Drawn by the Light, A Lakeland Experience 1999- 2010. For more recent and ongoing nature writing see Search, top right of Blog page

Langdale, a prelude
In the winters of 2009 and 2010 there came a drama of snow and ice. A ‘road closed’ notice at the foot of Wrynose Pass told of a harsh winter. The Romans forged this route through the fells, today there’s a choice: the scenic high passes or the longer but faster routes encircling the Lake District.
Dorothy Wordsworth’s ‘Grasmere Journals of 1800 to 1803’ tell of long journeys undertaken on foot over the fells. The response to an accident in the fells would come from local men, shepherds and farmers. Today, the Mountain Rescue Service draws on teams of volunteers from widely differing backgrounds. In the severe weather of 2009-2010 the emergency services depended upon their expertise and equipment.
When she died in 1943, Beatrix Potter left 4,000 acres and 14 farms to the National Trust: a bequest of farmsteads, cottages and land to help ensure the future of farming and the farming community in the Lake District. The character of hill farming is inscribed on the fells in farmstead, barns, stone walls and sheep folds but along with tradition there is always change which continues to shape these Langdale landscapes.
In the winters of 2009 and 2010 there came a drama of snow and ice. A ‘road closed’ notice at the foot of Wrynose Pass told of a harsh winter. The Romans forged this route through the fells, today there’s a choice: the scenic high passes or the longer but faster routes encircling the Lake District.
Dorothy Wordsworth’s ‘Grasmere Journals of 1800 to 1803’ tell of long journeys undertaken on foot over the fells. The response to an accident in the fells would come from local men, shepherds and farmers. Today, the Mountain Rescue Service draws on teams of volunteers from widely differing backgrounds. In the severe weather of 2009-2010 the emergency services depended upon their expertise and equipment.
When she died in 1943, Beatrix Potter left 4,000 acres and 14 farms to the National Trust: a bequest of farmsteads, cottages and land to help ensure the future of farming and the farming community in the Lake District. The character of hill farming is inscribed on the fells in farmstead, barns, stone walls and sheep folds but along with tradition there is always change which continues to shape these Langdale landscapes.
January and February 2009 Loughrigg Fell, Lily Tarn, Rydal Park
10 January
A prolonged period of Arctic weather and the coldest winter of the decade, with skaters and children tempted onto frozen lakes and tarns.
We set out from Ambleside, earth hard as iron, and came upon a frozen Lily Tarn scattered with chunks of ice. Bracken glowed deep and warm, though visibility was poor with a low cloud base and high humidity. Above Ivy Crag, water droplets had rimed seed-heads and tussocks of tall grasses waved white in the chilly wind. Higher still, en route for the trig point on Loughrigg Fell, bracken fronds were rimed to windward in a fretwork of ice, the wondrous creation of days and nights of freezing fog. Undulating paths wound about knolls and an ice-mantle overspread saturated ground, habitat of bog asphodel and cross-leaved heath.
A descent by dark juniper gullies overhung with outcropping rock. In the gloom of an early afternoon the River Rothay ran black as ink, with purple alder catkins and old cones. Below Nab Scar, we sat looking across Rydal Water toward Loughrigg, now lost in mist and murk.
Toward Rydal Hall, someone on a quad bike dragged a limb of rhododendron- a shuddering screen of foliage. Ancient trees in Rydal Park were embossed with great burrs. A fire blazed where five years ago an oak had fallen and now, threatening to topple onto the footpath, it was being sawn up. There was a row of cut logs and the woodcutter had stacked branches and kindling against the huge stump of the oak and fired it to reduce its size before he shifted it. A shower of sparks, and a red-hot glow at the heart of the fire was focal point in the gloom and chill of a January afternoon.
On 1 February, an extreme weather event was imminent with snow borne on east winds from Siberia forecast for late in the day, so we took advantage of the lull before the storm. The tops lay under a thin coating of snow and it was bitterly cold but as we reached Lily Tarn the grey cloud parted in an interlude of sunlight and intense colour. Seeping south from the tarn, through an icy and saturated mass of grasses, was an outflow bound for the River Brathay, and Windermere.
The Langdale Pikes looked icy. A hollow-trunked ash pollard by Loughrigg Tarn had icicles dripping from its pared-back bark and bore holes of invertebrates riddled its rotting wood. Conifer needles spread amongst the bare branches and in the poll a mat of roots probed the air, a tree within a tree. A generous host, this ash pollard. A decade later and all trace of this ancient ash is gone.
During the night came snow. There were school closures across Cumbria although the worst of the weather hit the east of the country. There must be children revelling in this, their first real snow.
10 January
A prolonged period of Arctic weather and the coldest winter of the decade, with skaters and children tempted onto frozen lakes and tarns.
We set out from Ambleside, earth hard as iron, and came upon a frozen Lily Tarn scattered with chunks of ice. Bracken glowed deep and warm, though visibility was poor with a low cloud base and high humidity. Above Ivy Crag, water droplets had rimed seed-heads and tussocks of tall grasses waved white in the chilly wind. Higher still, en route for the trig point on Loughrigg Fell, bracken fronds were rimed to windward in a fretwork of ice, the wondrous creation of days and nights of freezing fog. Undulating paths wound about knolls and an ice-mantle overspread saturated ground, habitat of bog asphodel and cross-leaved heath.
A descent by dark juniper gullies overhung with outcropping rock. In the gloom of an early afternoon the River Rothay ran black as ink, with purple alder catkins and old cones. Below Nab Scar, we sat looking across Rydal Water toward Loughrigg, now lost in mist and murk.
