Seasonal route: May to July on the Coast to Coast Magic and degradation meet here. Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk is so popular the route is under unsustainable pressure . A notice asking walkers to take a seasonal route is staked into eroded ground on the border of Cumbria and Yorkshire. Bare earth, dried out and deeply cracked, peat hags of softly crumbling dark peat, drying to dust. In wet weather we’d be deep in mud. To protect this landscape for the future we're asked to keep to the route of the season. It’s an urgent message and The Yorkshire Dales National Park gives a reasoned request . No dogs on this stretch, it’s important habitat for ground-nesting birds. So, what is the magic we don't want to lose?
Signposts showing two of the three distinct seasonal routes on the Coast to Coast path. With the notice telling of erosion and damage to vegetation and vulnerable ground-nesting birds, specifically between Nine Standards Rigg and Ravenseat. Peat hags and erosion show behind the notice and in the landscape.
Listen, skylark and curlew are making music over the moor. Listen and you may hear the plaintive note of golden plover. The day is hot, with a welcome hint of breeze. The mud has dried out and crisped vegetation crunches underfoot. Scan the horizon for golden plover through seed-heads like tiny white prayer flags. Golden plover forage amongst tussocks of hare’s-tail cotton grass, the greenish-gold mantle of the bird almost lost in moorland grasses. It’s magical to glimpse the bird dipping through plumes of white .
Down to earth and peering into peat bog habitat , there are tiny flowers deep amongst crowberry and the short heather the golden plover love. The birds feed on insects, seeds and berries. They love sphagnum moss, one of my favourite things. The subtlety of its colours is beautiful and as the surface layer dries out the muted shades blend into each other .
Down to earth and peering into peat bog habitat , there are tiny flowers deep amongst crowberry and the short heather the golden plover love. The birds feed on insects, seeds and berries. They love sphagnum moss, one of my favourite things. The subtlety of its colours is beautiful and as the surface layer dries out the muted shades blend into each other .
Cloudberry is special to the North Pennines, to the eastern fells of Cumbria. And it is commemorated in place names under its alias: knoutberry. Knoutberry Haw, Knoutberry Gill at Ravenseat, Knoutberry Currack and Knoutberry on Ravenstonedale Common. The plant is budding and amongst all the crinkled and fresh green leaves are a few white flowers. The petals fall to leave behind a pink calyx . Beetles and ants are busy pollinating. Cloud berry, Knoutberry, Rubus Chamaemorus is the Latin name. I’m revelling in fresh cloudberry flowers with golden plover and plotting them on my personal map of flora and fauna.
Beinn Dubh and Beinn Luskentyre, Harris, with golden plover 10 July 2015
RSS Feed