Beating The Bounds

After glorious weather for most of the week, now that the weekend has come the skies are overcast and we have had a little rain. Sods Law in full effect. By this evening I was feeling a little stir crazy and when it stopped raining I decided to get out for a short stroll up to Pointer Wood and Clark’s Lot. I think what led my steps in this particular direction was an intention to return to a Rowan that I photographed a few weeks ago when it was just coming into flower. Now the flowers are beginning to fade.

We have two Rowans in our garden - perhaps because they were traditionally planted near houses to ward off evil spirits. Our’s seem to have worked so far. Why I couldn’t just photograph one of them is a mystery to me.

Entwined around the Rowan, honeysuckle is almost in flower:

The Rowan stands in an area in the wood which has been mostly cleared of trees. Beside it is the gnarled decapitated trunk of a silver birch. I think that it’s true to say that Silver Birch are relatively short-lived trees. I tend to think of them as slender trees with papery white bark. But this is a sturdy stump, cracked and fissured, almost black, with only a few scales of silver remaining by which to identify it.

A hollow near the top of the trunk, curtained with cobwebs, is lined with the moss, feathers and grass of an abandoned nest.

The trunk hosts ivy and bracket fungus:

I’m sure that this tree would have a great deal to tell us if we only knew how to listen. If I were as clever as Cynthia at Words From the Northwest Woods I would invent a character and a story to accompany these pictures and observations.

Returning to the meadow I was struck by the profusion and variety of the flowers, including many more Early Purple Orchids, and these Bird’s-foot-trefoil, which I shall have to return to capture in better light:

This Hawthorn is taller then most. In the low light the abundant blossom seemed to glow:

I didn’t realise that I’d caught two will-o’-the-wisps in my picture until I got home, and since they passed the Rowan tree in the garden unharmed in the camera I assume that they are benign.

A cynic might say that I had raindrops on my lens, but then - we aren’t cynical are we?

Red Campion flowering on the verge of the lane, opposite our house.

Loren of In A Dark Time recently posted some quotations from the Vietnamese poet and philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh which really struck a chord with me. His message is a simple one and the things he has to say are hardly ground-breaking, perhaps even truisms which could be summarised with homilies: smile and the world smiles with you, wake up and smell the flowers, etc - but despite, or perhaps because of, the simplicity of the message, I found myself wanting to read more and posted a comment which ended: “I intend to seek this book out.”

I checked it out on Amazon and quite naturally looked at some of his other books whilst I was there. The odd thing was that some of them seemed familiar: ironically Angela has read many of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books, they have sat on our bookshelves and I have had ample opportunity to read them.

My books and Angela’s books share shelves, but on the whole they don’t intermingle. The same can be said of our CDs: Nina Simone and Louis Jordan have been allowed slip in amongst some of my favourites, but the likes of George Michael are not allowed to contamination my superior collection. Well now I shall pay for my snobbery: the Thich Nhat Hanh books - which I will have incuriously filed away in a section of books notionally labelled ‘Self-Help’ (i.e. beneath my consideration) - have been passed on. (Angela is averse to ‘clutter’).

My blog purports to be about the local and intimate and yet apparently I’m more likely to accept a reading recommendation from half-way around the world than from my own wife.

So much work to do at the moment that I’m dizzy from the effort of not thinking about it (thinking about it induces a kind of vertiginous panic that I’d rather avoid.) So did I stay in to catch up? Was I distracted by the UEFA Cup Final on the box? Of course not - I needed some fresh air therapy.

I parked by Barrow Scout Field and stepped out of the car into the fabulous song of a Peewit. He was displaying over the mere - twisting and turning, stalling and spiraling, swooping low over the water. True aerial acrobatics. I thought that by now the Lapwings would all be paired up and that this kind of exuberant showing off would no longer be necessary, but apparently not. I tried to photograph him but consistently ended up with empty sky. This Canada Goose was a more obliging subject.

In the fields on the other side of the road there seemed to be a Greylag Geese crèche with several large families of Goslings, but they were too far away for me to be sure.

At Crag Foot there are a few houses and an old stone chimney which is all that remains of an old sawmill. I took a path from here that takes a rising line above Leighton Moss across the lower slopes of Warton Crag. The path alternates between open fields and woodland. There were Cowslips and spikes of Bugle. The Hawthorns all seem to be in flower now:

Apparently ”legend links the hawthorn with licentious pagan and medieval rites to greet the advent of summer’. But paradoxically Hawthorn is also associated with Joseph of Arimathea, ‘owner of the tomb in which Jesus was placed after the Crucifixion, and who is alleged to have subsequently visited Glastonbury.

