Blow's Downs Heritage Trail - Post 4
Alongside the poem below, written by a Beech Hill Primary School student, you will find the fourth letter of the anagram, continue along the trail to find and collect the other letters and see if you can rearrange them to reveal the mystery word.
Poem by a Beech Hill Primary School student
Heritage Trail Map
You are currently at point number 4 on the trail map; Paddocks Slopes.
Walk towards the Oakwood Avenue entrance to find number 5, or scroll down to find some more information about Paddocks Slopes.
Paddocks Slopes
You are now standing, or maybe sitting, on the Paddocks slope. On the highest point of Blow’s Downs is a memorial for a man called John Rafters. He was one of the founding members of Blow’s Downs Conservation Group – a group of local volunteers who looked after Blow’s Downs before the Wildlife Trust BCN first acquired this part of the reserve.
The flat area of the reserve you can see if you look down towards the busway, is known as the Paddocks. In the early 1990s there had been plans to build a huge roundabout for the Dunstable Eastern bypass and A505 relief road at this location. The Blow’s Downs Conservation group worked hard to make sure this plan was stopped. We are very grateful that this land was saved for us and the wildlife to enjoy today.
All this goes to show what an important place for wildlife Blow’s Downs has been for so many years.
The place where the memorial stands is the highest point of Blow’s Downs at 212m above sea level. It’s quite incredible to think that from 145 million years ago to 65 million years ago this and the surrounding area would have been under a tropical sea. Over millions of years, the remains of plants and animals fell to the sea bed and created the layers of chalk that make up the Chiltern Hills, of which Blow’s Downs are a part.
