Tag: bog
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A splash of green
Heather moorland, for most of the year, especially in winter, offers a drab palette of dull browns. Only in late summer, when the heather comes into full bloom, do the moors take on their blanket of purple. Yet occasionally you come across a splash of contrast. Verdant bog mosses, most likely one of the UK’s…
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Commondale from Three Howes Rigg
The North Yorkshire Moors has been my playground since 1973, and yet every so often I get to someplace where I’ve never trod before. I’ve seen this view before, a mere glimpse whilst travelling at 60 mph down along Three Howes Rigg road on the way to Castleton. Cycling allows a longer view, but until…
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Quagmires, Sphagnum moss and WW1 wound dressings
If you find yourself stuck fast in an area of seemingly stable ground that suddenly gives way underfoot and leaves you becoming engulfed and unable to go forwards or backwards, you’ve probably found yourself in a quagmire. Obviously, there may be current political parallels but this is about quagmires in which the predominant vegetation is Sphagnum…
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Muirshiel Country Park
The term ‘country park’ brings up an image of a Capability Brown inspired landscape, broad swathes of close-cropped grass pasture grazed by herds of deer with a scattering of veteran trees, sweeping down to a lake. Muirshiel Country Park, west of Glasgow is 110 square miles of blanket bog with knee-high tussocks and soul-destroying heather.…
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Rivelindale
A Public Footpath is mapped between Percy Cross and Highcliffe Farm crossing the vast bog of Sleddale Slack or Rivelindale as referred to in old documents. It is a little used path but there has been some recent cutting of the heather at the Percy Cross end. Across the bog, however, no such luxury, a…