Berrow Sands to Brean Downs circular walk 28th May 2019

On 28th May 2019 I decided to do a walk from The John Fowlers Sandy Glade Caravan site. I had spent the day in Bath, but deicded to do this walk as the weather the next day was rain. So I left the site and crossed the road onto a footpath that takes me to Berrow Sands.

GPX File here
Viewranger File Here

Berrow Sands is a part of a 6½ mile long sandy beach reaching from Burnham-on-Sea to Brean Down. The shore is fine sand at the top, backed by dunes. Lower down, the beach is deep mud, and signs warn against venturing too far down. Swimming is only allowed for approximately 2 hours either side of high tide - at other times a red flag is flown. The sea is a consistent muddy brown colour, and uninviting. The remains of the Norwegian barque, the SS Nornen, wrecked in 1897, can be seen to the south at low tide.

Behind the dunes is the coast road, with numerous paths across the dunes to the beach. Lifeguards and Beach Wardens patrol in summer. Dogs are allowed at all times, but must be kept under control. Parking is on the sand, and vehicles must adhere to the 15 mph speed limit.

View across to Steep Holm

Steep Holm  is an English island lying in the Bristol Channel. The island covers 48.87 acres (19.78 ha) at high tide, expanding to 63.26 acres (25.60 ha) at mean low water. At its highest point it is 78 metres (256 ft) above mean sea level. Nearby is Flat Holm island (Welsh: Ynys Echni), part of Wales.

The Carboniferous Limestone island rises to about 200 feet (61 m) and serves as a wind and wave break, sheltering the upper reaches of the Bristol Channel. The island is now uninhabited, with the exception of the wardens. It is protected as a nature reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) with a large bird population and plants including wild peonies. There was a signal station or watchtower on the island in Roman times, but there may have been human habitation as early as the Iron Age. In the 6th century it was home to St Gildas and to a small Augustinian priory in the 12th and 13th centuries. An inn was built in 1832 and used for holidays in the 19th century. A bird sanctuary was established in 1931 and since 1951 has been leased to charitable trusts. It is now owned by the Kenneth Allsop Memorial Trust.

In the 1860s the island was fortified with ten 7-inch rifled muzzle loaders as one of the Palmerston Forts for the coastal defence of the Bristol Channel until it was abandoned in 1898. The infrastructure was reused in World War I and II when Mark VII 6-inch breech-loading guns and search lights were installed. To enable the movement of materials, soldiers from the Indian Army Service Corps initially used mules and then installed a cable-operated winched switchback railway.

This car was parked on the beach quite far out with a rising tide, coastguards had to tell them to move!

It was quite a trek along the beach and a lot further than it looked!

I now reach Brean Down after passing the cafe and car park.

I begin the climb up the 200+ steps to the top, my legs were very tired and I needed to use the handrail to physically pull myself up.

Standing over 300ft (92m) high and extending 1.5 miles (2.4km) into the Bristol Channel, the Down is steeped in intriguing stories, from prehistoric worship to Second World War weapon testing. It’s also renowned for its wildlife, so keep a look out for a great variety of birds, plants and butterflies whilst on route.

Looking back to Berrow

Made of Carboniferous Limestone, it is a continuation of the Mendip Hills. Two further continuations are the small islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm. The cliffs on the northern and southern flanks of Brean Down have large quantities of fossils laid down in the marine deposits about 320–350 million years ago. The site has been occupied by humans since the late Bronze Age and includes the remains of a Romano-Celtic Temple. At the seaward end is Brean Down Fort which was built in 1865 and then re-armed in the Second World War.

Brean Down is now owned by the National Trust, and is rich in wildlife, history and archaeology. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to both the geology and presence of nationally rare plants including the white rock-rose. It has also been scheduled as an ancient monument.

View across to Weston-Super-Mare

After more uphill climbing I reach the summit at 92m.

View to Steep Holm with Flat Holm Behind.

Flat Holm (Welsh: Ynys Echni) is a limestone island lying in the Bristol Channel approximately 6 km (4 mi) from Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan. It includes the most southerly point of Wales.