Toward Rydal Hall, someone on a quad bike dragged a limb of rhododendron- a shuddering screen of foliage. Ancient trees in Rydal Park were embossed with great burrs. A fire blazed where five years ago an oak had fallen and now, threatening to topple onto the footpath, it was being sawn up. There was a row of cut logs and the woodcutter had stacked branches and kindling against the huge stump of the oak and fired it to reduce its size before he shifted it. A shower of sparks, and a red-hot glow at the heart of the fire was focal point in the gloom and chill of a January afternoon.
On 1 February, an extreme weather event was imminent with snow borne on east winds from Siberia forecast for late in the day, so we took advantage of the lull before the storm. The tops lay under a thin coating of snow and it was bitterly cold but as we reached Lily Tarn the grey cloud parted in an interlude of sunlight and intense colour. Seeping south from the tarn, through an icy and saturated mass of grasses, was an outflow bound for the River Brathay, and Windermere.
The Langdale Pikes looked icy. A hollow-trunked ash pollard by Loughrigg Tarn had icicles dripping from its pared-back bark and bore holes of invertebrates riddled its rotting wood. Conifer needles spread amongst the bare branches and in the poll a mat of roots probed the air, a tree within a tree. A generous host, this ash pollard. A decade later and all trace of this ancient ash is gone.
During the night came snow. There were school closures across Cumbria although the worst of the weather hit the east of the country. There must be children revelling in this, their first real snow.
7 February 2009 Lily Tarn
The news had been dominated by winter weather of a severity not experienced in Britain for twenty years. The fells were treacherous. Two men died in the Langdales and there were further serious accidents. The Mountain Rescue would not forget this fortnight.
Troublesome ravishing snow. Woodpeckers were drumming and nuthatch active. There was no wind and the morning sun grew strong in a blue sky with bright cloud. Ice creaked underfoot and seed heads of bog asphodel showed against snow. Stone walls were etched black in a landscape of snow.
A frozen Lily Tarn was encircled with a ring of fire, knolls of bracken reflected in open water. Within the ice were whirling shapes and ellipses of rippling blue water and toward the outflow a jagged star reflected the blue of the sky. A history of winter weather was encrypted in ice with flurries of wind and blizzard, melt and freeze, ripples lapping at ice of different thicknesses, textures rough and smooth. Beneath the blue star lay a thin sheet of ice fractured and thawed into geometric design. An infusion of the elements poured into the tarn: sunlight, blue sky, clouds of white and grey, winter bracken and grasses. The tarn is an oculus that receives and transforms images.
I shared the Lily Tarn experience with my friend Sharon in Massachusetts and asked her what American nature writing she might recommend. Something wholesome - winter 2009 was not a season for dark imaginings. A treat was in store with Thoreau’s ‘Walden’. His winter pond resonated with Lily Tarn during the mid-February chill. I love the image of Thoreau in a boat looking down into the clear depths of the water, watching shoals of fish.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 Loughrigg Fell
A chilly 7.30am start from Rydal Church before the dew was burnt off the grass.
A sky of rippling, milky cloud infused the still waters of Lily Tarn whose islet birch tree showed a sharp reflection. Spring had come and dark patterns of new growth swirled and clustered, their mass amplified in reflection. I peered into the cloud-flooded water where leaves of pondweed floated, snagging the surface where stem met reflection. With my back to the south and the source of light, I saw the deep flush of pink on swelling flower-buds and the mirror-image of leaf clusters gave a fresh dimension of bogbean, menyanthes trifoliata, its three leaves just opening.
Leaving Lily Tarn, I heard a yellowhammer, found him in the crown of a hawthorn and watched as he sang- a male in breeding plumage, with yellow throat and head. I found several more during the day. A green woodpecker called from the oak trees and perhaps I heard a cuckoo. Cuckoo flower bloomed in a rill, where I rejoined my track. Up on the crags ravens gurgled to each other. I think of the raven as ‘deep throat’, for their range of bass notes and their variations on gurgling and gargling.
There were tents at the Loughrigg Tarn caravan site, people taking advantage of this extended spell of glorious weather. To the sound of wings, two dunnock flirted about a sycamore. Along the south-facing banks about the tarn were bluebells, violets and the first stitchwort. A bird cherry bore racemes of white flowers and oak trees had long tassels of catkins and tight clusters of new leaves.
Sunday 26 April 2009 Codale Tarn, Brownrigg Moss, Far Easedale
An overcast and chilly morning with strong winds. Beyond Easedale Tarn, we headed up a steep bracken slope with violets and, following the beck which issues from Codale Tarn, came up over the lip of its sheltered bowl and in the clear water of the shallows found water lobelia biding its time and looking unremarkable. The tarn lies in a peat-drenched landscape and its acid waters are just the habitat for lobelia dortmanna which I saw in flower here several years ago.
We followed the beck flowing into the tarn and found ourselves amongst peat hags and fibrous silts, with half-hidden, sodden scoops of incipient hags in the grass. Rough, undulating ground hid our target ridge where rusting fence-posts track the watershed. We crossed the Coast to Coast route at the col and made for Brownrigg Moss. Here, moss flows into tarn and tarn into moss. Amorphous, saturated, with tarns of no name and scant definition, this plateau is a slow-release watershed, reluctant to shed its waters into Wythburn, Greenburn and Far Easedale. At an altitude of some 500 metres, it is exposed to the elements. These upland tarns are shape-changing. Pools of open water, shoals of sediment, encroached by sedge and sphagnum. Here flowered common cotton-grass, its anthers heavy with pollen. Louring cloud flowed over water spiked and shadowed with erect stems of flower buds. A spotlight ranged over the fells and gusts of wind set waves rippling over the surface of the tarn and lashing flower-stems which gyrated in the water. From a protective sheath came forth a stem of three translucent leaves with a delicate edge of pink and a flower stem in a fist of deep pink buds. Beneath the water, stout pink runners and the bulk of the swelling plants were visible and bogbean stems seemed to surface through rings of mercury. I have long loved bogbean with its star-flowers and its late-summer fruiting of green pods. I had not known that its April rising from the waters is a thing of wonder.