You can see what Proust (and Solitary Walker) had to say about Hawthorn here.

The Moon loomed large in the sky…

…and seemed to presage something magical, something wild and mysterious.

On the margin of the woods I found the Moon’s gift: an area full of Early Purple Orchids:

I’ve never found them in such profusion before. My field guide tells me that ‘for centuries, the plant has been associated with love and reproduction, and until fairly recently was used as a love potion’. Perhaps not surprising when you consider the etymology of the the word Orchid:

From Latin orchis, from Greek όρχις ‘testicle’.

This is because of the resemblance of the tuber to that part of the male anatomy.

‘According to the early Greek physician Dioscorides, this plant was used by married couples in Thessaly to determine the sex of their future children.’

Between the lovelorn lapwing, the Silly Lovers in the lane, the licentious Hawthorn and the love potion Long Purples it feels like nature has a message for me.

But these orchids are also associated with the Crucifixion: they are said to have grown beneath the Cross and the spots on the leaves are drops of Jesus’ blood. So: a very mixed message then - the sacred and the profane? Perhaps, blundering around with my camera, shaking spent batteries in an attempt to prolong their life, I missed the chance to encounter un amant mystique.

(Incidentally if you don’t know Gavin Bryars ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ here is the new shorter version featuring Tom Waits - the original is 20 odd minutes and well worth seeking out)

Further into the wood this glacial erratic beached whale was glowing with the last of the sunset’s light.

This area is scattered with large boulders, often of fantastic shapes. Just after this I came across two lying next to each other, each with a perfectly flat face. Perhaps in the past they were one boulder, but if so it must have been some great chisel that split them asunder.

My route continued to climb steadily, eventually arriving on the summit of Warton Crag.

Despite the fact that on this still night I could hear the traffic on the motorway behind me, and that I know that this hilltop was a hill-fort prior to the arrival of the Romans a couple of millennia ago, I think that this is possibly the wildest spot in the area. It’s something to do with the rocky outcrop on the top and the views of woods and sea and distant mountains. I wish that I could bottle that feeling, but then…perhaps not. If it wasn’t earned it wouldn’t be quite the same.

The woods around the top fulfilled my expectation by being carpeted by bluebells. The green of May woods with an undercoat of cool blue was just the therapy that I needed. Amongst the greens and the blues I suddenly felt that I could almost be underwater - ‘in a marine light’.

Returning to my car I walked along a track called ‘Occupation Road’. The name has always intrigued me and I shall have to look in to the story behind it. Woodcock flew unseen beyond the trees. Bats flickered overhead and past my face. I love the way they fly - our very own nocturnal hummingbirds. I watched one regularly turning abruptly through ninety degrees like a fly consuming Pacman.

Back at Barrow Scout field the pools were shining with more reflected light than the sky seemed to be offering. A single white swan ghosted  across the back of the mere.

Sam and I took a short walk today down to Bottoms Wood. We’ve been tracking the progress of the Ramsons there since the first green spikes thrust through the leaf litter early in the year.

Now the wood is filled with great drifts of white flowers and a sweet garlic scent.

John Hee’s post about spring and the restorative powers of nature says it all.

Heading South along the lane past the house takes you immediately into deep shade. The verges aren’t so verdant as in the other direction, but there are plants none-the-less.

This is Woodruff (or Sweet Woodruff):

Several Arum Lilies are flowering on the margins of the track.

The entry on this plant in my wildflower guide is so interesting that it seems worth quoting it in full:

Lords and Ladies Arum maculatum

In the Middle Ages, this unusually shaped flower was connected with the act of making love. Its various local names - such as ’sweethearts’, ’silly lovers’ and ‘Adam and Eve’ - often had a sexual connotation. In the 16th century it was also known as cuckoo pintle, which was later abbreviated to cuckoo pint. ‘Cuckoo’ probably referred to the supposedly lustful male cuckoo, although some authorities think it came from ‘cuckold’.

The flowers are contained in a broad, sheathing hood, called the spathe. Inside there is a club-like structure, the spadix. It gives off a smell of decay which, together with its slight heat, attract flies. The insects crawl down inside the spathe and are trapped by the backward pointing hairs on the spadix. They then crawl around pollinating the flowers, at the same time picking up pollen from the flowers, until they die, or else escape when the spadix withers after pollination.

The roots of lords and ladies were gathered for their high starch content, and in Elizabethan time this was used for stiffening the high, pleated, linen ruffs that were then fashionable. The poisonous berries can be fatal if eaten by children.

