Approach to Smearsett Scar, 6 May 2019 Pastoral in limestone country. From Langcliffe, vistas unfold before us. Aspects of Pen Y Ghent, changing perspectives along our way.
Beside a hollowed-out ash set in mossy limestone pavement, an interlude where skylark sing and lapwing call. Before us, the Celtic wall and Ingleborough beyond.
Hoping for field pansies on Smearsett Scar we find them sooner.
Beside a hollowed-out ash set in mossy limestone pavement, an interlude where skylark sing and lapwing call. Before us, the Celtic wall and Ingleborough beyond.
Hoping for field pansies on Smearsett Scar we find them sooner.
Wheatear display as we zig-zag steeply upward. Solitary trees in limestone pavement against louring skies. Scree slopes, and limestone.
Lunch in a stone shelter looking toward Pen Y Ghent as sunlight plays over Cosh Beck Head and Foxup, our previous day’s route. To the south, a distant Pendle Hill. Our stone shelter protects us from a chilly wind on the coldest May Day Bank Holiday on record! Topsy-turvey after the hottest Easter!
Down from the Scar, we are bound for Wharfe Wood, pausing to contemplate vistas of Moughton Scar and Pen Y Ghent beyond. Wharfe Wood and Oxenber Wood, wonderful for bluebells, cowslips, early purple orchids, primroses, false oxlips, wood anemones, wood sorrel.
Lunch in a stone shelter looking toward Pen Y Ghent as sunlight plays over Cosh Beck Head and Foxup, our previous day’s route. To the south, a distant Pendle Hill. Our stone shelter protects us from a chilly wind on the coldest May Day Bank Holiday on record! Topsy-turvey after the hottest Easter!
Down from the Scar, we are bound for Wharfe Wood, pausing to contemplate vistas of Moughton Scar and Pen Y Ghent beyond. Wharfe Wood and Oxenber Wood, wonderful for bluebells, cowslips, early purple orchids, primroses, false oxlips, wood anemones, wood sorrel.
Returning to these woods a week later on an Arnside Naturalists’ field trip on a warm and sunny day, we approach the woods directly from Feizor and Chris Winnick talks through the geology of the landscape. There are green-veined whites and orange-tips nectaring amongst bluebells. He tells me the male orange-tips mark out territory and look for females, so they’re more often seen in flight- as I’ve observed. The intense colour of bluebells, changing in sunlight, as you turn about, deepest at a distance where perspective gives a mass of flowers. Contrasting with the fresh greens of new leaves in the canopy. Two of us lie flat out on the warm earth to look deep into the great sweep of bluebells before us. Sensational, the warm earth and the fragrance of bluebells.
Returning along Hale Lane, the Pennine Bridleway, we study ferns and the flora of the mossy wall, bush vetch and sorrel, limestone with erratics of different coloured lichens. Chris spies Herb Paris which we had searched for in the woods but did not find. He reckons that in the past these bluebells woods were far most extensive.
At Feizor, Elaine’s cafe does a brisk trade. Everyone is outdoors at her tables, taking refreshments in the sunshine, enjoying the swallows.
At Feizor, Elaine’s cafe does a brisk trade. Everyone is outdoors at her tables, taking refreshments in the sunshine, enjoying the swallows.
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