The day after my Arnside Knott walk was another cracker. I was out three times, twice around home and also for a short stroll in Kirkby Lonsdale whilst B was at rugby training.
Creeping Thistle.
I was revelling in the abundance and variety of the wildflowers on my home patch after the relative dearth beneath the trees in the Tarn Gorge. I took a huge number of photos, of which just a small selection have been chosen for this post.
Yarrow and Oxeye Daisy.Hoverfly. Nipplewort.
Nipplewort is a tall straggly weed, without, at first glance, a great deal to offer, but the small flowers are well worth a closer look.
Grange from the Cove.River Lune from Ruskin’s View in Kirkby Lonsdale.Market Cross, Kirkby Lonsdale.St. Mary’s Church, Kirkby Lonsdale.Hoverfly.Common Darter.Guelder Rose berries.Common Darter (on, I think, Marsh Thistle).Yet another Common Darter.More Guelder Rose berries.A shower out over the Bay, taken on a midweek, post-work walk.
These first two photos represent our first fortnight of September – stuck at home quarantining and, like these snails, inseparable from our home. I walked around our garden a lot, listening to podcasts as I stomped. The snails (and there were quite a few more than those in the photograph) had all been resident inside the lid of one of our garden waste wheely bins. Since the bins were empty, I’d decided to remove the snails and put them into the flowerbeds where they might find something to eat (don’t tell the gardener!) I’m not sure what the diddy one is, but the rest are (I think): Copse Snail, White-lipped Snail, Garden Snail, another White-lipped and finally a Brown-lipped Snail. Not bad variety for a garden safari.
The hills of home from Farleton Fell.
When we were eventually permitted to venture a bit further, I had a post-work wander up Farleton Fell, while A was at a dance class. It was gloomy, cold and a bit damp, but I was happy since I found some Autumn Gentians…
I couldn’t decide whether the flowers were closed because of the lack of sun, or because they hadn’t yet opened, or because I was too late and had missed them at their best. But I’ve not seen them before, so was happy to know where to look on another visit.
The Dale from by the Pepper Pot.
The following weekend brought some glorious weather and, for me, a wander around the coast to New Barns and an ascent of Arnside Knott.
RosehipsThe view from Arnside Point.Bryony.A Hawkweed?
I spent quite some time taking photos of spectacular webs and large diadem spiders on these weeds and am disappointed that none of the photos have come out at all sharp.
River Kent.The view from the Knott.
Springing forward to the present, it’s the start of ‘British Summer Time’ and it’s throwing it down, cold and windy. Yesterday was brighter, and we had both Roe Deer and a Sparrowhawk in the garden. The gardener (TBH) is miffed though since the deer have eaten all of her new, purple tulips.
I think we’re all braced, locally, for a very busy Easter period, with lots of extra parking organised in anticipation of the invading hordes. I note that the Times has listed Arnside and Silverdale as one of ‘Other best places to live in the Northwest’ behind regional winner Altrincham (I know where I would choose!) and that a Guardian article listing ‘Seven extraordinary villages to visit in England and Wales’ is headed by Arnside. Neither of which will help. Batten down the hatches!
This is, I think, a Scotch Argus butterfly. If I’m right, then this is the third photo of a Scotch Argus which has appeared here on the blog. The first was from a family holiday in the Vosges ten years ago, the second taken much closer to home on Arnside Knott, which has one of only two English colonies. I assume that we call them Scotch Argus because of their rarity in England and relative abundance in Scotland, but apparently they are common across Europe. This had me wondering what they’re called in French, surely not Scotch Argus? A bit of lazy internet research failed to turn up an answer, but I did discover that France has around 250 species of butterfly, as compared to our own miserly total of 57 (or 59 if you included Painted Ladies and Clouded Yellow which both arrive regularly as migrants). No wonder I feel so much at home in France! I also discovered that France has over 30 species of Ringlet, the family to which Scotch Argus belong, so my identification may be incorrect anyway. I’m looking again at my photo from the Vosges and wondering whether it might actually be an Arran Brown?
Andy had waded the Tarn and discovered a rough, steep path which lead up to the sentier which runs along the left side of the gorge, away from any roads. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss so, on separate days, we had a couple of out and back walks along that path.