Field Guide to The Wildflowers Of Britain

Can’t see what everybody is getting all hot under the collar about, can you?

So the weather decided to make a mockery of my description of yesterday as hot and sticky by piling on the heat and the humidity today. Of course these things are all relative, and had my Spanish Sister-in-Law been here I’m sure that she would have been well wrapped-up in a heavy overcoat bemoaning the cold English climate.

Still, when I took Sam out for a walk this morning it seemed sensible to head for the dappled shade of the woods. As we entered the  woods not only did the temperature change from roasting to a more comfortable slow cook, the wet earthy smell of the woods replaced the heady pollen-scented summer atmosphere.

For once I set off with a particular mission in mind and was resolved not to be distracted by pathside diversions. My resolve lasted for several minutes (yes - longer than usual) before I was seduced by this Solomon’s Seal:

This is a popular garden plant, but it is native to our woods and apparently quite common in the South.

The Wood Ants were beavering away on and around their nest. Since it’s been many centuries since Beavers lived in the UK perhaps we should replace them with Ants as the proverbial exemplar of industrious activity. What do think… anting away. Hmmm, it might grow on you…

I was reading, I think on the notice at the entrance to Grubbins Wood, that the Wood Ants feed high in the tree canopy. Taking my lead from the arboreal exploits of  Robert Macfarlane your intrepid reporter scaled a nearby tree to bring you these shots of Ants ‘milking’ aphids:

Well - they were at the top of the tree, that much is true, but I could hardly leave Sam and go exploring Eaves Wood from a new perspective like Calvino’s Count In The Trees. In fact the Ants were farming a sapling situated conveniently by the path.

Anyway - on with the story. Please pay attention at the back, and do stop scratching. So I had somewhere to get to and was determined not to be diverted from my task, except by Ants and Solomon’s Seal. But I haven’t seen any Bugle flowering so far this year and so when I spotted this by the path…

…I could hardly pass it by.

Bugle is another native plant often found in gardens. The flowers are very similar to those of Ground Ivy (see yesterday’s post) but Ground Ivy has rounder leaves with edges like a child’s drawing of a cloud (or indeed my drawing of a cloud) and Bugle leaves often have a reddish or purple blush.

The Speedwell in the background was feeling a bit left out so I felt obligated to photograph it too:

And across the path - my first flowering Early Purple Orchid of the year:

When we left Eaves Wood and joined the road a car went past and Sam woke up with a start. Unperturbed by the heat he had fallen asleep almost as soon as we left the house, sitting up, his hands still clasped to the bar across the front of the pushchair, his head hanging down across his chest. Now he rubbed his eyes, looked around and the nestled down for a five minute snooze. When that was over he sat up and began singing just where he left off when he first fell asleep.

We saw lots of butterflies both yesterday and today. Orange-Tips, Speckled Woods and a handful of Whites (yes I’m being vague - I’m as clueless with the various species of Whites as I am with the different types of Speedwell).

Anyway - our determination paid off. We had walked to the far side of Haweswater looking for Birds-Eye Primrose. This is the only place in the area where I’m aware of it growing and some years I forget to come looking for it before it’s too late.

In the woods nearby the Primrose’s cousin Cowslips were flowering:

On the way home, with Sam’s lunchtime imminent, we really did need to be single minded. I did stop briefly though to admire this field below Eaves Wood. The fields on the opposite side of the road are monotone monoculture - green grass and nothing else. This field has a wash of yellow and white from Dandelions, Daises and Buttercups. I noticed that it also has Thistles and Plantains. I think that these are all pretty robust plants, well-placed to compete with heavily fertilised grass, but none of the other fields look like this. Has this one been less heavily grazed?

This afternoon brought rumbles of distant thunder which occasionally crescendoed to loud cracks but didn’t turn to lightening and rain until early evening, and then didn’t last long.

I have been lax. I have taken my eye off the ball. Nature has snuck up on me and summer has crept in unreported. Today was a typical summer’s day in this part of the world. Overcast and hazy, warm sticky and muggy. The threat of showers, occasionally fulfilled. I took the boys out for a short walk which turned into an epic dawdle. Even before we left the track that runs past the house, the weeds on the verges had me stopping every couple of yards.

I blogged a few weeks back about the Green Alkanet that grows in many places around the village, without mentioning (or remembering) that one of the places that it grows is on the wee scrap of ground behind our garage:

I suppose that one advantage of having the recall of a Goldfish is the repeated opportunities to discover the world anew. (Although I do seem to remember reading that a school boy has conducted a series of experiments which prove that Goldfish actually have much better memories than we have been giving credit for - what will we use now as our epitome of forgetfulness?)

