Monday 25 June 2012

Severn Valley Country Park 20 May 2012

On Sunday the 20th of May we decided to visit the Severn Valley Country Park at Alveley in Shropshire. This is a great place to visit and I'd love to go again.

We took a steep path down from the Visitors Centre to the River Severn to where a bridge crosses the River and carries on towards Park Halt, a small halt (station) on the Severn Valley Railway.

We didn't cross the river, instead deciding to take a left turn and follow the river for a while. This takes you past a picnicking area and then into some woods called Hallclose Coppice.

The Coppice is full of old Oak trees and interesting plants associated with ancient woodland and there is at least one waterfall.

There were lots of ferns but I'm not quite there yet with my plants to take a stab at these. I'd love to go back and spend more time looking at them as I really didn't get to stop for long enough! Although if the weather stays like it is the whole place could end up under several feet of water and we'll all be getting around by boat a la Kevin Costner's Waterworld.

On some well drained gravel waste ground I found some Herb Robert and also some Common Stork's-bill.

Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum)

Common Stork's-bill (Erodicum cicutarium)

Herb Robert is quite a common weed of waste ground and I have some growing in my front garden.

Along the river bank there was some pretty Red Campion which also looked decidedly pink (I can see a theme developing here)!

Red Campion (Silene dioica)

For those of you that don't like the colour pink we also found some Ramsons/wild garlic and Bugle in the coppice.

Ramsons are apparently very nice in salads and various over dishes but I can't say that I've tried them myself. I'd rather leave them in place for others to enjoy.

Ramsons (Allium ursinum)

Bugle (Ajuga reptans)
 One curious thing we spotted which I forgot to take a photo of was either a wishing tree or Celtic Clootie well. This was a tree near a waterfall that had strips of cloth tied to the branches.


Tuesday 5 June 2012

Back to old layout

Although I liked the look of the new Blogger "Dynamic layout" for blogs, it didn't display a lot of the extra information I have in the sidebar of the blog and other information was hidden in a "pop-out" menu so I decided to revert to a traditional style of layout.

For  example, I licence all of my photos using a Creative Commons licence but you would not know that by using the dynamical layout because that information was not displayed.

I hope you all agree with me that this format is better but any comments on preference are most welcome.