The slopes were heavily wooded, but every now and then gaps in the trees would reveal tantalising views of the towering rock features above or on the far side of the gorge.
Huge toadstool.
It was terrific walking which had me daydreaming again about long distance walking in France in general, and about a multi-day wander through the gorge in particular. I’ve subsequently found this blog, which has further sold me on that idea.
Unlike in the Cirque des Baumes, here in the deep shade of the trees there were still quite a few plants in flower, including some delightful tiny yellow blooms which had mauve bracts or leaves on the end of its stems beyond the flowers. I took lots of photos, but sadly none of them have come out well, perhaps due to the depth of the shade where they were growing.
On the first of our two walks I saw lots of Wall Browns in the woods.
…the wall brown is la Mégère – Megera, one of the Furies, which is arresting, but seems a bit of an over-the-top label for such an inoffensive basker in the sunshine.
Michael McCarthy
The path gradually climbed, whilst the river dropped, so that we were soon high above the valley bottom.A small, sunnny, open glade was very busy with Common Blues.
For our second walk we had less sunny conditions, but since this section of the path had quite a bit of up and down, maybe this wasn’t a bad thing.
Les Détroits, I think.Southern Smooth Snake?
At the end of the walk, as I waded back across the river, I was startled to spot a snake, motionless on the riverbed. I fumbled my camera out and bellowed to the others to come and see what I assumed was a dead snake. I was even more startled when it shot off across the rocky river-bottom. I knew that snakes could swim on the surface but haven’t seen one submerged before.
That’s the last of my photos from France last summer and as I look out at leaden grey skies, I’m slightly sad about that fact. I’ve hardly been anywhere since though, so I should be able to make swift inroads into catching-up.
We drove up to Point Sublime one evening to watch the sunset.
Looking ‘downstream’.TBH and A.
In point of fact, the sunset was behind us, away from the view of the gorge, but this was still a great place to chill out with some friends and watch the day turn to night.
In this photo, you can just about pick out the cliffs which have been spotlit down the valley, From the campsite they looked monumental, from Point Sublime, pretty insignificant. Haven’t posted a moon photo for a while – I’m always amazed by the detail even a handheld camera can capture.
Inevitably, we hired kayaks and had a paddle down the Tarn.
Andy demonstrates that you don’t have to be young to be bonkers.
The Tarn is a bit more racy than the Dordogne, with some shallower, fast flowing sections and lots of places to stop for swims and for the DBs to throw themselves into the river.
The scenery is amazing, the water beautifully clear and very inviting.
The beginning (I think) of Les Détroits– the straits.
You can perhaps see, in the photograph above, that there are a lot of people congregated on the shingle bank downstream. They are examining a fast-flowing section which we had been told we should portage around. In fact, everybody seemed to be canoeing the little rapid quite successfully, so we did the same.
The section through Les Détroits was quite odd – suddenly we were fighting a strong, chilly head-on wind. Once the steep cliffs either side of the river receded the wind calmed down again.
Our route took as past the campsite (I think we stopped for ice-creams) and then past the mushroom rock, just after which there was another small fast-flowing section. Having successfully navigated that, I was upended by one of the flat-bottomed commercial passenger boats which ply the river with, it seems, almost complete disregard for the many canoeists also on the water. Somehow, I didn’t lose either my hat or my glasses, and only my pride was hurt, but I was infuriated and may have hurled a few choice Anglo-Saxon expletives after the departing boatman.
On a couple of occasions, later in the week, we drove a little down the valley to swim in the river in an area where a substantial rockfall in the past has left the river choked with huge boulders.
It was a fascinating spot. The water was very deep and, in places, where side-streams issued into the Tarn, the water was bracingly cold. Upstream, the water flowed through narrow little channels and forcing a way upstream became both challenging and exhausting, but highly enjoyable.
The big boulders in and by the river provided numerous opportunities for big jumps into the water. Even A joined in. Me too, but nothing too ambitious.
It was a great find, enlivened, for B at least, by the radar speed sign on the road above the river – which he found he could trigger by running along the road.
Last time we came this way, we drove up to the view point at Point Sublime, left the cars up at the rim of the gorge, and walked back down to the campsite. It proved to be one of the most memorable mornings of the trip, so, naturally, we were keen to repeat that outing this time.
