Limestone spoil

One of the nice things about living on the edge of the south Wales coalfield is that I'm never too far away from the geological margin of carboniferous limestone that encircles the coal measures. For a person who craves landscape variation this gives me the opportunity to jump in and out of differing plant communities like a game of school yard hopscotch.

Now I love a perturbation. The havoc wrecked by our industrial forefathers has left a legacy, not of dereliction as many decision makers will have us believe, but one of intrigue and variety that nature is reclaiming with characteristic enthusiasm. 

Climbing through Company's Wood a disused tram line takes you directly to a small limestone quarry complete with its moderately sized spoil heaps - nothing like the jumbo coal tips that litter the nearby Blaenavon landscape. On this visit I diverted mid way to take a track the produced by recent forestry operations. Some log turning produced a bit of a surprise in the form of a great crested newt. All the more surprising that the nearest know water-body is some distance away. Where the forestry ends the ancient woodland starts complete with its impressive beech trees. 

At the end of the track it rejoins the tram line at the foot of several limestone spoil tips. Gripping the some of the self seeded ash trees I am still just about able to scramble up these tips, but for how much longer I wonder? At the summit I was able view the quarry and its spoil but know largely full of hawthorn and blackthorn scrub along with some larch that was planted but a previous misguided tree planting scheme. Where the scrub thins the vegetation is of fine grasses, wildflowers and bare ground. Here several dingy skipper were on the wing, alighting on the warming bare ground. But, due the rapid nature of scrub development, the long term future of grassland butterflies such the dingy skipper is uncertain. For me the removal of scrub and conversion back to limestone grassland is a conservation project in waiting.