Our Far Easedale descent was sunlit with a mass of brilliant white clouds in a blue sky. In the steeper, upper reaches of the dale was the deep-cleft of a gill with waterfall and overhanging tree. Then came juniper and rowan in Easedale Beck with water cascading over dark slabs of rock. Further down the dale lay intakes and a sheepfold, a pastoral scene with dark-fleeced Herdwicks grazing. Fell-sides with dead bracken and trees with fresh foliage signified an April landscape. On the Coast to Coast descent of Far Easedale we had seen a few folk and all the last walkers of the day came companionably down off the fells on the trudge into Grasmere.
Saturday 2 May 2009 Loughrigg Fell
Somewhere in the trees close to Grasmere, a cuckoo called. I made for Lily Tarn in pursuit of bogbean and pondweed (if the names are not inspiring the plants certainly are). Amongst the deep pink buds of the bogbean flower stems was a scatter of white stars. And the voluptuous form of menyanthes trifoliata: fleshy pink runners visible beneath the water, leaf stems, flower stems, everything pink until sunlight works on it. I knelt on the sponge of sphagnum and sunlight scintillated on the water so I waited upon the ascendancy of clouds, knees sodden. Imagine subtleties on the spectrum of red, and a study in surface tension. Submerged stems of pondweed rose up and a leaf on globules of water rode on water-wheels. Lily Tarn was silent, but for a yellow hammer who sat on a wall singing. I hear them so frequently up here that I know them from the first note.
In bracken debris were wood sorrel and bluebells - green veined whites feed on their nectar. Toward Loughrigg trig point, an innominate upland tarn has islets of bog asphodel with last summer’s seed heads, encircled with bogbean amidst whose flowers sat a mallard drake, his glossy green head tucked into his plumage. He is always here, so for me Drake Tarn.
After yesterday’s rain Sour Milk Gill showed well and a kestrel hunted over the summit of Loughrigg Fell. Not quite the osprey which Andrew Motion celebrated in his poem ‘As the osprey to the fish’. This week his decade as poet laureate came to a conclusion. Back by Rydal Mount (sometime home of a previous laureate Wordsworth) wedding guests were leaving the church and, admiring the women’s dresses, I designed a fabric with a Lily Tarn motif. As silence is integral to music, so space sets off pattern: let this silk of mine be awash with cloud reflected in Lily Tarn, with floating leaves and stems dipped in shades of the softest reds. And a confetti of stars from menyanthes trifoliata perhaps. What could be more beautiful than these natural forms? Too early in the season for the lilies of Lily Tarn.
Friday 29 May 2009 Loughrigg is the place of the yellowhammer. Faintly, so faintly, came the call of a cuckoo. In a delightful digression, I followed through cotton-grass, through flowering hawthorn, and rocks with budding stone crop and tiny red sorrel. Bogbean showed the last of its white stars- a brief flowering season. A shepherd stood on a crag calling to his dog, then vanished into the silence. The cuckoo was now somewhere above the shore of Windermere. Birdsong was glorious in the deciduous trees within the intake wall. Tree pipit and willow warbler sang, a great spotted woodpecker called. At last, I saw that distinctive cuckoo profile in the top of a dead tree and felt I had earned the moment. A decline in cuckoo numbers gives cause for concern nationally, so I’m pleased to have seen two in a week and this was a nearer view than my cuckoo at Corden Hill, Shropshire.
There are limestone flushes in the peat of Loughrigg Fell: the perfect habitat for bird’s-eye primrose. Water-tracks thread through grass tussocks and sedges, with fragrant water mint and marsh valerian. It’s an insect-rich habitat with carnivorous sundew, and butterwort with violet flowers. Bird’s-eye primrose, Primula farinosa, - the Latin name highlights a distinguishing feature: the stems and underside of its leaves are white and mealy, farinaceous. Rising from a rosette of leaves on a tall stem are beautiful pink flowers. A passing glance at this habitat shows merely a rhythm of tussocks but look more closely and it conceals a wealth of tiny flowers.
The news had been dominated by winter weather of a severity not experienced in Britain for twenty years. The fells were treacherous. Two men died in the Langdales and there were further serious accidents. The Mountain Rescue would not forget this fortnight.
Troublesome ravishing snow. Woodpeckers were drumming and nuthatch active. There was no wind and the morning sun grew strong in a blue sky with bright cloud. Ice creaked underfoot and seed heads of bog asphodel showed against snow. Stone walls were etched black in a landscape of snow.
A frozen Lily Tarn was encircled with a ring of fire, knolls of bracken reflected in open water. Within the ice were whirling shapes and ellipses of rippling blue water and toward the outflow a jagged star reflected the blue of the sky. A history of winter weather was encrypted in ice with flurries of wind and blizzard, melt and freeze, ripples lapping at ice of different thicknesses, textures rough and smooth. Beneath the blue star lay a thin sheet of ice fractured and thawed into geometric design. An infusion of the elements poured into the tarn: sunlight, blue sky, clouds of white and grey, winter bracken and grasses. The tarn is an oculus that receives and transforms images.
I shared the Lily Tarn experience with my friend Sharon in Massachusetts and asked her what American nature writing she might recommend. Something wholesome - winter 2009 was not a season for dark imaginings. A treat was in store with Thoreau’s ‘Walden’. His winter pond resonated with Lily Tarn during the mid-February chill. I love the image of Thoreau in a boat looking down into the clear depths of the water, watching shoals of fish.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 Loughrigg Fell
A chilly 7.30am start from Rydal Church before the dew was burnt off the grass.