The island has a long history of occupation, dating at least from Anglo-Saxon and Viking age. Religious uses include visits by disciples of Saint Cadoc in the 6th century, and in 1835 it was the site of the foundation of the Bristol Channel Mission, which later became the Mission to Seafarers. A sanatorium for cholera patients was built in 1896 as the isolation hospital for the port of Cardiff. Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first wireless signals over open sea from Flat Holm to Lavernock. Because of frequent shipwrecks a lighthouse was built on the island, which was replaced by a Trinity House lighthouse in 1737. Because of its strategic position on the approaches to Bristol and Cardiff a series of gun emplacements, known as Flat Holm Battery, were built in the 1860s as part of a line of defences, known as Palmerston Forts. On the outbreak of World War II, the island was rearmed.

It forms part of the City and County of Cardiff and is now managed by Cardiff Council's Flat Holm Project Team and designated as a Local Nature Reserve, Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Protection Area, because of the maritime grassland and rare plants such as rock sea-lavender (Limonium binervosum) and wild leek (Allium ampeloprasum). The island also has significant breeding colonies of lesser black-backed gulls (Larus fuscus), herring gulls (Larus argentatus) and great black-backed gulls (Larus marinus). It is also home to slowworms (Anguis fragilis) with larger than usual blue markings.

Human occupation dates back to the Beaker culture of the late Bronze Age. There is also evidence of an Iron Age hill fort and prehistoric barrows and field systems. There is evidence of a shrine dating from pre-Roman times, which was re-established as a Romano-Celtic Temple in the mid-4th century. According to at least one source, it is extremely likely this was succeeded by a small late-4th-century Christian oratory. Several Roman finds including gold coins of Augustus, Nero, and Drusus, two silver denarii of Vespasian and a Roman carnelian ring were found at the site during quarrying.

Brean Down Fort was built on the headland between 1864 and 1871 on the recommendations of the 1859 Royal Commission. It was the most southerly of a chain of defences across the Bristol Channel, protecting the access to Bristol and Cardiff. Four acres of land at the end of Brean Down were requisitioned in 1862, with construction beginning in 1864 and completed in 1871.

In the 1860s plans were laid for a deep-water harbour on the northern shore of Brean Down. It was intended that this harbour would replace Bristol as a port on embarkation for transatlantic crossings and the export of minerals and agricultural produce from the Mendip Hills and the rest of Somerset. The foundation stones of the pier were laid, but the project was later abandoned after a large storm destroyed the foundations. In 1897, following wireless transmissions from Lavernock Point in Wales and Flat Holm, Guglielmo Marconi moved his equipment to Brean Down and set a new distance record of 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) for wireless transmission over open sea. In 1912 Brean Down was leased by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds as a bird sanctuary, acquiring the shooting rights to stop others shooting on the promontory.

On the outbreak of World War II, the fort was rearmed with two 6-inch (15-centimetre) ex-naval guns, and machine gun posts were built on the Down. Birnbeck Pier was taken over by the Admiralty in 1941 as an outpost of the Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD). It was commissioned as HMS Birnbeck, and was used for secret weapons development and storage with testing. The "Bouncing bomb" was tested at the Brean Down Fort on the opposite side of Weston Bay.

In 1954 the former Axbridge Rural District Council gave 59.685 hectares (147.48 acres) of the down to the National Trust to celebrate the Festival of Britain. The Major Aldermen and Burgesses of the Borough of Weston-Super Mare gave 1.494 hectares (3.69 acres) in 1963, and a further 1.371 hectares (3.39 acres) at Brean Down Cove was acquired from M.D. and M Matthews in 2000. After restoring the fort, which covers 1.606 hectares (3.97 acres), Sedgemoor District Council gave this to the trust as well in 2002.

Various proposals have been put forward to construct a Severn Barrage for tidal electricity production from Brean Down to Lavernock Point in south Wales. The proposals, which go back over 100 years, have never been successful so far, however Peter Hain and others are still working on further proposals and trying to persuade the government to fund either the barrage or tidal lagoons.

I am now descending down to Brean Down Fort.

The site has a long history, because of its prominent position. The earliest recorded settlement is from the Early to Middle Bronze Age.

The current buildings were constructed in the 1860s as one of the Palmerston Forts to provide protection to the ports of the Bristol Channel, and was decommissioned in 1901. During World War II it was rearmed and used for experimental weapons testing.

The site has been owned by the National Trust since 2002, following a £431,000 renovation project, as part of its Brean Down property and is open to the public.

The fort was used as a location for filming of the second episode, "Warriors", of the BBC television drama Bonekickers.

The Fort was also used for exterior scenes of the Royal Marines attack on the villains base on Cragfest Island in episode six of 1978 HTV series The Doombolt Chase.

