An exhasting day in Bransdale planting broadleaf saplings in the recently clear-felled Bloworth Wood, which sits, predictably, on the catchment of Bloworth Slack. Digging the holes was not the real issue; it was scrambling over the 45-degree slopes, ditches, brashings, and tree stumps that made it a delight.
This simple photograph of the dale therefore was all that I managed for today, though, unbeknownst to me at the time, it also captured that towering column of smoke on the horizon from a so-called “controlled” burning of the heather moorland. This gave the sky a hazy effect, softening what would otherwise have been a sunny, crisp winter’s day. The enthusiastic burning of these moors, of course, ensures greater water runoff, increasing the likelihood of floods downstream, while also transforming the landscape into something vaguely industrial. On the way home, the sheer number of separate burns on other moors was striking, filling the dales with smoke and making for a thoroughly depressing scene.
The National Trust’s Bransdale property is an isolated refuge for wildlife, marooned amid these heavily managed heather moors. A reminder, as if one were needed, that five years ago, during the first lockdown, five dead buzzards were found stuffed into a hole under a large rock on that ridge opposite. Presumably, this was to hide them. Eight individuals were interviewed under caution for this abhorrent crime, yet somehow, not a single person was prosecuted.
As if to reinforce the point, a hen harrier obligingly flew across the track as we left the dale. Or so I was told. A ranger identified it; I merely glimpsed something zooming past—it could have been a Woodcock for all I know. Hen harriers are beloved by birdwatchers, and even this brief sighting lifted my spirits. Gamekeepers, on the other hand, despise them, referring to them as “rats with wings,” which, unsurprisingly, is not meant as a compliment.
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