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Cartmel Fell and Simpson Ground

30/12/2017

Ash pollard on 28 December 2017

Snow-capped fells surrounded us on a pastoral walk which took in Cartmel Fell and Simpson Ground. We basked in sunlight whilst much of the UK saw the disruption of sudden snowfall.
The late-December sun created strange and puzzling effects. I love long winter shadows and shall have fun asking friends to work out who's who in the photographs. In the corner of a field we saw bales of silage, or were they boulders? What on earth were they?

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Christmas baubles, naturally

24/12/2017

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Cobweb in fog

Fog and the air is laden with moisture. Wood and stone are slippery underfoot and to the touch. Clothes inhale the damp atmosphere. There are hidden gems, if you seek them out. Water seeps through alder catkins and stains with colour. Hawthorn berries, decorated with droplets, wait in vain for sunlight to sparkle them. Spiders living in stone walls find their webs patterned and made visible.

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Leighton Moss

18/12/2017

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Mute swan, 18 December 2017

Sunlight with frost and ice at Leighton Moss on a December morning. The day was still and we listened to the confiding chatter amongst a brood of cygnets along the track to the public hide. There was ice on the pools, with striking pattern where swans found open water. Narcissus like, the swan dips its head and forages- admiring its reflection in the water. Reeds and bulrushes reflect in warm colour and the reed beds look warm in the sunlight. There was the piglet squeal of a water rail which lurked unseen.

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Pen Y Ghent

5/12/2017

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Pen Y Ghent, west face, 3 December

White mist hovered over Pen Y Ghent, and dispersed. The low December sun highlighted the architecture of its western face: a dark cap of gritstone over terraces of limestone. Perspectives on the whaleback ridge throughout the day.
From the heather, the red grouse call 'go back, go back.' A grouse flies low, dips down, then stands proud in the sunlight, resplendent.

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Kentmere: a flying rowan

2/12/2017

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Kentmere, spring 2010

'Are there other flying rowan?' he asked. After that flogron beside Gurnall Dubbs. I know of one in Kentmere so trawled my archive of images. These I took in spring 2010 and I was focused on landscape, not on flying rowan which feature almost by chance. There's a barn enclosed by a wall where the sheep from Brockstones are fed and beside it a green sward, a nursery of ewes and their lambs. There are several trees, including a rowan encased in rock, a flogron, a flying rowan.

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Potter Fell and Gurnall Dubbs

1/12/2017

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30 November, the flying rowan of Gurnall Dubbs

An icy north wind resounded through Craggy Wood. A pure light from the north and a low sun highlighting landscape features in a late-November signature: stone walls and outcropping rock illuminated. Long shadows creating a drama of their own.
The waters of Gurnall Dubbs reflected an intense blue in a clear, blue sky. Along the shore we looked out for the flying rowan, a flogron of magic properties. A flying rowan has its roots neither in earth nor heaven, but suspended between realms. This flying rowan grows in the cleft of a glacial erratic and today the strong sunlight gleams on its bark and its poll of fine branches. And an old nest. Imagine the brood of nestlings hatched in a tree of super-magic.
A flogron, the flying rowan of Norse mythology. So what's the story, I'm asked.

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Cartmel Fell and Simpson Ground

Christmas baubles, naturally

Leighton Moss

Pen Y Ghent

Kentmere: a flying rowan

Potter Fell and Gurnall Dubbs

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