Tag: bracken
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Trampling hooves and composting dreams — Dealing with Bracken
In the midst of this stifling bracken season, I’ve yet to encounter anyone who harbours any affection for this plant. Sure, it may bring a touch of colour come autumn, but only when it’s dead and devoid of vitality. In the summer, perhaps a stroke of luck might grant you a glimpse of a stonechat…
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Roseberry
A day spent with the National Trust cutting back the growing bracken on footpaths. This particular path is the old bridleway up Roseberry, possibly used to take Victorian tourists up the Topping — although I haven’t any evidence to support this. The bridleway is little used now, but has to be cleared because it’s a…
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Kirby Bank
Kirby Bank looking luxuriant under a coat of fresh bracken, the bane of the moors. On 14 June 1932, the Daily Mail carried a somewhat brief report: Climbed 41 Peaks in 24 Hours Mr. Robert Graham, of Keswick, Cumberland, has created a 24-hours walking and climbing record in Lakeland by scaling 41 peaks in an…
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Lonsdale
I had a vague plan to run around the head of Lonsdale to Percy Cross but surveying the dale from Lonsdale quarry I remembered that I used to often follow a route crossing the valley by keeping upside of the moor wall. Those were the days when I rarely stuck to paths. On the descent…
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Autumnity
We’re well and truly into autumn, a morning chill, a low sun and a palette of russett and golds. Bracken is a formidable plant. It’s been around since the dinosaurs, with fossil records going back over the last 55 million years. But its success represents a real threat to biodiversity, shading out other plants, producing…
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Bracken bashing on Roseberry Common
A wet return to volunteering for the National Trust after the Coronavirus lockdown. A nice simple task to ease the rusty joints: bracken bashing, which also has the benefit of enforcing social distancing. The common was sprayed last year with a bracken specific herbicide so today was just keeping on top on any persistent fronds.…
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Location, location, location
A wet day with sleet and low cloud on Roseberry Common removing Rowan trees and creating wildlife habitats with the brashings. This might sound harsh, cutting down trees especially in these days of a growing awareness of their essentiality in the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Roseberry Common is an area of semi-open…
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Autumn Equinox
At 08:50 this morning the ecliptic path of the Sun crossed the celestial equator and day and night were of equal length. For those of us in the northern hemisphere it’s the Autumn Equinox. So my project for today was to take an autumnal photo. I had in mind a palette of “feuille-morte” of the…
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Bracken spraying on Roseberry
Roseberry looks different. Striped by quad bike tracks spraying the bracken that infests the Common. Bracken is found worldwide and in Britain, it is particularly invasive especially on the acidic soils of our moorlands. It’s always been with us, a pioneer plant quickly establishing itself as prehistoric man cleared the ancient woodland. But bracken remained…
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Great Fryup Head
A vague plan hatched. Mooch up to the head of the dale through Canon Atkinson’s undercliff. End up at Yew Grain, the waterfall on the left. But The Hills proved far too interesting so this is as far as we got. The waterfall on the right is Spa Dike. Arising out of George Gap Spa,…