Common toad Wetsleddale and Hobgrumble Gill. Sounds as if we’re in for a rough time, bad weather and bad temper! If we had hung around for a day or so we’d have seen what heavy rain can do in this landscape. A common lizard scurried across the track to Wetsleddale Hall. Cumbrian farmsteads are often known as halls and it always reminds me of She Stoops to Conquer, where the culture of town and country collide.
Once belonging to Shap Abbey, Wetsleddale Hall was the location of the cult film WIthnail and I. The building looks partially restored, with stylish doorway and pediment and walls that give glimpses of history breaking out through layers of rubbles and cladding. By the outlying barn rowan trees were dripping with berries.
Above Sleddale Beck a common toad sat at the side of the track. A handsome toad whose dark warts glistened in the sun. He seemed crusted in jewels. How could anyone fail to see him? But his cryptic colouring is so subtle, warts, blotches and speckles. His warty jewels seem flung at him, haphazard. There is no symmetry in the pattern, those back legs dissolve into stone. Later in the day, someone found a long-legged frog that hopped away into the grasses. Look at this sequence of images, left to right, to see how cryptic colouring hides him.
Above Sleddale Beck a common toad sat at the side of the track. A handsome toad whose dark warts glistened in the sun. He seemed crusted in jewels. How could anyone fail to see him? But his cryptic colouring is so subtle, warts, blotches and speckles. His warty jewels seem flung at him, haphazard. There is no symmetry in the pattern, those back legs dissolve into stone. Later in the day, someone found a long-legged frog that hopped away into the grasses. Look at this sequence of images, left to right, to see how cryptic colouring hides him.
We were contouring above Sleddale Beck, below cultivation terraces. A snipe rose from the rushes, buzzards later in the day. Nigel found a nest of white-tailed bumblebees in a disused burrow beneath a large rock- a species common in upland areas. Bombus lucorum, worker white-tailed bumblebees. A warm, dry day and the worker bees were active. There is dry grass down in the entrance that goes beneath the rock, with an exit on the far side.
White-tailed bumblebees, Bombus lucorum
White-plumes of cotton grass and flame-like seed heads of bog asphodel were everywhere in wet ground. The seed-heads are even more striking than the summer flowers, and they last so much longer. Standing on the bridge over Mosedale Beck we watched fish darting in the water below. Sunlit drumlins in upper Mosedale, then we descend beside Forces Falls. Hobgrumble Gill lurks in shadow. Wonderful name! With heavy rain forecast the hobgoblins will be gobbling and grumbling loudly, chucking rocks through cascading water. Through woodland above Swindale, then we strike south east across an exposed upland of blanket bog, by Blea Moss and Gambling Moss. Dark and dangerous. Gambling Moss: it’s risky to cross here after weeks of rain, chancy. The ground can quake and shiver. There will be pools of open water and bright green spells danger on the mosses. Probe the sphagnum and you may find it’s floating vegetation. Sphagnum mops up water and releases it very slowly. Fall in and there are no solid banks to clutch to heave yourself out again.
I love a squelch through blanket bog spiked with slow-growing sphagnum mounds, with deer grass showing the first hint of autumn colour, bog asphodel and a depth of rich-coloured mosses. There are tiny scarlet fungi in a weave of moss. Habitat for invertebrates too. On distant knolls a few sheep graze. There may be parts of the Lake District where overgrazing has damaged blanket bog but not here. It’s beautiful, a naturalist’s delight. And historic over grazing is being addressed by conservation projects. The international importance of blanket bog is recognised. This week, Guardian journalist George Monbiot caused much offence in a headline-grabbing piece that disputed whether farming and conservation could work together. I hope he takes up our MP Tim Farron’s offer to show him something of Cumbria before he writes more ill-informed polemic.
In the week that poet Seamus Heaney died I recall his fine essays entitled Sense of Place. He writes about his boyhood and the thrill of exploring peat moorland the mosses. Gambling in the moss. Heaney was all for chancing it. He delves the moss in a baptismal rite, an initiation.
These sphagnum images shows the beauty and intricacy of blanket bog. An essential habitat for carbon-storing, slow water-release and flood control.
Thanks to Vic and Eleanor Quaglieni for an excellent walk.
Acknowledgement. Uncertain about these wild bees, I contacted ecologist Jacqui Ogden, Natural England. She is always most helpful and gives me lots of detailed information, points me in the right direction. Today, she passed on my inquiry to a colleague. So thanks to Jon Curson (NE) for identification and information on Bombus lucorum
In the week that poet Seamus Heaney died I recall his fine essays entitled Sense of Place. He writes about his boyhood and the thrill of exploring peat moorland the mosses. Gambling in the moss. Heaney was all for chancing it. He delves the moss in a baptismal rite, an initiation.
These sphagnum images shows the beauty and intricacy of blanket bog. An essential habitat for carbon-storing, slow water-release and flood control.
Thanks to Vic and Eleanor Quaglieni for an excellent walk.
Acknowledgement. Uncertain about these wild bees, I contacted ecologist Jacqui Ogden, Natural England. She is always most helpful and gives me lots of detailed information, points me in the right direction. Today, she passed on my inquiry to a colleague. So thanks to Jon Curson (NE) for identification and information on Bombus lucorum
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