A sky of rippling, milky cloud infused the still waters of Lily Tarn whose islet birch tree showed a sharp reflection. Spring had come and dark patterns of new growth swirled and clustered, their mass amplified in reflection. I peered into the cloud-flooded water where leaves of pondweed floated, snagging the surface where stem met reflection. With my back to the south and the source of light, I saw the deep flush of pink on swelling flower-buds and the mirror-image of leaf clusters gave a fresh dimension of bogbean, menyanthes trifoliata, its three leaves just opening.
Leaving Lily Tarn, I heard a yellowhammer, found him in the crown of a hawthorn and watched as he sang- a male in breeding plumage, with yellow throat and head. I found several more during the day. A green woodpecker called from the oak trees and perhaps I heard a cuckoo. Cuckoo flower bloomed in a rill, where I rejoined my track. Up on the crags ravens gurgled to each other. I think of the raven as ‘deep throat’, for their range of bass notes and their variations on gurgling and gargling.
There were tents at the Loughrigg Tarn caravan site, people taking advantage of this extended spell of glorious weather. To the sound of wings, two dunnock flirted about a sycamore. Along the south-facing banks about the tarn were bluebells, violets and the first stitchwort. A bird cherry bore racemes of white flowers and oak trees had long tassels of catkins and tight clusters of new leaves.
Sunday 26 April 2009 Codale Tarn, Brownrigg Moss, Far Easedale
An overcast and chilly morning with strong winds. Beyond Easedale Tarn, we headed up a steep bracken slope with violets and, following the beck which issues from Codale Tarn, came up over the lip of its sheltered bowl and in the clear water of the shallows found water lobelia biding its time and looking unremarkable. The tarn lies in a peat-drenched landscape and its acid waters are just the habitat for lobelia dortmanna which I saw in flower here several years ago.
We followed the beck flowing into the tarn and found ourselves amongst peat hags and fibrous silts, with half-hidden, sodden scoops of incipient hags in the grass. Rough, undulating ground hid our target ridge where rusting fence-posts track the watershed. We crossed the Coast to Coast route at the col and made for Brownrigg Moss. Here, moss flows into tarn and tarn into moss. Amorphous, saturated, with tarns of no name and scant definition, this plateau is a slow-release watershed, reluctant to shed its waters into Wythburn, Greenburn and Far Easedale. At an altitude of some 500 metres, it is exposed to the elements. These upland tarns are shape-changing. Pools of open water, shoals of sediment, encroached by sedge and sphagnum. Here flowered common cotton-grass, its anthers heavy with pollen. Louring cloud flowed over water spiked and shadowed with erect stems of flower buds. A spotlight ranged over the fells and gusts of wind set waves rippling over the surface of the tarn and lashing flower-stems which gyrated in the water. From a protective sheath came forth a stem of three translucent leaves with a delicate edge of pink and a flower stem in a fist of deep pink buds. Beneath the water, stout pink runners and the bulk of the swelling plants were visible and bogbean stems seemed to surface through rings of mercury. I have long loved bogbean with its star-flowers and its late-summer fruiting of green pods. I had not known that its April rising from the waters is a thing of wonder.
Our Far Easedale descent was sunlit with a mass of brilliant white clouds in a blue sky. In the steeper, upper reaches of the dale was the deep-cleft of a gill with waterfall and overhanging tree. Then came juniper and rowan in Easedale Beck with water cascading over dark slabs of rock. Further down the dale lay intakes and a sheepfold, a pastoral scene with dark-fleeced Herdwicks grazing. Fell-sides with dead bracken and trees with fresh foliage signified an April landscape. On the Coast to Coast descent of Far Easedale we had seen a few folk and all the last walkers of the day came companionably down off the fells on the trudge into Grasmere.
Saturday 2 May 2009 Loughrigg Fell
Somewhere in the trees close to Grasmere, a cuckoo called. I made for Lily Tarn in pursuit of bogbean and pondweed (if the names are not inspiring the plants certainly are). Amongst the deep pink buds of the bogbean flower stems was a scatter of white stars. And the voluptuous form of menyanthes trifoliata: fleshy pink runners visible beneath the water, leaf stems, flower stems, everything pink until sunlight works on it. I knelt on the sponge of sphagnum and sunlight scintillated on the water so I waited upon the ascendancy of clouds, knees sodden. Imagine subtleties on the spectrum of red, and a study in surface tension. Submerged stems of pondweed rose up and a leaf on globules of water rode on water-wheels. Lily Tarn was silent, but for a yellow hammer who sat on a wall singing. I hear them so frequently up here that I know them from the first note.
In bracken debris were wood sorrel and bluebells - green veined whites feed on their nectar. Toward Loughrigg trig point, an innominate upland tarn has islets of bog asphodel with last summer’s seed heads, encircled with bogbean amidst whose flowers sat a mallard drake, his glossy green head tucked into his plumage. He is always here, so for me Drake Tarn.
After yesterday’s rain Sour Milk Gill showed well and a kestrel hunted over the summit of Loughrigg Fell. Not quite the osprey which Andrew Motion celebrated in his poem ‘As the osprey to the fish’. This week his decade as poet laureate came to a conclusion. Back by Rydal Mount (sometime home of a previous laureate Wordsworth) wedding guests were leaving the church and, admiring the women’s dresses, I designed a fabric with a Lily Tarn motif. As silence is integral to music, so space sets off pattern: let this silk of mine be awash with cloud reflected in Lily Tarn, with floating leaves and stems dipped in shades of the softest reds. And a confetti of stars from menyanthes trifoliata perhaps. What could be more beautiful than these natural forms? Too early in the season for the lilies of Lily Tarn.
