28 Years Later | Cheddar Gorge — Five Days the Road Belonged to the Film

In July 2024 the B3135 through Cheddar Gorge closed for five days, which had never happened for a film before. Somerset Council and Screen Somerset signed it off; the crew ran to over a hundred people; and near Arch Rock they assembled a fake rockfall built off-site out of wood and fibreglass, mounted on a transit van so it could be driven clear if an ambulance needed through. Two days of shooting, much of it on iPhones to match the grain of the 2002 original. Danny Boyle called it an honour to shoot there.

Nothing of that remains. The gorge is limestone cliffs rising four hundred feet on both sides of a road barely wide enough for a coach, feral goats on ledges that shouldn't hold a goat, and a slow queue of traffic that has been the same since the 1930s.

Drive up from the village rather than down from the top. The walls close in on you gradually that way, and by Horseshoe Bend you understand why a production would want the road to itself.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA).