As we walk down the Balk from Netherton on a still, grey Sunday morning, the only sound coming across the Calder Valley is the peel of bells from the spire of Horbury’s Georgian Church of St Peter’s. The bells were recast a year ago and we can hear the difference in harmony. Not that I thought they were out of tune before but there was a bit of a clanking abruptness when they were ringing; the arpeggios are smoother now.
On the bank of the stream at the lower end of The Balk, ivy stems climb the trunk of this ash tree as luxuriantly as a strangler fig in a rain forest.
Branched bur-reed, Sparganium erectum, grows by the canal bank, alongside The Strands, in the valley at Horbury Bridge. After engineering work to repair locks and drains damaged by flooding in February last year, the Canal & River Trust did some dredging along this stretch of the Calder and Hebble Navigation. Floating vegetation and marginals have soon colonised this quiet stretch but now most Covid restrictions have been lifted, we’re seeing more narrowboats, which help keep it clear.
A little further along, where trees grow alongside the canal, Mycena fungi grow on the stump of a sawn-off alder growing from the bank.