Friday 29 May 2009 Loughrigg is the place of the yellowhammer. Faintly, so faintly, came the call of a cuckoo. In a delightful digression, I followed through cotton-grass, through flowering hawthorn, and rocks with budding stone crop and tiny red sorrel. Bogbean showed the last of its white stars- a brief flowering season. A shepherd stood on a crag calling to his dog, then vanished into the silence. The cuckoo was now somewhere above the shore of Windermere. Birdsong was glorious in the deciduous trees within the intake wall. Tree pipit and willow warbler sang, a great spotted woodpecker called. At last, I saw that distinctive cuckoo profile in the top of a dead tree and felt I had earned the moment. A decline in cuckoo numbers gives cause for concern nationally, so I’m pleased to have seen two in a week and this was a nearer view than my cuckoo at Corden Hill, Shropshire.
There are limestone flushes in the peat of Loughrigg Fell: the perfect habitat for bird’s-eye primrose. Water-tracks thread through grass tussocks and sedges, with fragrant water mint and marsh valerian. It’s an insect-rich habitat with carnivorous sundew, and butterwort with violet flowers. Bird’s-eye primrose, Primula farinosa, - the Latin name highlights a distinguishing feature: the stems and underside of its leaves are white and mealy, farinaceous. Rising from a rosette of leaves on a tall stem are beautiful pink flowers. A passing glance at this habitat shows merely a rhythm of tussocks but look more closely and it conceals a wealth of tiny flowers.
Sunday 5 July 2009 Codale Tarn and Easedale Tarn
After the heat wave came downpours and I set off for Codale Tarn in rain, trusting that it would clear early, and so it did. There were striking patterns of long, lax strands, green spikes with creamy-white flowers of an aquatic plant too far out to identify. Sunlight shimmered the water through a sheen of green, blue, and cloud-grey. Close to the shore, water lobelia was in flower but they looked washed-out.
Below Slapestone Edge, through squelchy ground rosy with sundew in sphaghum, a track follows the northern shore of Easedale Tarn. Summer bracken was high and where I might reach the shore a man and his son were fishing and I was reluctant to disturb them. Then, through my binoculars, I saw water lobelia and picked my way down to the water’s edge to find flowers at their loveliest. Here was that beautiful corolla of pale lilac and clasping one flower was a common blue damselfly. Stepping onto rocks, I edged a little closer , gently lowered a foot into the water, and the damselfly was gone. I followed the course of Sour Milk Gill, headed into Far Easedale, and met the fishermen who had caught a perch and told me of trout and minnows in the tarn.
After the heat wave came downpours and I set off for Codale Tarn in rain, trusting that it would clear early, and so it did. There were striking patterns of long, lax strands, green spikes with creamy-white flowers of an aquatic plant too far out to identify. Sunlight shimmered the water through a sheen of green, blue, and cloud-grey. Close to the shore, water lobelia was in flower but they looked washed-out.
Below Slapestone Edge, through squelchy ground rosy with sundew in sphaghum, a track follows the northern shore of Easedale Tarn. Summer bracken was high and where I might reach the shore a man and his son were fishing and I was reluctant to disturb them. Then, through my binoculars, I saw water lobelia and picked my way down to the water’s edge to find flowers at their loveliest. Here was that beautiful corolla of pale lilac and clasping one flower was a common blue damselfly. Stepping onto rocks, I edged a little closer , gently lowered a foot into the water, and the damselfly was gone. I followed the course of Sour Milk Gill, headed into Far Easedale, and met the fishermen who had caught a perch and told me of trout and minnows in the tarn.
Two days ago, I spent a long, contemplative while on my knees in silence beside a deep pool in a raised bog where the white-faced darter breeds in a secret location. Raindrops fell upon the water and bubbles clung to the sphagnum where this rare dragonfly spends two years as a nymph. We peered amongst blades of rush, cross-leaved heath, white-budding sundew, tiny fungi and strands of heather and teased out exuviae - larval skins shed when the nymph leaves the pool to emerge as a dragonfly: the white-faced darter, Leucorrhinia dubia. Gently, so as not to disturb the life of the pool, we collected and counted brittle exuviae. Gently. A twitch of the legs and here was a dragonfly in the throes of metamorphosis. It shook out its wings as raindrops sang in the pool. What a fate, two years as an aquatic nymph and the moment it becomes a dragonfly and spreads its new wings out to dry it meets clutching fingers and a downpour! Lucky they don’t all emerge on the same day! A few short weeks to mate and lay eggs, then farewell dragonfly. *
Far too much rain, too little light to photograph the white-faced darter, but that image of metamorphosis will live in my mind’s eye. And I might look upon water lobelia and damselfly in all their loveliness. Digital images show transparent wings, the electric blue wand of the abdomen, and cloud-water-silts on the bed of the tarn. I had set out to chart the tarns where water lobelia grew and to find the flower at its best. It is not uncommon, but easily overlooked, and in a wet summer perfection may be elusive.
* This expedition was courtesy of Cumbria Wildlife
Far too much rain, too little light to photograph the white-faced darter, but that image of metamorphosis will live in my mind’s eye. And I might look upon water lobelia and damselfly in all their loveliness. Digital images show transparent wings, the electric blue wand of the abdomen, and cloud-water-silts on the bed of the tarn. I had set out to chart the tarns where water lobelia grew and to find the flower at its best. It is not uncommon, but easily overlooked, and in a wet summer perfection may be elusive.
* This expedition was courtesy of Cumbria Wildlife
Monday 28 December 2009 Easedale Tarn and Far Easedale
Snow arrived in mid-December and with The Big Freeze there was a rush to buy sledges and crampons, with the chance of skiing on the fells. Fun to be had, if only one could get there! The high passes were impassable, with minor roads untreated. Severely cold nights with sub-zero temperatures during short winter days. Exceptionally harsh weather for an England grown accustomed to mild winters. Throughout the November floods and during The Big Freeze, walkers thinking of heading for the fells were advised that the Mountain Rescue Service was already fully committed in supporting the emergency services in urban areas, their expertise and their Land Rovers being essential to facilitate police, ambulance service, doctors and health visitors.