Brean Down Fort forms part of a line of defences, known as Palmerston Forts, built across the channel to protect the approaches to Bristol and Cardiff. It was fortified following a visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to France, where they had been concerned at the strength of the French Navy. The Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, under direction of Lord Palmerston, recommended fortification of the coast. Brean Down Fort formed part of a strategic coastal defence system covering the channel between the mainland and the islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm.

Four acres of land at the end of Brean Down were requisitioned in 1862, with construction beginning in 1864 and completed in 1871.

The fort was originally armed with seven 7-inch (18 cm) rifled muzzle-loading guns, which were among the last of this type to be made at the Woolwich Gun Foundry. These sited at three main gun positions, including W battery containing two guns on 'C' pivots (rotating around a reused Georgian cannon set upright in the ground). Each gun weighed 7 tons and had a 30-pound (14 kg) charge of gunpowder able to fire a 112-pound (51 kg) Palliser shot at 1,560 feet (475 m) per second. This could pierce 8 inches (20 cm) of armour at 1,000 yards (910 m). It was proposed to replace the 7-inch (18 cm) guns with larger 9-inch (23 cm) versions in 1888 but this was never put into action. It had a large, underground, main gunpowder magazine, 15 feet (4.5 m) by 18 feet (5.5 m) by 20 feet (6.1 m) high. The fort was staffed by 50 officers and men of the Coast Brigade, Royal Artillery, but no shots were ever fired in action.

The end of the fort's active service came at 5 a.m. on 6 July 1900 when the No. 3 magazine which held 3 tons (3 tonnes) of gunpowder exploded. An inquiry found that Gunner Haines had fired a ball cartridge down a ventilator shaft causing the explosion, after being put on a charge for returning late to barracks, however this explanation has been challenged. The wall separating the fort from the moat on the south west corner was demolished and wreckage thrown up to 200 yards (183 m). No one knew why the gunner had blown up the fort, but it has been speculated that it was an act of suicide. The cannons were hauled away by traction engines.

It was then used as a café, owned by the Hillman family from at least 1907 until sold in 1936 to the 'bird sanctuary people'.

On the outbreak of World War II the fort was rearmed with two six inch ex-naval guns and two searchlights as a Coastal artillery battery . The site was also used as a test launch site for rockets and experimental weapons.

Two gun positions were built to mount the ex-naval guns in their turrets. These were later protected with a "plastic" anti-aircraft roof. One position was built over the ruins of the old west battery and the other partly obscures the north west battery. The barrack blocks were converted and the windows partly blocked to reduce the effects of blast. Several other associated structures, including searchlight batteries for illuminating seaborne targets, a command post and the barracks for the garrison were built outside the original Palmeston fort.

The site was manned by 365 and 366 Coast Batteries RA of 571 Coast Regiment in 1942.

Several experimental weapons were trialled at Brean, by the Admiralty's Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development, based at HMS Birnbeck. The only evidence being a short length of launching rail, designed to launch a bouncing bomb.

Some of the better known weapons trialled were the seaborne Bouncing bomb designed specifically to bounce to a target such as across water to avoid torpedo nets, Anti-submarine missile AMUCK and the expendable acoustic emitter (designed to confuse noise seeking torpedoes).

I leave the Fort behind and head back uphill along the Weston-Super-Mare side of the Down.

The River Axe

I descend the Down by a winding path and I am now down at Sea level again, now a long slog back to the site as I'm knackered.

After a long walk along the beach I decide to leave early and walk through Brean.

Brean is a village and civil parish between Weston-super-Mare and Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset, England. The name is derived from "Bryn" Brythonic and Modern Welsh for a hill and it has a population of 635.

The village is on a strip of land between the sea and the River Axe. It is the home of Brean Leisure Park, a tropical bird garden, other tourist attractions and several caravan parks. The sandy beach has been used for land sailing since 1970. Sometimes, Brean can also be linked with the nearby village, Berrow so the villages can also be called Berrow & Brean.

Brean Theme Park

After nearly 11 miles I make it back to the site, it had been a hard but fantastic walk!

Bath,Somerset 28th May 2019

On Tuesday the 28th of May 2019 we drove to Bath in Somerset for a look around the city, we parked in the Avon Street Car Park and then made our way up St James Street.

Bath is the largest city in the county of Somerset.

The city became a spa with the Latin name Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis") c. 60 AD when the Romans built baths and a temple in the valley of the River Avon, although hot springs were known even before then.

