Limekilns and quarry from Smardale Fell Smardale Fell is exhilarating in a chill April wind. Larks are singing, red grouse cackle and fly low over heather. Diffuse sunlight gives the landscape the look of a watercolour, pools of light, winter trees outlined on the horizon, distant sheep give hints of brightness. From Smardale Fell dark skeletons of hawthorn. Limekilns and the fell-side quarry glimmer. The line of the disused railway is hidden in the trees.
Shall we hear the ghost train of Smardalegill Viaduct?
Shall we hear the ghost train of Smardalegill Viaduct?
We go down to the packhorse bridge, climb Smardale Fell and return through the wood to Smardalegill Viaduct and back to Newbiggin-on-Lune, crossing the watershed from the River Eden into the Lune catchment. Crossing Scandal Beck at the packhorse bridge we are always drawn to the wall climbing over Smardale Fell, the wall which the Coast to Coast follows. Stone gate posts, one of limestone one of sandstone, alert us to geology. There's a sandstone quarry by the bridge, a limestone quarry along the Stainmore Line, the disused railway line crossed by Smardalegill Viaduct. A glance at the stone wall shows a diversity of geology. It's fossil rich where there is limestone. And it's a living thing, smothered in lichens and occasional clumps of mosses. Always larksong through the wind, and we stop to watch red grouse flying and find them as they come down in the heather. As we head north-east the glimmering sunlight gleams white lichens on the top-stones of the wall. White lichens seem to flow over the rock. There are corral fossils, gastropods but its the organic nature of the life of the wall that most intrigues us, a fusion of fossil, lichen and moss. And the mystery of aeons of time that these gathered stones represent. I created a wall of fossil images, a montage for my book Cumbrian Contrasts. Today, we discover different fossils and lichens, seeing them in a fresh light. So here I go again.
We digress to discover the location of the new Smardale carpark, coltsfoot flowering beside new walkways. A team busy to complete the work.
Primroses in the wood to complement the oxslips we saw earlier. And dead-wood habitat, logpiles smothered in dog lichen whose seasonal change is something I noticed last week by Loweswater- and here it is again. In close-up, mosses are a novel reveal too.
Flowers of blue moor grass, short-stemmed at this season and close to the ground, are purplish blue. Two days later, on Scout Scar, the flowers burst open and are yellow with pollen.
Primroses in the wood to complement the oxslips we saw earlier. And dead-wood habitat, logpiles smothered in dog lichen whose seasonal change is something I noticed last week by Loweswater- and here it is again. In close-up, mosses are a novel reveal too.
Flowers of blue moor grass, short-stemmed at this season and close to the ground, are purplish blue. Two days later, on Scout Scar, the flowers burst open and are yellow with pollen.
Will the ghost train of Smardalegill Viaduct sound its whistle today? There needs a brisk wind to make it audible. With my ear to the upright of the railing I hear it faintly. Then a sudden gust brings ghost trains rushing toward us, whistles sounding in several notes.
In my photographic archive I have winter images of dog lichen, the foliose grey-brown structures tipped with deep orange and, I think, capsules. It transpired these images are of these same Smardale log piles, taken 23rd October 2014. Dog lichen grows on log piles, on fallen trees, on dry-stone walls- it's common and much of the time looks unremarkable. But these seasonal eruptions give it a striking appearance. When we found it near Loweswater the blackthorn hedges were white with flowers and those white filaments fringing the leaf-like structures of dog lichen make it seem( at a glance) as if it is covered in fallen petals.
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