So where should we go? Before we could go anywhere we had to dig out the car, and on this morning we succeeded. Grasmere, I suggested. We parked on ice, roadside on the main street, as everyone did.
The track to Sour Milk Gill was compacted snow and ice. Like a sepia photograph with trees and a trace of warm colour on snow-covered bracken slopes. What matchless winter light! The earth was all reflective surfaces: snow, ice, and becks flowing black against whiteness. With the sun low in the sky, Blea Rigg cast shadow over the southern shore of Easedale Tarn where children were sledging as we crossed the Sour Milk Gill outlet and made for the sunlit northern shore whose glacial moraines show best under snow. Easedale is a deep corrie lake and a dazzling beam of light reached across the frozen tarn, its ice the lustre of beaten pewter, of shifting colour, gloss and gleam. Even with strong sunlight, food and hot chocolate, the sub-zero temperatures told. Below us, was an inlet with ice-ripples and a dusting of snow over the surface. Blue fists were punched into the ice by thrown stones, and a shredded ribbon of blue water lapped frothy, oxygenated ice along a stretch of the shore. The lure of the frozen tarn had David enthralled, he must walk on it. Probing the ice with his walking poles, he took cautious steps, grew confident and ventured forth toward the sun, trailing his shadow which stretched and stretched behind him. He turned and caught sight of his long, long shadow-legs, and looked puzzled. Lifting a boot as if he might shake his shadow off, he tried to tug it free of the shore but it clung on like a slender lifeline and, though he declared the ice solid, he seemed reluctant to walk further out- thank heavens. The chance to walk on ice comes rarely, so when he suggested I try- I did. Not that my shadow went to the lengths of his!
Snow arrived in mid-December and with The Big Freeze there was a rush to buy sledges and crampons, with the chance of skiing on the fells. Fun to be had, if only one could get there! The high passes were impassable, with minor roads untreated. Severely cold nights with sub-zero temperatures during short winter days. Exceptionally harsh weather for an England grown accustomed to mild winters. Throughout the November floods and during The Big Freeze, walkers thinking of heading for the fells were advised that the Mountain Rescue Service was already fully committed in supporting the emergency services in urban areas, their expertise and their Land Rovers being essential to facilitate police, ambulance service, doctors and health visitors.
So where should we go? Before we could go anywhere we had to dig out the car, and on this morning we succeeded. Grasmere, I suggested. We parked on ice, roadside on the main street, as everyone did.
The track to Sour Milk Gill was compacted snow and ice. Like a sepia photograph with trees and a trace of warm colour on snow-covered bracken slopes. What matchless winter light! The earth was all reflective surfaces: snow, ice, and becks flowing black against whiteness. With the sun low in the sky, Blea Rigg cast shadow over the southern shore of Easedale Tarn where children were sledging as we crossed the Sour Milk Gill outlet and made for the sunlit northern shore whose glacial moraines show best under snow. Easedale is a deep corrie lake and a dazzling beam of light reached across the frozen tarn, its ice the lustre of beaten pewter, of shifting colour, gloss and gleam. Even with strong sunlight, food and hot chocolate, the sub-zero temperatures told. Below us, was an inlet with ice-ripples and a dusting of snow over the surface. Blue fists were punched into the ice by thrown stones, and a shredded ribbon of blue water lapped frothy, oxygenated ice along a stretch of the shore. The lure of the frozen tarn had David enthralled, he must walk on it. Probing the ice with his walking poles, he took cautious steps, grew confident and ventured forth toward the sun, trailing his shadow which stretched and stretched behind him. He turned and caught sight of his long, long shadow-legs, and looked puzzled. Lifting a boot as if he might shake his shadow off, he tried to tug it free of the shore but it clung on like a slender lifeline and, though he declared the ice solid, he seemed reluctant to walk further out- thank heavens. The chance to walk on ice comes rarely, so when he suggested I try- I did. Not that my shadow went to the lengths of his!
On the edge of the tarn was a stone ruin, perhaps a sheep fold, its stones capped with snow. A party of walkers headed up beside a beck that came steeply off Tarn Crag, we hoped on a winter mountaineering course - that or a poor route choice. As the sun began to dip behind the fells that blazing track across the ice was extinguished and, with dwindling daylight and temperatures set to plummet once again, it was time to head for home
We crossed into Far Easedale where the sun lit the snow on Bracken Hause and the pale moon hung in a blue sky and dipped from sight as we descended into the valley. Patterns of intake walls below Gibson Knott and Helm Crag showed distinct in snow. Fieldfare flew into the trees and a group of white-faced Herdwicks gathered about their feeder full of hay. There is something comforting about coming off the fells into a pastoral landscape, especially in winter. Something atavistic. With a cluster of intakes comes the likelihood of a nearby farmstead with food, shelter, the hearth, the warmth of beasts, a refuge as night approaches. Who needs more?
