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Welchman
Hall Gully Nature Walk Part 1 |
It's a bland name for a grand easy walk in an underground jungle setting. |
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What do you call a cave after it loses its roof? In Barbados, it becomes a gully. In this instance Welchman Hall Gully, a wide, deep trench cutting through the limestone bedrock which covers most of the island. The Barbados National Trust owns this 3/4-mile-long humid gully protected from high winds, allowing incredibly luxuriant plant life to grow out of the side walls. A gigantic pillar reveals the subterranean origin of this now-open gully more than 4.5 feet in diameter, reputedly the world's largest example of a stalactite and stalagmite coming together to form a single column. Once a barren subterranean chamber, Welchman Hall Gully has become a flourishing microcosm of the plant and animal life of Barbados. It's one of the most reliable places in the Caribbean to encounter free-roaming families of green monkeys darting among the thick, jungle-like canopy of palms and other tall trees that pack the gully. "A Touch of Jungle" is precisely how the Barbados National Trust describes a walk through the ravine, which is thickly stuffed with some 200 species of tropical plants. It even feels a bit like the jungle in there too, since the high cliffs bordering the gully block out the wind, making this one of the most humid places on the island, though not uncomfortably so. Welchman Hall Gully was created after the roof of a series of immense caves collapsed and fell sometime in the distant past. The gully, in fact, is less than a mile from Harrison 's Cave, one of the largest caves in the Caribbean. The gully takes its unusual name from an early Welch settler who owned the sunken corridor. It's said to be the one place on the island that most closely resembles how Barbados appeared to the first settlers in 1627. Next
Page (Welchman Hall Gully Part 2)
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