Clearwell walks; moving through April

April showers bring forth May flowers, so there wont be any flowers this May. Of course the weather has been all over the place for several years now and the flowers seem to cope, maybe opening a bit earlier or not lasting so long but they adapt. Lets hope we can all adapt to this present situation

Our walks have developed into basically three routes, down by the church, up onto Clearwell Meend and across up behind the chicken farm. The chicken farm route is quite long and suffers from part of the area being churned up by quad bikes and motor bikes. I can see a need for people who like that sort of thing to have a designated area and this is private land but I do not think that they should use the footpaths as this renders them virtually impossible to walk along. They have plenty of other spaces and in general that is what they use.

The nicest route is probably the church route, lots of lovely views across to Wales, Beacons in the distance on a clear day. The hedge rows have quite a lot of Blackthorn in flower at the moment and the fields are dotted with hundreds of Dandelions.

Clearwell Mend is closest to us and it can result in a walk which is less than the allotted one hour, unless we purposely make a very circuitous route, backing up on ourselves and more or less going over the same ground twice. Still it is very pleasant and probably has the richest wild flower selection. It has plants that like acid soils up at the top like Bell Heather and Sorrel and lower down the soil becomes alkaline so in the summer you get Ladies Bedstraw and Fairy Flax and many other calcicoles, which is the botanical name for plants that like it alkaline.

It also has good views with Clearwell church and then across to Wales but again you need a clear day.