The waterfall from 'The Heavens', in spate

On our Christmas Day walk I mentioned to Woodpeckers that I wanted to visit ‘the waterfall’, and we agreed to go there. With the sunshine today I got ready but Woodpeckers wasn’t feeling very well so I decided to go there alone.

‘The waterfall’ is a well known local feature of the valley behind our house where the farmland consists of meadows and pasture on the lower slopes and thick woodland on the much steeper slopes above. If you’ve regularly seen my blip photos looking out from my study across the Golden Valley you will have an idea of this terrain where outcropping carboniferous limestone strata intersperse with various clays and brash. Springs abound where the layers meet, with water caught in the sponge-like limestone and then flowing out where it meets the impervious clay.

Short streams run down the hillsides and become tributaries of the River Frome that flows through Stroud and join the River Severn about eight miles to the west. These are additional to the four other main streams that also join up here to form the Five Valleys of the Stroud area.

We live on the hillside of a very short valley called ‘The Horns’,  formed by the Lime Brook, whilst a few hundred yards further east is the small combe called ‘The Heavens. At the top of that there is a small cluster of houses with the same name and where there is a spout, a controlled piped outlet for a spring. It is probably less than forty feet below the summit of the hill which is one of the highest points in the area. I’ve checked maps and I do believe that it is also one of the highest points between this Cotswold hill and the first hills in northern Germany, several hundred miles away to the east.

The underground water flows from the spout straight downhill and forms this waterfall, which is progressively and observably eroding back into the hillside. I can see how many yards it has eroded away in the nearly twenty years we have lived near here, just four hundred yards away. This picture is taken from the old track that has now been worn away looking straight uphill. The spout is about a hundred feet higher than this point in a straight line, behind where the sun is shining through the trees at the top of the slope. 

It is hard to imagine that a scene like this exists in the normally tranquil Cotswolds. It may be unique. More likely to be found in the hills of Wales, or the Pennines I’d say. I think we are lucky to have it. If you look at the map link it quite clearly shows the lay of the land and the path of the streams.