Royate Hill
Two disused railway embankments linked by a brick viaduct to make a city centre nature reserve
The railway embankment creates a varied local topography with long and short, steep and gentle slopes. The habitats on the site range from limestone flora on the embankment top, to flower rich grassland, developing woodland and scrub on the embankment sides. Species such as ox-eyed daisy, mouse eared chickweed and bee orchid have been recorded at the site.
Hedgerows, a stream and an old orchard are also present within the reserve boundary.
The embankments were constructed in the early 1870's to form part of the Clifton Extension Railway. They span 450 metres in a shallow curve from Edward Street in the north west, to Clay Bottom to the east, crossing Royate Hill and the Coombe Brook at their centre.
The site was compulsorily purchased by the former Avon County Council in 1996, following a five-year high profile campaign by local people to save it from development.
21 GoodGymers have supported Royate Hill with 2 tasks.
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A Royate Good Trim
Sunday 26th January 2020
Written by Shona Buchanan
It was a drizzly old morning at Royate Hill but 10 GoodGymers came out in force to help the Nature Reserve with some bramble cutting back. Once we had all convened, Martin showed us to the location for today's work: a very steep, brambly (and now wet and muddy) slope. The brave (/crazy) GoodGymers made their way straight down the slope while the more sedate/sensible ones went the road route. We were split between loppers and rakes, and got to work cutting back the brambles and then raking them into unused area. The task was a great core workout, as we precariously tried to keep our footing in the mud and wet while chopping and raking.
Martin promised we could come back to help with their other location once the baby goats were born and we headed merrily on our way!
A royate Good Friday!
Friday 30th March 2018
Written by Paul Becker (he/him)
Congratulations to Darren for hitting 50 good deeds today!
I think I may have mentioned before (once or twice) that I love my running club and today was a good example of why. What other club would allow you to put out a speculative request for a few litter pickers and find that a couple of days later that you have 13 people signed up and ready to sacrifice a few hours of their Bank Holiday to help out even if they live nowhere near the site being cleared?
Things were made even better as we were rewarded with a bit of karmic weather that ensured that we completed the longish run up the cycle path and the entire pick without a drop of rain. Ok, so there was a bit of dampness on the way back, but at least we had the promise of brunch and a warm room to warm up our frozen hands by then!
Todays last minute task came about following a plea for help on our Facebook page by Saffron of Eastville Park friends group. Since we already had tasks scheduled for the next couple of weeks it looked at first like we wouldn't be able to help out but seeing that an event had been set up for Good Friday it was great to be able to respond and get involved in tidying up Royate Hill nature reserve - a lovely green space tucked away alongside Greenbank Cemetery. Saffron had recruited a good few others so we all worked together to tackle both the lower section alongside the cemetery and further up along the viaduct as well. This included the Moon Temple - a place I didn't realise existed until today but provided for some quality photographs by Caroline!
I lost count of how many bags of rubbish we removed but I think it was 15-20 so a very productive morning and a seriously lovely group of people to spend it with.
