The fells, glimpsed from North Walney 31 August The tide was far out as we headed north along the sands. Then east over the shingle, over the sand dunes, by the gravel pits and onto the salt-marsh. 'A spectacle of purple-blue flowers stretching as far as the eye can see.' Limonium, sea-lavender,' at its best three weeks ago.' Steve Benn regretted our field-trip date didn't coincide with optimum flowering. Impossible to predict in this the hottest summer in England ever. The sea-asters are splendid. Do we appreciate how remarkable they are?
So, to the salt-marsh.
So, to the salt-marsh.
Leaving the damselflies and dragonflies of the gravel pits , we look north through heather, on acidic peat on a substrate of sand or clay. To salt-marsh and sea-lavender. At a casual glance it's not unlike an expanse of fading heather flowers. And there are lavenders still fresh in flower, it's simply that Steve hoped we'd see it at its most glorious. Some of the plants here are taller and more robust than my memory of those on South Walney. Flowering amongst the sea-lavender are sea-asters, Aster tripolium, fleshy leaves suited to the salinity of salt-marsh. Fleshy like sea-purslane, Halimione portulacoides, which grows thick about the mud-channels draining North End Marsh. Fleshy like Salicornia, glasswort. Fleshy, like annual seablite. We crouch low over these plants, teasing them free to study them more closely, focused, talking over what we observe, what we know. Sharing and learning is fun.
North End Salt-Marsh: a network of muddy channels draining out to Scarth Hole, to Scarth Channel and out into the Irish Sea. Every time I come to the Walney salt-marsh I picture Dickens' convict Abel Magwitch, covered in mud and terrifying Pip who meets him in the graveyard beside the marshes.
A wonderful day on North Walney and I'm eager to return next summer to see the sea-lavender looking even more lovely.
North End Salt-Marsh: a network of muddy channels draining out to Scarth Hole, to Scarth Channel and out into the Irish Sea. Every time I come to the Walney salt-marsh I picture Dickens' convict Abel Magwitch, covered in mud and terrifying Pip who meets him in the graveyard beside the marshes.
A wonderful day on North Walney and I'm eager to return next summer to see the sea-lavender looking even more lovely.
By the time we returned to the car park, in the afternoon, the tide was high and sands and shingle had vanished. So we sat mulling over a great day and enjoying ice-cream.
RSS Feed