Coming down off the fells, down to the head of Easedale, reaching the shelter of the valley, the first habitation is Brimmer Head Farm. Close by, at the foot of the fell where Blindtarn Gill flows to its confluence with Easedale Beck, lies Blindtarn cottage, once the home of George and Sarah Green and their eight children. On Saturday 18th March 1808 the couple walked to Langdale for a sale. The family had lived in Easedale for several generations so they had probably crossed over between Blea Rigg and Silver How many a time on foot. They set out from Langdale late in the afternoon and headed home to Blindtarn cottage where their eleven year old girl was looking after the five younger children who waited up late but, when their parents did not return, assumed they had decided to stay the night in Langdale. On Saturday night, people at an outlying house heard screams but drinking after a sale was not unusual and the cries were ignored. Through Sunday, the children waited. The youngest child was an infant ‘at the breast.’ On Monday, the eldest girl went to ask a neighbour if she might borrow a cloak to search for her parents on the fell. Realising the gravity of the situation, as the children did not, the men from Grasmere and Langdale went out on the fells to search, hindered by the snow. They were local men, farm labourers and shepherds who knew the ground intimately. It was Tuesday when two bodies were found at a crag foot. George and Sarah Green appeared to have fallen. Perhaps they were surprised by mist, or snow and ice made the ground treacherous and darkness overtook them. Their journey home was not long, but snow can make a landscape look unfamiliar and it takes energy and stamina. Such terrain is inhospitable and the weather must have deteriorated. How many hours must they have spent lost in snow and darkness and longing to see a light from their cottage down in the safety of the dale?
During the hours the men of Grasmere were out on mountain rescue, their women rallied- round and set about feeding and comforting the children, and planning how the community could help eight orphans from a poor family. Among them was Dorothy Wordsworth, at home in Grasmere during the unravelling of the tragedy. Her letters and journals give glimpses of people criss-crossing the fells on foot in the normal course of their working lives, and in winter it was not unusual for travellers to be lost on the passes and fells. For over a thousand years the sight of a homestead must have seemed a sanctuary.
Revisiting Far Easedale on 6 March 2011, I focused on sheepfolds along Far Easedale Gill below Gibson Knott and Helm Crag. Those Brimmer Head Farm out-takes I had photographed under snow in December 2009. A traditional sheepfold design, where sheep were gathered off the fell, then released into a washing pool in the beck.
We crossed into Far Easedale where the sun lit the snow on Bracken Hause and the pale moon hung in a blue sky and dipped from sight as we descended into the valley. Patterns of intake walls below Gibson Knott and Helm Crag showed distinct in snow. Fieldfare flew into the trees and a group of white-faced Herdwicks gathered about their feeder full of hay. There is something comforting about coming off the fells into a pastoral landscape, especially in winter. Something atavistic. With a cluster of intakes comes the likelihood of a nearby farmstead with food, shelter, the hearth, the warmth of beasts, a refuge as night approaches. Who needs more?
Coming down off the fells, down to the head of Easedale, reaching the shelter of the valley, the first habitation is Brimmer Head Farm. Close by, at the foot of the fell where Blindtarn Gill flows to its confluence with Easedale Beck, lies Blindtarn cottage, once the home of George and Sarah Green and their eight children. On Saturday 18th March 1808 the couple walked to Langdale for a sale. The family had lived in Easedale for several generations so they had probably crossed over between Blea Rigg and Silver How many a time on foot. They set out from Langdale late in the afternoon and headed home to Blindtarn cottage where their eleven year old girl was looking after the five younger children who waited up late but, when their parents did not return, assumed they had decided to stay the night in Langdale. On Saturday night, people at an outlying house heard screams but drinking after a sale was not unusual and the cries were ignored. Through Sunday, the children waited. The youngest child was an infant ‘at the breast.’ On Monday, the eldest girl went to ask a neighbour if she might borrow a cloak to search for her parents on the fell. Realising the gravity of the situation, as the children did not, the men from Grasmere and Langdale went out on the fells to search, hindered by the snow. They were local men, farm labourers and shepherds who knew the ground intimately. It was Tuesday when two bodies were found at a crag foot. George and Sarah Green appeared to have fallen. Perhaps they were surprised by mist, or snow and ice made the ground treacherous and darkness overtook them. Their journey home was not long, but snow can make a landscape look unfamiliar and it takes energy and stamina. Such terrain is inhospitable and the weather must have deteriorated. How many hours must they have spent lost in snow and darkness and longing to see a light from their cottage down in the safety of the dale?
During the hours the men of Grasmere were out on mountain rescue, their women rallied- round and set about feeding and comforting the children, and planning how the community could help eight orphans from a poor family. Among them was Dorothy Wordsworth, at home in Grasmere during the unravelling of the tragedy. Her letters and journals give glimpses of people criss-crossing the fells on foot in the normal course of their working lives, and in winter it was not unusual for travellers to be lost on the passes and fells. For over a thousand years the sight of a homestead must have seemed a sanctuary.
Revisiting Far Easedale on 6 March 2011, I focused on sheepfolds along Far Easedale Gill below Gibson Knott and Helm Crag. Those Brimmer Head Farm out-takes I had photographed under snow in December 2009. A traditional sheepfold design, where sheep were gathered off the fell, then released into a washing pool in the beck.
Sunday 15 August 2010 Lingmoor: ling, lizard and lepidoptera
Early one morning I came upon a herd of Aberdeen Angus cows and calves as I drove into Great Langdale. Or they came upon me. The farmer gestured me to the side of the walled and narrow road. I tried for an escape route up a steepish side-track but my tyres spun on grit and as the lead cows reached me I switched off the engine with the car not entirely off the road. Several cows and calves had broken away from the rear of the herd, climbed up onto the bank above me and all that weight came bearing down upon my car which almost blocked an exit I had not foreseen and the farmer never intended, and the herd engulfed me in blackness as the break-aways bulldozed into a gap between me and the wall, thudding , thumping and rocking my car which shuddered, as I did. How would it withstand this onslaught? The farmers were out of sight in robust, off-road vehicles and I felt I had been abandoned to the herd. Then it was over, and with a hasty wave the farmer was gone and I made my way to the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel car park to find my near-side daubed with cow shit and black hairs stuck on the off-side side from my Aberdeen Angus tight squeeze.