Bath Abbey was founded in the 7th century and became a religious centre; the building was rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century, claims were made for the curative properties of water from the springs, and Bath became popular as a spa town in the Georgian era. Georgian architecture, crafted from Bath stone, includes the Royal Crescent, Circus, Pump Room and Assembly Rooms where Beau Nash presided over the city's social life from 1705 until his death in 1761. Many of the streets and squares were laid out by John Wood, the Elder, and in the 18th century the city became fashionable and the population grew. Jane Austen lived in Bath in the early 19th century. Further building was undertaken in the 19th century and following the Bath Blitz in World War II.

The city has software, publishing and service-oriented industries. Theatres, museums and other cultural and sporting venues have helped make it a major centre for tourism, with more than one million staying visitors and 3.8 million day visitors to the city each year.

There are several museums including the Museum of Bath Architecture, the Victoria Art Gallery, the Museum of East Asian Art, the Herschel Museum of Astronomy and the Holburne Museum. The city has two universities – the University of Bath and Bath Spa University – with Bath College providing further education. Sporting clubs include Bath Rugby and Bath City F.C.

We made our way to Bath Abbey, the entrance fee put us off from going in for a look about though.

Bath Abbey was founded in the 7th century, it was reorganised in the 10th century and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries; major restoration work was carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the 1860s. It is one of the largest examples of Perpendicular Gothic architecture in the West Country. The cathedral was consolidated to Wells Cathedral in 1539 after the abbey was dissolved in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but the name of the diocese has remained unchanged.

The church is cruciform in plan, and able to seat 1,200. An active place of worship, it also hosts civic ceremonies, concerts and lectures. There is a heritage museum in the vaults.

The abbey is a Grade I listed building, particularly noted for its fan vaulting. It contains war memorials for the local population and monuments to several notable people, in the form of wall and floor plaques and commemorative stained glass. The church has two organs and a peal of ten bells. The west front includes sculptures of angels climbing to heaven on two stone ladders.

Roman Baths entrance

The Roman Baths complex is a site of historical interest in the English city of Bath. It is a well-preserved Roman site once used for public bathing.

The Roman Baths themselves are below the modern street level. There are four main features: the Sacred Spring, the Roman Temple, the Roman Bath House and the museum, holding finds from Roman Bath. The buildings above street level date from the 19th century.

The Baths are a major tourist attraction and, together with the Grand Pump Room, receive more than one million visitors a year. Visitors can tour the baths and museum but cannot enter the water.

Inside The Roman Baths

The water which bubbles up from the ground at Bath falls as rain on the nearby Mendip Hills. It percolates down through limestone aquifers to a depth of between 2,700 and 4,300 metres (8,900 and 14,100 ft) where geothermal energy raises the water temperature to between 69 and 96 °C (156.2 and 204.8 °F). Under pressure, the heated water rises to the surface along fissures and faults in the limestone. This process is similar to an enhanced geothermal system, which also makes use of the high pressures and temperatures below the earth's crust. Hot water at a temperature of 46 °C (114.8 °F) rises here at the rate of 1,170,000 litres (257,364 imp gal) every day, from a geological fault (the Pennyquick fault). In 1983 a new spa water bore-hole was sunk, providing a clean and safe supply of spa water for drinking in the Pump Room.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the site of the baths may have been a centre of worship used by Celts; the springs were dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans identified with Minerva. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his largely fictional Historia Regum Britanniae describes how in 836 BC the spring was discovered by the British king Bladud who built the first Moorish baths. Early in the 18th century Geoffrey's obscure legend was given great prominence as a royal endorsement of the waters' qualities, with the embellishment that the spring had cured Bladud and his herd of pigs of leprosy through wallowing in the warm mud.

Bath was charged with responsibility for the hot springs in a Royal Charter of 1591 granted by Elizabeth I. This duty has now passed to Bath and North East Somerset Council, who carry out monitoring of pressure, temperature and flow rates. The thermal waters contain sodium, calcium, chloride and sulphate ions in high concentrations.

We had a wander about the many shops and tried to find our way to the Queen Square and The Crescent, not easy to find our way around the city.

We made our way down to the River Avon,  was expecting something more picturesque. Maybe it was elsewhere!

We made our way up Southgate Street and then onto Stall Street where we popped into the Roman Baths Gift Shop.

After a few more roads we made our way to Queen Square.

