Golden Valley - Feb 2026
| Golden Valley - Feb 2026 | |
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One day we decided to go for a short hike - and picnic of course - at Wick
Golden Valley Nature Reserve just east of Bristol. Some research online
ahead of time told us that parking is an issue. Some people seemed to
just park along the road, although locals were upset about this. So we found Wick
Park Car Park just at the start of the village. It was free to park there,
and there was a space available for Percy.
Our very approximate walking route is shown in the map below. |
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| After a short walk through the town, we were met with several signs telling people to not park on the road. So we were pleased with our choice. There were fancy wooden markers announcing that we were in a nature reserve, but the trails were not well marked. | |
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A very full River Boyd was running through the reserve. Farmer's fields and people's
gardens were lining the river, so we hope this was the maximum level of the river.
We had had quite a bit of rain lately, although luckily none today!
We did quite a bit of scrambling and backtracking to find our way through the reserve. The trail was quite steep and we were happy to have good hiking boots. At some points we needed to pull ourselves up steep parts by grabbing trees and branches. |
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| At one lookout point there was a nice bench with metal inlays in the shape of leaves. We do not know who made this or why it was in this park. Still, it was an interesting break on our hike. | |
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| At Ravens Rock we found a good view of the limestone quarry and a nice log to sit on. This had been our intended lunch spot. It is an active quarry, and they were even active and working on a Saturday. Amazingly we don't have a photo of our picnic. It was pleasant to enjoy our sandwich and cup of tea in the sun. | |
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| The site used to be used for iron mining in the 1700s and a big ochre processing facility up until 1968. | |
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| Further along our hike we also got a view over the deep disused quarry lake. | |
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| At one point we also found this make-shift shelter of metal and a tarpaulin. Inside there was straw. We couldn't see any animals around, so we are not sure who lived here | |
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| On our return to find Percy we did struggle a bit to find a trail. Several trails were dead ends, so we had to backtrack a few times. We had to come down the same steep path as we had gone out along. We found another exit from the reserve to the west and chose this. A circular walk is more fun than a "there-and-back"! |
Feb 2026