The views from the top of the gorge defy superlatives. I think I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.
The campsite is down there somewhere, in the trees.The top of Cirque des Baumes – looks steep. It is.
Last time we visited, I was absolutely fascinated by the vultures we regularly saw overhead, and spent quite a bit of time both watching them and photographing them, mostly producing fairly useless photos. This time, perhaps the novelty had worn off a bit and I wasn’t as engaged as I had been. Never-the-less, they are amazing to watch and from the top of the gorge we had great views.
Griffon Vulture (I think)
Of course, having not been so intent on getting a photo of the vultures, I actually got my best yet. Inevitable perhaps. There’s probably a moral there somewhere, for a clever person to tease out.
Griffon Vulture. Big.Wall Brown.B nonchalantlystanding much too close to the edge.A vulture on an even more airy perch.The head of Cirque des Baumes again.Grasshopper.Grasshopper.I suspect that this is a Common Lizard – I think the most widespread reptile species, but I’m not sure.Likewise.Descending into the cirque.
It’s quite a sketchy path through really impressive scenery. Some of us were taking our time to save our aged knees (and take photos) and the kids raced ahead of us, only to reappear above and behind us somehow.
As we dropped past one of the large towers, a vulture wheeled just overhead, the closest encounter I’ve had by far. Sadly, my hasty photos, with the light behind the huge scavenger, didn’t come out too well, but it was a very exciting few moments.
This looks like a Meadow Brown, except they usually have some orange on the underwing. So, I’m hoping that it’s actually a Tree Grayling which would make it another new species to me, in what was a bumper year for butterflies.Common Blue, I presume. There were a lot of them about.Actually, this might well be a Tree Grayling.Silver-washed Fritillary. Possibly.Unidentified, but colourful grasshopper.Unidentified, but rather lovely moth.
Last time we visited, the Best Butterfly Moment of the holiday – surely everybody has ‘Best Butterfly Moments’ in their holidays? – was the Small Purple Emperor I spotted by the Tarn. This time it was a number of Southern White Admirals which were flitting about near to the end of our descent, where the trees started to get bigger, but there was still plenty of sunshine filtering through.
Southern White Admiral.Southern White Admiral.Southern White Admiral.
Stunning creatures. It was a species I didn’t know existed until this summer. Marvellous.
Looking back up the Cirque.A member of the Dead-Nettle family, I suspect.
Most plants seemed to have finished flowering, perhaps as a result of the tree-cover and also the heat, so it was nice to find this small but attractive flowers.
Wall Brown.
As I approached the bottom of the ravine I met a group who asked if they were going the right way for Point Sublime. They weren’t, having taken the the turn which leads up to La Chapelle Saint-Hillaire, a tiny church nestling under cliffs. My attempts to produce “Go back and turn left” in my rusty school French met with blank looks, but fortunately one of the group spoke very good English. I didn’t envy them the steep ascent in the midday heat, but they were at least young and they all looked very fit.
Sadly, a locked gate blocked the last part of the path to the church, so no photographs this time, although there are a few on my post from our last visit.
Almost down: looking into the steep-sided ravine at the bottom of the gorge.Crag Martin
My own short climb up to the chapel wasn’t wasted energy, partly because the views from near the church are superb, but also because I actually managed to catch a hirundine in flight. Not the sharpest photo, but better than I expected. Crag Martins are apparently quite similar to our own Sand Martins, but with broader wings, lacking a darker band on their chests and with ‘diagnostic’ twin white patches on their tails. I’d been enjoying watching the martins deftly skimming across the surface of the huge cliff which looms over the latter part of the descent, so was very happy to have a closer encounter and a chance to take some photos. You can see in the picture how closely they hug the cliffs in their long sweeps, a bit like watching swallows in their low sallies across a pond or field, but with the different challenge of a vertical surface to follow.
Looking back at Cirque des Baumes from the road.The Tarn from the ‘Mushroom Rock’. The campsite is in the trees by the big shingle bank on the left.
Of course, one consequence of walking down and leaving the cars is that somebody has to go back later to collect them. What a hardship!
Beating The Bounds 