In the lane there are also Welsh Poppies:

(A clever blogger would insert a witty and erudite riff here connecting Poppies and Forgetfulness, but I am not that blogger, and besides what is he thinking of - these are not opium Poppies!)

Cow parsley:

And Hedge Garlic or Jack-by-the-Hedge:

These tiny flowers top tall plants, and in fact the leaves were some of the first to appear in the early spring. The leaves are supposed to be a good addition to a salad, but they are too bitter for me.

Dandelions are of course ubiquitous, but the flowers are cheery…

…and the seed-heads are both beautiful…

…and a fabulous free toy that kept one three year old very happy for quite some time this morning. He didn’t blow them, but swung them back and forth sending hundreds of embryonic Dandelions floating off on the breeze.

We will be popular with local gardeners.

The boys were in the double buggy. As I pushed them through the village, Sam soon fell asleep. A recent development is that Sam will now continue to sleep in the buggy when it stops moving. So at Pointer Wood, Ben and I were able to stop to admire the candles on the Horse Chestnuts:

I’ve always liked Horse Chestnut flowers but examined this closely, the flagrant nature of their soliciting is a little off-putting.

Under the trees the thousand starbursts and the garlic scent of Ransoms:

The fields alongside Bottoms Lane hold a wide variety of Livestock: Chickens and Ducks, Ponies and Donkeys, Pigs, Sheep and Goats - which kept Ben entertained. He was particularly pleased when these Cows came to say hello:

And he also appreciated the snails in the hedge bottom alongside the gate:

The hedgerows also held an embarrassment of riches for someone with a macro lens. There were Cuckoo-Pints (or Arum Lilies or Lords-and-Ladies):

Like the Hedge Garlic the leaves of Cuckoo-Pint appear very early in the spring. After these unusual flowers die back they will be replace by bright orange berries.

There were also Cuckoo-Flowers:

Stitchwort (I think?):

Most of these flowers are very small, but Crosswort makes them look like giants:

I think that’s why I like it so much. You could walk past it every day and never notice that it is there, but when you’ve noticed it once you find that you can’t really miss it again and although the flowers are miniature and very subtle, the way that they ring the stems is very attractive.

I didn’t even realise that I had (sort of) caught a spider at work here until I looked at the photo at home.

This is another very small flower, Ground Ivy, which has actually been flowering for some time:

This is a vetch (don’t know which one!):

I think that these are Ribwort Plantain:

…and that these are Wood Avens, but I’m far from confident:

Bluebells:

I love the way that the macro lens can reveal images of flowers that seemed familiar but are suddenly seen anew. I think that my favourite from today was this humble clover:

Which I’ve never looked this closely at before.

The hedges themselves are promising colour, with some of the Hawthorn beginning to flower:

And at the bottom end of the lane several stretches of hedge which aren’t Hawthorn, with lots of pink buds:

…some of which are open:

I’ve never noticed them here before trimmed into a hedge, but I think that they are Crab Apples.

Later, a Blackbird on the birdbath again:

(not very Black because she is female)

The title of this post Realms of Day is the end of the last line of Blake’s Auguries of Innocence which begins with the oft quoted:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

We were out for nearly two hours, and probably didn’t cover even two miles. Sam was mostly asleep, but Ben was patient with my groveling in the hedge bottom in a way that I can’t imagine any adult companion managing. If you’ve managed to persevere through all 27 images, well thank you for your patience too. I did warn you that it was an epic dawdle.

Blackbird bathing in the birdbath right outside the window again. Even through the double-glazing I could hear the splashing. I’m sure that on a hot day like today he was enjoying a wash. A female briefly joined him, but neither of them seemed keen to share their ablutions and after initially retreating he saw her off.

I was at home to see this because for the second time in as many weeks I have some kind of bug - temperature, nausea, headache, sore-throat. I’m feeling quite rundown and it seems that when I feel this way I’m going to catch everything going round.

Late one night at the weekend, when excited kids were finally sleeping, washing and tidying-up was done and we were enjoying a beer and a chinwag in Andy and Jane’s commodious tent, we reminisced about our exploits, solo and together, on and amongst high mountains. The consensus opinion seemed to be that those days are behind us, which seems both a little sad and perhaps premature to me.

Whilst we relived climbs and walks in the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Andes somebody said:

“It’s impossible to explain to somebody who hasn’t experienced it how at altitude walking up even the slightest incline can become the hardest thing that you have ever done.”

