Birch trees in sunlit Whitbarrow A low November sun discovers colours rich and rare in autumn trees. A glimmering faerie light casts long shadows. The sun highlights time-sculpted stone on limestone terraces, suffusing WItherslack Hall in a soft glow and flooding the sea at Morecambe Bay with waves of brilliance. Out of November rains and gloom comes a day of wondrous light.
Jay are clamorous and a great spotted woodpecker calls from conifers beside a damson orchard. Bullfinch call and I hear several nuthatch. Swags of glossy red berries of black bryony drape the shrubs on the fringe of Durham Bridge Wood. Spindle has leaves of rosy gold and bright pink capsules with orange seeds. Hazel leaves mellow and fall to show green catkins, fully formed by late summer.
In late autumn and winter the crowns of birch trees show amethyst against a bright sky. Today, the sun confers on them a warm pinkish-brown but when the roving spotlight is gone they seem dark and rather sinister. The world of faerie if made of light, of long shadows and of darkness. On such a bright morning in autumn the woodland canopy is a palette of warm colour, for a while. There are limestone terraces and woods with birch, larch and Scots pine. Cattle of conservation grazing stare at us, and keep their distance. A farmer is out checking on them and where the cows gather there are blue buckets of cattle feed.
As we walk south toward Morecambe Bay the sun blinds us, concealing rough ground and deep puddles in a rutted track. Dazzling light is a motif of late autumn when the sun is low in the sky.
Long tailed tits call in a birch grove. A flock of fieldfare flies in the distance, silently. We see no-one until we reach limestone terraces with woods to the east where someone sits looking into the trees. Then we hear the baying of hounds and a hunting horn, all invisible. The hounds give tongue and their calls ring through the wood. We hear them to the west toward Witherslack where the hall glows in a raking light but they crossed the open fell unseen.
As we walk south toward Morecambe Bay the sun blinds us, concealing rough ground and deep puddles in a rutted track. Dazzling light is a motif of late autumn when the sun is low in the sky.
Long tailed tits call in a birch grove. A flock of fieldfare flies in the distance, silently. We see no-one until we reach limestone terraces with woods to the east where someone sits looking into the trees. Then we hear the baying of hounds and a hunting horn, all invisible. The hounds give tongue and their calls ring through the wood. We hear them to the west toward Witherslack where the hall glows in a raking light but they crossed the open fell unseen.
Looking south toward Morecambe Bay the sea is a blaze of light out of darkness. At my feet, wood sage glimmers, then fades as clouds gather. The yelping of hounds mingles with the gurgles, honks and croaks of ravens they put to flight, dark birds against the blue. Above Chapel Head Scar a pale shape runs, muzzle to the ground as the hound follows a scent. In my pocket is a lens cloth printed with Uccello's 'Hunt in the Forest.' Medieval huntsmen and their hounds throng the foreground and deep beneath the forest canopy white hounds pursue fleeting deer. Uccello's hunt is long silent but the sound of hunting horn and baying hounds ring out from deep in the wood so at any moment his brightly clad huntsmen might burst out of the trees. My Uccello cloth might magic the scene into being. Time plays strange tricks and the past comes closer when you are alone on the fells in the midst of an invisible hunt in the season of faerie light and darkness. There is something liminal here, a threshold between reality and imagination.
Returning with the sun behind us is a wholly different experience and for some while the sun is hidden by cloud. Being out for hours we see the cloudscape changing. From the Hervey Monument we descend by limestone terraces, through birch trees. The dip slope off Whitbarrow escarpment contours gently over some distance and the gate we seek is hidden until you are almost upon it. So we check we have the right track. I speak the fixed features out loud
‘ cairn, low limestone terrace- ignore the blue buckets they can move.’
They do move. They turn to look at us, a couple in blue jackets sitting on a rock. Ooops! A gaffe not easy to explain. My vision includes an element of imagination, the light was poor, they were in blue but who wants to be mistaken for a bucket of cattle feed?
We hear fieldfare somewhere in birch and yew as we come off Whitbarrow.
Returning with the sun behind us is a wholly different experience and for some while the sun is hidden by cloud. Being out for hours we see the cloudscape changing. From the Hervey Monument we descend by limestone terraces, through birch trees. The dip slope off Whitbarrow escarpment contours gently over some distance and the gate we seek is hidden until you are almost upon it. So we check we have the right track. I speak the fixed features out loud
‘ cairn, low limestone terrace- ignore the blue buckets they can move.’
They do move. They turn to look at us, a couple in blue jackets sitting on a rock. Ooops! A gaffe not easy to explain. My vision includes an element of imagination, the light was poor, they were in blue but who wants to be mistaken for a bucket of cattle feed?
We hear fieldfare somewhere in birch and yew as we come off Whitbarrow.
The light over the Lyth Valley is wondrous, flood water gleams and mirrors the sky. I walk the single track road over the mosses to see what I might find and hear pigs grunting over the hedge. I hear fieldfare and a flock of starling flies overhead and comes down in tree tops. Mostly starling, possibly those elusive fieldfare too. Little egret fly and settle amongst sheep. A flock of gulls gleams white in flight against peachy golden trees. The distant fells show dark with autumn trees all aglow and an ancient laid hedge is distinctive in the Lyth Valley after the limestone walls up on the fells. There’s a golden glow in the sky to the west as we head for home.
Whitbarrow is a National Nature Reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Dogs on leads, reads the notice. The hounds hadn't read it.
The rest of the week it’s back to a gloomy November days with blustery winds and rain and darkness that made the wondrous quality of light on Whitbarrow so special.
Whitbarrow is a National Nature Reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Dogs on leads, reads the notice. The hounds hadn't read it.
The rest of the week it’s back to a gloomy November days with blustery winds and rain and darkness that made the wondrous quality of light on Whitbarrow so special.
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