Blog

Sizergh to Helsington Church

28/9/2024

Now, my friend insisted. Now while the sun's on the trees. So we lingered about the lake as sunlight coloured the foliage of guelder rose and spindle. Glad to have seized the moment because cloud soon hid the sun and when we returned to the lake colour was gone from the shrubs. The lake is surrounded by beautiful shrubs and trees and we enjoy returning to see how they fare, through the seasons and year by year. Foliage of the large spindle bush has quickly assumed autumn colour but it has no berries. Now for that lovely rowan, Sorbus Vilmorinii.

Black Mire to Loughrigg Fell, and descent to Loughrigg Terrace

20/9/2024

Bog asphodel and cross-leaved heath

Black Mire was golden with the seed-heads of bog asphodel, sprinkled with pink flowers of cross-leaved heath. Not a long walk, but tough. We sloshed up the fellside through the mire of saturated peat, our legs tethered by stems of bracken grown rank through a wet spring and summer. We slogged through the solitude of Black Mire, loving the way sunlight coloured a great sweep of bog asphodel, intense gold, dull gold. I love thinking through habitat, considering the flora that could be here at this season, then finding cross-leaved heath and devil's bit scabious.

History and Natural History Mapped at Cockerham Marsh and the Lancashire Coastal Path

18/9/2024

Glasson Canal

All the right notes but not necessarily in the right order, so said Eric of Morecambe Bay whose statue frolics by the sea.
So, a litany of place-names on an OS map of Cockerham Marsh and the Lancashire Coastal Path evoking those who fished and farmed here and wildlife whose place they shared.

The right to roam Scout Scar and the Lake District National Park

13/9/2024

Opinion on closing the Brigsteer Bridge

SCAM. That's what many people think. A graffiti artist has painted the word, big and bold, on the barrier above massive concrete blocks preventing access to Brigsteer Bridge. Not everyone accepts that closure is either necessary, or lawful.
For today, I'm grateful that a friend drives us via Prizet Lane, shunting back and forth as vehicles jam a narrow and winding country lane now the only Scout Scar access for diverted traffic.
With bridge closures we'll see who has made it to walk on Scout Scar.

Smardale geology and trees

9/9/2024

Gateposts indicate geology at Smardale Gill

Heading off Smardale Fell, toward the packhorse bridge over Scandal Beck, we follow a stone wall rich in limestone fossils. Gateposts indicate the geology here, one being of limestone, the other of sandstone. There's a disused sandstone quarry beside the packhorse bridge and another low on the fellside where we stop for lunch, looking out toward the double lime kilns and the limestone quarry on the northern side of the beck. Today, Scandal Beck flows fast and full and we hear the sound of a tributary beck running off the fell to join it.

Smardale Heather Fell in September

9/9/2024

Rough Fell sheep in the heather

Low cloud capped the fells and windscreen wipers cleared the rain. The ground was puddled, the track over Smardale Fell waterlogged. We squelched up the low fell-side where white flowers of Grass of Parnassus were beaded with raindrops. Later in the morning the sun shrugged off cloud and a distant light roved toward us and flood-lit the heather fell.

Butterflies in Sizergh Castle Gardens

7/9/2024

Brimstone

Brimstone is the butterfly of the day and they favour pink flowers in the herbaceous border. The morning is hot and at moments brimstones become translucent in strong sunlight, wings self-shadowing and body visible through the hind-wing. With leaf-shaped wings of cryptic design brimstones dissolve into green foliage. The quality of light is remarkable and a fine dark line bordering the wings is visible today. A flickering play of sunlight makes colour evanescent and in an instant a rich buttery brimstone is leaf-green or blazed white, all detail erased.

Ings to Kentmere, an ambience of fells

4/9/2024

Approaching Kentmere Hall

Late summer flowers are wayside at our feet and the Kentmere fells open up before us. A group of deer stares at us, then runs A buzzard circles, a cormorant stands on the shore of Kentmere Tarn.
Heather is in bloom, and cross-leaved heath. Devil's bit scabious is in flower and bog asphodel colours the marshy ground.

Kendal community amenities- when will that be?

31/8/2024

Beside the River Kent

When will access to the countryside on our doorstep be restored? Brigsteer Bridge, a key amenity, is closed.
It's worse than Covid lockdown, said a resident. Scout Scar was our salvation in the lovely spring of 2020, with wildlife sightings galore. With the Lake District National Park on our doorstep, we crossed that bridge to freedom.

Brown Hairstreak at Arnside Knott

10/8/2024

Female Brown Hairstreak on Hemp Agrimony

I have seen Brown Hairstreak and I never thought I would. This elusive arboreal butterfly mates high in ash trees where it feeds on aphid honeydew.
I may have seen caterpillars and eggs, and not seen them. In early spring, I look for the first flowers of Blackthorn on lichened twigs. In autumn, I go in quest of photographs when sloes are ripe and Blackthorn leaves are rich in colour. Prunus spinosa, Blackthorn of bitter plum. The Brown Hairstreak lays her white eggs on young Blackthorn shoots so chances are I’ve overlooked both eggs and green caterpillars that feed only on Blackthorn.

