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From the centre of Weston-super-Mare
we walked north along lawns and then beach.
The tide had only just receded and the sand was still wet. We walked under the pier and sea wall as
far as we could until we had to climb steps to the street. The usual gulls, black-headed, herring, greater
& lesser black-backs, monopolised most of the sea-edge, along with a few
crows. The shells were few in variety,
dominated by Baltic tellin, with shell-sand made up of Hydrobia and Rissoids. We
passed inland of the Marine Pool, because the causeway on the seaward side
was still more or less covered by water, and rounded Kewstoke headland along
the toll road through Weston woods. These
were mostly of introduced trees like Turkey and evergreen oaks, sycamore
and sweet chestnut, so there was little sign of much limestone flora, apart
from a single plant of orpine and abundant traveller’s joy. A low cliff prevented access to the beach
below until the road bent inland, although round the head itself the beach
was very rocky in any case. We got
down at the beginning of Sand
Bay, headed by rather decrepit
dunes. There were the expected plants
such as sea rocket, saltwort, evening primrose, sea spurge and haresfoot
clover, and not too much planted sea buckthorn. At the north end was saltmarsh with
cord-grass. While watching curlews, we
saw a sparrowhawk glide just above the top of the grass, scaring up a cloud
of small birds. Eventually we came to Middle
Hope, a limestone headland of no great height but plenty of botanical
interest. Even the toilets at the
bottom had an interesting combination of rare introduced plants round them,
obviously from an earlier rock garden, including wall germander, pencilled
cranesbill, Mediterranean spurge, Mexican fleabane and what appeared to be
some kind of shrubby Penstemon. The walk along the crest of the hill
revealed typical limestone short-turf flora with centaury, yellowwort,
carline thistle and thyme. We easily
found the sweetbriar Rosa agrestis. There were a number of butterflies in the
modest autumn sunshine – red admiral, small tortoiseshell, small copper and
speckled wood, and plenty of common darter
dragonflies. [In June 1997 when we
previously came here we saw Glanville fritillary introduced from its only native site on the Isle
of Wight. We also saw
caterpillars of the small eggar moth.]
After lunch on the top we descended to the north side of the hill and
walked just above the shore eastwards as far as the MoD research site at the
far end, protected by some serious fencing.
Thistles & teasels attracted large flocks of goldfinch. Most of the hill belongs to the National
Trust and we were able to walk near the coast at the end as far as the
car-park near Woodspring Priory, where we picked up a road eastward and
inland until we reached the footpath north to Wick St. Lawrence. This village, mainly a large cluster of
farms, lay two kilometres back from the sea.
Between the coast and the village were low grasslands, inaccessible to
the public, and very few footpaths. We
walked through the village, which had no facilities other than a telephone
and a church, not even a pub, until we found ourselves going east again and even
further away from the coast. As soon
as we could, we left the road, following a path that went slightly further
north and then proceeded east along the River Yeo. The waterway prevented easier access to
this part of the coast. The path took
us, with some difficulty caused by several blockages, eventually under the M5
motorway using a streamside partly-flooded tunnel on a narrow concrete walkway
beside a sewer pipe. It led us over a
busy railway, and eventually on to the main Bristol-Weston road at Hewish,
where we could catch a regular bus service back to our starting-point.
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Glanville
fritillary, Middle Hope
Small
copper
Slender
thistle
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