This is an easy Cache & Dash to highlight a beautiful road verge that has miraculously survived in a nutrient-rich landscape. It can be done at any time of year, but is at its best in June when the rare Dyer's Greenweed is in flower. This is a shrubby relative of Broom and Gorse, growing about a foot high, with spikes of yellow vetch-like flowers. Despite its name, this Greenweed was used to produce a water-fast yellow dye. Please don't be tempted to harvest any though! It used to be widespread across Monmouthshire and the rest of Wales, but has declined very rapidly because of habitat loss.
The Cross Hands verges have not been ploughed and preserve a fragment of the kind of grassland that would have been all over Wales in the early 20th century. At the same time, these verges are sufficiently far from the fertilisers used in adjacent fields, so they still hold their wildflowers rather than being dominated by Goosegrass and Stinging Nettles like most road verges (as we cachers know to our cost!), and have also not been planted with shrubs or trees. They are mown in late summer, once the flowers have set seed, and that mowing removes nutrients and helps the flowers survive. There are beautiful road verges across Wales, but they are getting rarer and rarer.
There is room to reverse a single car up on to the verge from the north-eastern road of the crossroads, immediately adjacent to the cache. The cache should be an easy find, but please be careful when you remove it because it's very small an could easily end up among the flowers. The road isn't too busy, so you shouldn't have a problem waiting for a gap in the traffic. Dyer's Greenweed is mostly on the southern quadrant, so please take care if you cross the road to admire it.
Thanks to Jaughan for inspiring me with the first few Botanical Wales caches.