Queen Square is a square of Georgian houses in the city of Bath, England. Queen Square is the first element in "the most important architectural sequence in Bath", which includes the Circus and the Royal Crescent. All of the buildings which make up the square are Grade I listed.

The original development was undertaken by John Wood, the Elder in the early 18th century. He designed the building frontages following the rules of Palladian architecture and then sub-let to individual builders to put up the rest of the buildings. The obelisk in the centre of the square, of which Wood was “inordinately proud”, was erected by Beau Nash in 1738 in honour of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Queen Square was the first speculative development by the architect John Wood, the Elder, who later lived in a house on the square.

Wood set out to restore Bath to what he believed was its former ancient glory as one of the most important and significant cities in Britain. In 1725 he developed an ambitious plan for his home town:

I began to turn [his] thoughts towards the improvement of the city by building.

Wood's grand plans for Bath were consistently hampered by the Corporation (council), churchmen, landowners and moneymen. Instead he approached Robert Gay, a barber surgeon from London, and the owner of the Barton Farm estate in the Manor of Walcot, outside the city walls. On these fields Wood established Bath’s architectural style, the basic principles of which were copied by all those architects who came after him.

Queen Square is a key component of Wood's vision for Bath. Named in honour of Queen Caroline, wife of George II, it was intended to appear like a palace with wings and a forecourt to be viewed from the south side:

North side: Numbers 21-27 make up the north side, which was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "one of the finest Palladian compositions in England before 1730".

West side: the west side (numbers 14–18 and 18A, 19 & 20) was designed by John Pinch in 1830 and differs from Wood's original design as the central block is in Neo-Grecian style. 

We made our way up Royal Avenue to The Crescent.

The Royal Crescent is a row of 30 terraced houses laid out in a sweeping crescent in the city of Bath, England. Designed by the architect John Wood, the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774, it is among the greatest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the United Kingdom and is a Grade I listed building. Although some changes have been made to the various interiors over the years, the Georgian stone façade remains much as it was when first built.

The 500-foot-long (150 m) crescent has 114 Ionic columns on the first floor with an entablature in a Palladian style above. It was the first crescent of terraced houses to be built and an example of "rus in urbe" (the country in the city) with its views over the parkland opposite.

Many notable people have either lived or stayed in the Royal Crescent since it was built over 240 years ago, and some are commemorated on special plaques attached to the relevant buildings. Of the crescent's 30 townhouses, 10 are still full-size townhouses; 18 have been split into flats of various sizes; one is the No. 1 Royal Crescent museum and the large central house at number 16 is the Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa.

The street that is known today as "The Royal Crescent" was originally named "The Crescent." It is claimed that the adjective "Royal" was added at the end of the 18th century after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany had stayed there. He initially rented number one and later bought number 16.

We walked through Royal Victoria Park back into the city centre.

On Union Street we passed the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases.

From the 16th century the needs of the "deserving poor" who came to take the healing waters of the Roman Baths were recognised and an act of 1597 gave them the right to free use of the waters. This attracted beggars and, although the act was repealed in 1714, large numbers of people were still attracted to the city and St John's Hospital was only accessible to local residents. Plans were suggested for a hospital to receive them in 1716 with supporters which included Lady Elizabeth Hastings, Henry Hoare, Joseph Jekyll, William Oliver and Beau Nash.

The hospital was founded in 1738 as The Mineral Water Hospital. It provided care for the impoverished sick who were attracted to Bath because of the supposed healing properties of the mineral water from the spa. The original building, which was designed by John Wood the Elder, was built with Bath stone donated by Ralph Allen and completed in 1742. It was later enlarged, firstly in 1793 by the addition of an attic storey and later in 1860 by a second building erected on the west side of the earlier edifice. There is a fine pediment, in Bath stone, on the 1860 building depicting the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The hospital possesses a number of interesting oil paintings, in particular a picture of Dr Oliver and Mr Peirce examining three patients in 1741.

In 1993, it became an NHS Foundation Trust, specialising in Rheumatic Disease and Rehabilitation, which received a 3 star rating in 2005. The hospital had a large brain injury rehabilitation service with separate units for adults, adolescents and children; this service closed in March 2013 as a result of financial pressures.

The hospital was named by the Health Service Journal as the best acute specialist trust to work for in 2015. At that time it had 208 full-time equivalent staff and a sickness absence rate of 3.18%. 91% of staff recommend it as a place for treatment and 79% recommended it as a place to work.

We made our way back to the car and had a great day out in this lovely city.