Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
The Sunday evening ITV series The Durrells prompted me to take another look at a comic strip of My Family and Other Animals that I drew in my school days. I was so lucky to have Gerald Durrell’s account of a naturalist’s childhood in Corfu as the set book for my O-level English Literature exam.
11.50 a.m, 60ºF, 15ºC: It reminds me of being in Austria or Switzerland, sitting here with a coffee in the beer garden of the Castle Inn and drawing craggy summits. An energetic group of school children climbs the zig-zag path to Peveril Castle.
1.15 p.m., 52ºF, 11ºC: We’re back at the Rose Cottage Tearooms for lunch, as we were a week ago on our book delivery trip. Then I sketched the upper branches of an ash which seems to have a weeping habit; today I drew its trunk.
If it wasn’t signed, you’d miss the entrance to Cavedale in Castleton as, going up between the houses, it looks more like the entrance to someone’s back yard. An information panel explains that you’re entering via a narrow gap in rocks that are part of a fossil reef.
The dale soon opens out into a canyon. The keep of Peveril Castle is perched on top of the cliff on your right. Today the stony path, which gets steeper as the dale narrows ahead, seems more like a water feature after all the rain they’ve had in the Peak District recently.
We climb the path which steadily levels out then we follow a green lane across the plateau to Mam Tor. Passing the Blue John mine, we take the old road, closed due to landslips in 1979, down into the Hope Valley.
3 p.m., 58ºF, 14ºC: Small scabious, Scabiosa columbaria, is, as its names suggests, smaller than the field scabious, which is the species that we occasionally find growing on some of our local hedge banks. Field scabious has pinnate leaves while the the lance-shaped leaves of small scabious are entire, with fine teeth along the edge.
We planted it yesterday in the sunny border by the back lawn.
I try to get down to wild flower level by sitting at the edge of the lawn on a picnic blanket in as near as I can get to the lotus position, the way traditional tailors used to sit (and probably still do). I’m determined to finish my drawing down at this level but after 10 or 15 minutes it feels as if my hip joints were getting pulled apart so I sit with my legs folded sideways as I add the colour.
Greenfinch, song thrush and blackbird are singing, with a pheasant bursting into a grockle in the background. Then a burglar alarm joins in.
At the old mill race, Horbury Bridge, we’re looking down at the celandine, which is now in full flower, when we spot a wren gathering material from the steep shady bank on our right and taking it over to a crevice in the stonework on the sunny bank of the stream. To me this nest site looks perilously close to the flood level of the stream but the male builds several nests and it’s up to the female to decide which one will be suitable.
South Ossett, 10.20 a.m.: The morning sun is just getting into this sheltered corner and the flowers of the dandelion are steadily opening; ants are scurry across the paving.
The dandelion head on the lower right has turned to seed but dozens of them are lying on the wet paving slab, parachutes (pappus) unopened. It looks as if some bird has been pecking at it, perhaps one of the sparrows that I can hear calling from the rooftops.
We’re back at Blacker Hall Farm shop for lunch with a view from the restaurant in the barn of the Barnsley to Wakefield Kirkgate railway.
When we called in at the Rickaro Bookshop in Horbury this morning I couldn’t help thinking that Tilly, the bookshop border collie was feeling the call of the wild.
3.05 p.m.: A dunnock bursts into hurried song from the top of the freshly green hedge, then flies off on its rounds.
House sparrows are engaged in some dispute down in the hedge, repeatedly cheep, cheep, cheeping at each other.
The breeze whips around as a large grey cloud arrives from the west. Hanging from my bag in the sun, my key-fob thermometer shows a pleasant 70ºF, 22ºC; as the sun goes behind the cloud the temperature drops 20 degrees Fahrenheit to 50ºF, 10ºC.
A large bumble bee prospects under a pile of mossy/grassy debris by the compost bin. I’ve been considering providing an insect hotel.
Common knapweed, ribwort plantain and cow parsley are sprouting in our meadow area; less welcome are the creeping buttercup and particularly the chicory which, attractive as its sky blue flowers are, could easily take over, spreading by its rootstock in our deep, rich soil.
Gold-tipped feathery moss spreads over the bare patches of soil. My aim is to weed out the chicory and docks and this year to plant pot-grown wild flowers to add some interest and wildlife value . . . and to give me more subjects to draw.
2.30 p.m., 47ºF, 9ºC: It’s been an April showers day with bright sun alternating with wild lashings of rain. There’s a cool breeze from the south-east but the low cumulus clouds are moving in almost the opposite direction: heading east with a westerly wind behind them.
One sixth of the pond in the sunniest northern corner is filled with algae-covered frogspawn which has sunk to a few inches below the surface. The black tadpoles which are each just over a centimetre long have now emerged from the spawn and gathered in three main groups, feeding on the abundant algae.
Nearby amongst the pondweed, two banner-tailed male smooth newts are closely following a round-tailed female.
Near the edge of the pond a newt briefly emerges from the depths to pop a mouthful of air.
A ramshorn pond snail makes slow progress over the butyl rubber pond liner.
A wolf spider runs across the water surface at the edge of the pond then basks in the sun on the black liner.
One approach to the restoration of a building is to rip everything out and produce a space fit for purpose for the 21st century. The approach that I prefer – as here at Blacker Hall Farm Shop – is to compromise a little and keep the old features that give a building character and give us a sense of its story.
I’m always sorry to see history thrown in the skip because so many bits and pieces can be recycled. But even architectural salvage only gives you half the story because when you wrench some prize feature from a building and pop it into another it’s like cutting and pasting a paragraph of Charlotte Brontë into a Charles Dickens novel. You might have just about got the right period but you’ve lost the vital context.
Having said that, I suspect that, several hundred years ago, whoever built this barn – which now houses the farm shop restaurant – went down the architectural salvage route: each of those beams looks as if it had a history before it ended up in its present position.
Link: Blacker Hall farm shop
Our favourite book delivery: after dropping off a consignment of my walks booklets at the distributors in Orgreave we make our way across Sheffield and, via Ringinglow, up onto the moors. At the Riverside Café near Hathersage there are plenty of siskins on the bird feeders this morning.
There must have been more rain here in the Peak District than we’ve had at home because we’ve never known the paths from Hope across the slopes of Lose Hill to be so slickly muddy but at least we are able to thoroughly clean our walking boots in the puddles on the farm track into Castleton.
Our first swallow flies out of a stable at Spring House Farm and out across the pasture.
Jackdaws sit in the top of the weeping ash in the back garden at Rose Cottage Tearooms, our regular lunch stop, but the garden isn’t quite as bird friendly as the Riverside: a tabby cat patrols the patio.
2.15 p.m.: A dipper in the river, Peaksole Water, at Hope, seems to take some effort to push below the surface. It keeps returning to a mid-stream rock, then heading out in different directions beneath the surface.