Perspectives: from Arnside Knott to White Scar

10/8/2024

From Arnside Knott over the Kent Estuary

From up on Arnside Knott I spy the Kent Viaduct, then Foulshaw Moss and White Scar. Here's a viewpoint to put in perspective different habitats about the Kent Estuary and Moracambe Bay. Sites of summer visits, from the disused limestone quarry and the terraced cliff at White Scar to the raised mires at Foulshaw and Meathop Moss and the limestone up on Arnside Knott. A cluster of sites to study flora and fauna and of strikingly different character. Arnside Knott is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, nationally important for butterflies.

Painted Lady at Arnside Knott

10/8/2024

Painted lady on Knapweed

Golden tops is spectacular this summer and pollinators love it. I rather like this name the poet John Clare gave to Ragwort. At Arnside Knott a talk on management for butterflies was complemented by the appearance of a Painted lady in a sunlit glade on the fringe of woodland. My first of this year, even Chris Winnick is only on his second and if they were about he’d have found them.

Being on Scout Scar

4/8/2024

29 July 2024 Scout Scar escarpment

At Helsington Church the car park was busy, for a Monday morning. Cars were parked close by on the Brigsteer Road too. With the Brigsteer Bridge closed everyone must have taken a diversion to drive here. All looked deceptively normal. What you don't see is the disabled, all who cannot take to their cars and drive. Some are not able to afford a car, others, for a range of reasons, cannot drive or choose not to. So those who most need a daily walk from their doorstep are excluded. It's discriminatory.

Perspectives on Smardale

28/7/2024

Packhorse bridge and Scandal Beck, Smardale

Through a drift of flowers, a perspective opens up to Scandal Beck spanned by a medieval packhorse bridge. There's a disused sandstone quarry and once there was a pub. The beck is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, within the Eden catchment. Eden, a peaceful scene now but over the centuries when sandstone and limestone quarries were active and the railway was being built it must have been very different. Above Scandal Beck, up on the fell, the OS map says Gallows Hill. If malefactors were hanged up there the sight would have been a warning visible to all who passed this way.

Foulshaw Moss and Meathop Moss Flora

26/7/2024

Fruit of Bog Myrtle, Sweet Gale, Myrica gale

Bog myrtle is abundant at Foulshaw Moss, fringing the board walk and on the peat bog. In late July its fruit shows as a greenish nut. I searched for the plant at Meathop Moss and found none. But the flora of the peat bog at Meathop is superb. First impressions are of Bog asphodel. And White-beak sedge, Rhynchospora alba, mingles with Cross-leaved heath in a delightful show. Cross-leaved heath, Erica tetralix, is often found in peat bog. Pink flowers fade to an attractive orange and dead stems linger long.

Latterbarrow and White Scar with Butterfly Conservation

21/7/2024

Six-spot Burnet Moth on Betony

Latterbarrow is special for the flora of limestone grassland with woodland fringes where fritillaries may appear. In July, agrimony and betony show well. There's angelica and Brian points out burnet saxifrage. And tells which moths favour golden rod as a food-plant. There has been overnight rain and fine grasses are drenched with raindrops. The morning is cloudy so few butterflies are on the wing but Chris knows the site well and tells how it's managed for butterflies and shows us micro-habitat favoured by particular species.

Meathop Moss Flora

21/7/2024

Cranberries in sphagnum moss

Ripening cranberries over-spread sphagnum at Meathop Moss. Each berry has a red stalk attached to a stem with tiny evergreen leaves. Cranberry creeps over sphagnum moss of golden--green or wine red. A tapestry rich in colour and detail. If I zoom-in on an image I find more and more berries. some immature, no bigger than a pin-head. Carnivorous sundew lurks in the moss, blood-red in hue. Each filament is tipped with a sticky dew that attracts its insect prey. When an insect is caught the sundew leaf closes around it, trapping the insect and digesting it.

Westmorland and Furness- a great place to live, work and thrive?

19/7/2024

Brigsteer Bridge, 8 June 2024, barriers now re-enforced

Council Plan
'Our natural environment provides opportunities for improving health and wellbeing and we will work hard to maximise those opportunities and to ensure that we protect our natural resources, striving to become carbon net zero and addressing biodiversity loss.
Most importantly we are committed to working to ensure that Westmorland and Furness is a great place to live, work and thrive.'

Silver Washed Fritillary and Brigsteer Wood

17/7/2024

The woodland fringe where SIlver Washed Fritillary show

Hearing that Silver Washed Fritillary had been seen, we went to look for them. A large, orange butterfly they can be seen flying against the deep shadow of the woodland fringe, over sunlit bracken and flowering hemp agrimony. Today, they were active and rarely settling. Emerging from the shadows, they favoured flowers close to an ash.
Look centre of this image, just left of the tree trunk and there's a Silver Washed Fritillary, its wings poised at an angle, half-open. I cropped the image to show it more clearly but then it's almost out of focus.

Flora at High Borrowdale Upland Hay Meadows

11/7/2024

Great Burnet, Marsh Valerian and seeding grasses

Through summer, fresh flowers appear and early species set-seed. Yellow rattle shows flowers and inflated seed-pods. Grasses grow rank from days and days of rain.
Today, there are fresh flowers of Marsh Valerian and Great Burnet amongst grasses of a pinkish hue. Borrow Beck runs high, we wade puddles along the track and everywhere the sounds of water in the landscape. I have childhood memories of the River Derwent and the other Borrowdale in the rain. This year. cloud and rain prevail.