And a little light-bulb popped on in my head. That’s a perfect description of anaemia. Perhaps I should have made the connection before - the problem is essentially the same: not enough oxygen reaching the muscles. The thing is that coping with altitude is all about finding a pace that you can live with. It seems pretty clear that I shall have to learn to live with anaemia in the long term and that it might be a useful way to think about it in that way. Take your time. Find a pace. Do what you can.

Monday brought wall-to-wall sunshine. We parked at the top of the pass at Newlands Hause and took a short walk…

…to admire Moss Force:

..and to paddle in Moss Beck:

The water was very cold, the rocks were slippy and perhaps inevitably we set-off back to the Hause for a picnic after an involuntary immersion for one of the party.

After the picnic, Gill and Jane joined us having walked over the tops from the campsite. Some of the kids were raring for the off so I joined them for a steady climb up Knott Rigg. It’s a fairly steep climb and with Sam on my back I was glad of the grey-brown grubs that littered the hillside and that Ben insisted on stopping to pick-up and carefully examine. With the pace thus limited I had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the views back over the Hause to Moss Force:

Ben was in fine form and climbed all the way to the ‘top’:

Sam had fallen asleep, so while everybody else had a sit down to admire the view…

…or to try to scratch their name on a rock…

…I plodded on along the ridge. Knott Rigg is not really a top at all, just the beginning of a ridge which eventually leads to the summit of Ard Crags. I’m pretty sure that I’ve only been up here once before and that was probably twenty years ago, on a mammoth day which began at Honister Hause and took in Dale Head, Hindscarth, Robinson, Ard Crags and a round of the North-Western fells before a camp down in Braithwaite. I do miss long days on the tops, but sharing the outdoors with my kids is a pretty fair substitute.

After faffing about on the campsite for most of Sunday morning we set off for a short drive down the Newlands valley. Unfortunately, we timed it so that we hit the early stages of the Keswick half marathon. It’s not so many years ago that I ran this race myself, although I’m sure that it wasn’t staged on a bank holiday weekend then. I do remember that the amount of traffic on the narrow roads rather spoiled what should have been an excellent run.

Sam was asleep when we arrived at our parking spot so while the rest of the party embarked across the Newlands valley, I sat in the car with him and listened to the radio. When he woke up we crossed Newlands Beck:

And soon found the rest of the party having their lunch on the slopes of Cat Bells.

The weather was quite odd with sunshine, but also drops of rain in the air. From our picnic stop it was a short walk…

To Hawes End on Derwent Water - a top spot for throwing stones into the lake:

Having a run around:

Or a natter with your Dad:

At Hawes End we caught on of the scheduled launches that circuit the lake. The front of the boat was open and the very front seats were empty. Naturally the kids were very excited and made a beeline for those seats. Nobody thought to warn us why they were empty. Out on the Lake it was windy and choppy and as we hit the wake of another boat a huge wave crashed over the bows and into our laps. On the first leg of the journey we just about managed take it in our strides and laugh off the discomfort, but after picking-up more passengers at Nichol End the waves were bigger and more frequent. The boat was packed and there was no real way to get the kids out of the way of a proper drenching. Some of them were very wet and cold, and Ben in particular was upset, but kids are remarkably resilient and once we were off the boat they were soon racing around the shore and swinging on a barrier.

In Keswick we had a bit of a wander around a park and a quick stop for a snack.

Captions are invited for this photo, my own thoughts were either:

I thought that you had the meths!

Or, perhaps Jane is thinking:

I never was in favour of Care in the Community

Not all of my friends are scruffy, just the oldest and closest ones.

After several hours of trying it finally began to rain in earnest. We boarded another launch to complete our trip around the lake, but this time got seats inside. The rest of the trip was fun, but as we approached Hawes End the rain showed no sign of abating. Angela, Jane and Matt disappeared to fetch the cars and Andy and I were left to try to maintain the spirits of the flagging children. Ben had slept on my lap around the lake, and not surprisingly didn’t appreciate being woken up to be taken out into the rain. I ended up carrying him up the hill to the road. There was a bit of a mix up with the cars but on the whole the children did very well despite the cold and wet and my rendition of several verses of If you’re miserable and you know it. I did bribe them with chocolate biscuits. And a cuckoo serenaded us whilst we waited - the first that I can remember hearing for quite some time. Given recent gloomy reports about the dwindling numbers of migrating birds it was nice to have the opportunity to hear it, even in the pouring rain.

We arrived back at the campsite to see a short-lived but stunning rainbow over Skiddaw and from that point the sky began to clear in preparation for a glorious day on Monday…