The Malvern Hills from Barrow Wake, Birdlip

Helena asked me to drive her to Sheepscombe village at the head of one of the streams that feed into the Painswick valley.  She had booked a stall at the May Day Fair being held at the village hall to raise money for charity. We arrived as planned soon after 9-30am and rather earlier than most others. Having unloaded her presentation materials I abandoned her for the rest of the day and drove further up the winding valley and up onto the top of the escarpment.

I had thought I would go to Buckholt Wood to take some pictures of the newly emerging beech leaves which look beautiful at this time of the year. But driving through the wood revealed that the leaves weren't quite open.  So I drove on a further mile to Birdlip and crossed the old Roman road running down from the hill top to the city of Gloucester. Nearby is a parking place beside the ancient Barrow Wake, originally a neolithic site on the hillside of a combe down which another ancient road runs into the Severn vale.

On the far side of the combe is Crickley Hill where a major neolithic camp has been excavated on a headland overlooking the whole of the vale formed by the River Severn. My blip shows the headland and the cliff face of limestone part of which has been quarried intensively through the ages.  You can see the various strata outcropping below the top of the camp. Now it is a busy location for walkers, bike riders and naturalist from both Gloucester and Cheltenham which are close by at the bottom if the vale.

The view shows the wonderful line of the Malvern Hills in the far distance about 30 miles away which are renowned for being in the shape of a snake's back. The  River Severn, called Sabrina by the Romans, flows south down this side of the hills having flowed all the way from the north of Wales and down through Worcestershire. Gloucester became an important defensive camp for the romans as it provided the lowest crossing point of the river and defended the Roma territory from the wild Welsh who lived further west.
I have added a couple of 'Extra photos', one of which is a view westwards over Robinswood Hill, which is an outlier just east of the city of Gloucester. I liked the way the light caught the building on its summit.  You might also notice a patch of bright light just above the horizon to the right of the picture. It is a plane caught in the sunlight as it banked to land at the nearby Staverton airfield.  The last picture is of another  person taking advantage of the viewpoint at Barrow Wake.