A restorative interlude below Raven Crag, by Middle Fell Farm, where I was attracted by the din of swallows at home about the wires of the farmhouse chimneystack. The domestic life of swallows busily flying to and fro, feeding their begging juveniles, preening and sleeking their feathers. Long tail streamers distinguished the adult birds, and a wondrous warm light suffused their white breasts and cast their shadows cast on the lime-washed wall. Swallows perched on a wriggle of wires about the chimneystack in intimate relation to farmstead and barn. What a morning!
Early one morning I came upon a herd of Aberdeen Angus cows and calves as I drove into Great Langdale. Or they came upon me. The farmer gestured me to the side of the walled and narrow road. I tried for an escape route up a steepish side-track but my tyres spun on grit and as the lead cows reached me I switched off the engine with the car not entirely off the road. Several cows and calves had broken away from the rear of the herd, climbed up onto the bank above me and all that weight came bearing down upon my car which almost blocked an exit I had not foreseen and the farmer never intended, and the herd engulfed me in blackness as the break-aways bulldozed into a gap between me and the wall, thudding , thumping and rocking my car which shuddered, as I did. How would it withstand this onslaught? The farmers were out of sight in robust, off-road vehicles and I felt I had been abandoned to the herd. Then it was over, and with a hasty wave the farmer was gone and I made my way to the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel car park to find my near-side daubed with cow shit and black hairs stuck on the off-side side from my Aberdeen Angus tight squeeze.
A restorative interlude below Raven Crag, by Middle Fell Farm, where I was attracted by the din of swallows at home about the wires of the farmhouse chimneystack. The domestic life of swallows busily flying to and fro, feeding their begging juveniles, preening and sleeking their feathers. Long tail streamers distinguished the adult birds, and a wondrous warm light suffused their white breasts and cast their shadows cast on the lime-washed wall. Swallows perched on a wriggle of wires about the chimneystack in intimate relation to farmstead and barn. What a morning!
It wasn’t chance that brought me to Lingmoor, but it was good fortune. How rarely season and weather coincide to highlight the heather habitat at its most vivacious! From 9th July, when a hose-pipe ban was imposed on the North West, there had been unsettled weather with rain and a prevailing gloom. Yesterday came high pressure and Sunday quickly grew hot on a still and humid day with hazy sunshine. Perfect for the ling of Lingmoor experience with heather in full bloom and fragrant, and the air astir with insects on the wing and seeking nectar: grasshoppers, hoverflies, bees, pale fluttering moths, tortoiseshell butterflies and clouds of midges. Beyond the whine of insects and vibrant wings was the distant sound of waterfalls from Dungeon Ghyll and Stickle Ghyll where toward mid-day a hundred tiny figures were strung out along the track and through my binoculars I could just make out Stickle Tarn and above it rose Pavey Ark and Jack’s Rake which I first climbed on a sultry summer’s day. Here on Lingmoor was solitude and, with a hazy backdrop of the Langdale Pikes, the rich colours were at my feet. The undulating ridge had rocky outcrops with flowers of heather and bell heather, burnt heather, red- stemmed crowberry, bilberry, stag’s-horn clubmoss and all textured with tall seeding grasses with fine red stems. Descending from the ridge down to Lingmoor Tarn were the tiniest tarns with cotton- grass tinged wine-red and sphagnum moss with insect-eating sundew having a feast day. On wet ground, in green dips and hollows, sprays of deer grass flowered with hints of gold, deep pink flowers of cross-leaved heath, and bog asphodel seed heads aflame. How peaceful here on Lingmoor on a lazy, hazy late-summer’s day in fragrant heather habitat alive with insects. Whirring like a yellow and black gold-ringed dragonfly, a helicopter skimmed low over Wrynose and headed for Pike o’Blisco and for an illusory moment a buzzard seemed to keep pace with it. A greenish-yellow creature with dark flecks of colour on its scales scurried across my track and came to rest on a rock. Zootaca vivipara, the viviparous lizard with a wealth of insect prey at hand. Viviparous: in a rapid response to the hot sun the female gives birth to live young. Now that would really be something to see! I try to imagine the lizard in hibernation during the harsh winter, underground, deep in a rubble of rock, sheltered by stout stems of heather woven with soft sphagnum moss.
A buzzard called and soared on a thermal, higher and higher until it was out of sight. Cloud swept over the heather in evanescent colours. Flowers bloomed and faded into late summer: bell heather of magenta and papery brown flowers, pink bells of cross-leaved heath matured to tawny russet. For insects to catch the perfect conditions of hot sun to pollinate flowers and breed this time-dispersed flowering is vital. Lingmoor was wondrous in the detail and in the overview. Colour and motif flowed over a topography of rocky knoll and damp hollows in a fluid design of infinite subtlety.
Fresh from a rereading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped’, and the adventures of David Balfour and Alan Breck who ‘take to the heather’ in flight from King George’s redcoat soldiers, I wandered by Lingmoor Tarn in a take-to-the-heather fantasy, finding a split rock where I might hide in the solitudes of Lingmoor knolls and hollows. Ranging over heather puts a spring in the step and I imagine it would be comfortable for a bed, with drinking water trickling down toward the tarn for fugitives who don’t mind sharing it with a few Herdwicks. A lone figure appeared on up on Side Pike, scanning the landscape, but I doubt he saw me and he was not a redcoat so I was safe.
Fresh from a rereading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped’, and the adventures of David Balfour and Alan Breck who ‘take to the heather’ in flight from King George’s redcoat soldiers, I wandered by Lingmoor Tarn in a take-to-the-heather fantasy, finding a split rock where I might hide in the solitudes of Lingmoor knolls and hollows. Ranging over heather puts a spring in the step and I imagine it would be comfortable for a bed, with drinking water trickling down toward the tarn for fugitives who don’t mind sharing it with a few Herdwicks. A lone figure appeared on up on Side Pike, scanning the landscape, but I doubt he saw me and he was not a redcoat so I was safe.
Click on images to enlarge and read captions.