until it’s the spring or the summer’ and he’s like “No! They have to understand the importance of fire. You’re not going to understand the importance of fire in the summer. It’s got to be cold. It’s got to be difficult you know.” So he’s going to come and live here with them (laughs). That crucial lesson, you know, for children.
I think the Gorge is kind of under-imagined. You know, at the moment, the only thing that’s people are aspiring to is rare plants, so to have ‘rare’ people here as well would be really good.
I think most people are in a dream most of the time. People don’t really look around so much. You know I’ve been hanging around on the streets most of my life and now everyone’s in a rush going somewhere.
It only takes someone to go “Hold on a minute, I’ll just stand here for a bit. Oh look, there’s a hold in the ground over there (laughs). I’ll go and see what’s down there.” instead of “Oh, I’ve got to check my mobile, see what’s on the telly”.
