Clevedon - Geography

Geography

Clevedon is situated on and round seven hills called Churchill, Wain's hill (which is topped by the remains of an Iron Age hill fort), Dial hill, Strawberry hill, Castle hill, Hangstone hill and Court hill which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. On a clear day there are far reaching views across the Severn estuary to Wales. When the visibility is particularly good the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel can be seen. The tidal rise and fall in the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel can be as great as 14.5 m (48 ft), second only to Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada.

The seafront stretches for approximately half a mile from the pier to Salthouse Field, and includes ornamental gardens, a Victorian bandstand, a bowling green, tennis courts, crazy golf and other amusements. An addition to this list is Marine Lake, which was once a Victorian swimming pool, is now used for boating activities, as well as a small festival once a year where people can try out new sports. The Salthouse Field has a light railway running round the perimeter and is still used for donkey rides during the summer.

The shore at Clevedon is a mixture of pebbled beaches and low rocky cliffs, with the old harbour being at the western edge of the town at the mouth of the Land Yeo river. It is remembered as the place at which John Ashley conceived of the idea of creating The Mission to Seafarers. The rocky beach, which has been designated as the Clevedon Shore geological Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is the side of a mineralised fault, which runs east-west adjacent to the pier, and forms a small cliff feature in Dolomitic Conglomerate on the north side of Clevedon Beach, containing cream to pink baryte together with sulfides. The minerals identified at the site include: haematite, chalcopyrite, tennantite, galena, tetrahedrite, bornite, pyrite, marcasite, enargite and sphalerite. Secondary alteration of this assemblage has produced idaite, Covellite and other Copper sulfides.

"Poet's Walk" is a footpath around Wain's Hill and Church Hill, to the south west of the seafront, and the upper part of the town contains many other footpaths through parks and wooded areas which were laid out in the nineteenth century. The name of the walk is a commemoration of the poets and writers who have visited Clevedon. These include Coleridge in 1795 and Tennyson in 1834.