Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
The level of the lake is up compared to last year but tide-marks of dry sedgy debris show that it can rise by another five or six feet. Oystercatchers call at the top, marshy end of the lake.
A dipper perches on the bridge as we get back to the farm then flits off upstream.
On the drive back to Hawes, I see a kestrel fly to the corner of a field barn to enter by a square opening, just below the roofline, which I guess must be an owl window.
Riverside hide, Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale, 3.45p.m.; A common sandpiper preens itself on a rock on the far bank of the beck then it sets off probing along the edge of the river.
It’s joined by a second bird, which trots off up the grassy bank while the first bird continues downstream.
A pied wagtail perches on rocks in the beck, flitting out to take invertebrates from amongst the pebbles.
1 p.m.; A weasel scampers along beyond the cattle grid as we take the track from Oughtershaw back to Nethergill.
3.15 p.m.; This mole appeared on the grass verge just feet from me by some surface excavations, crossed three of four feet of short grass then vanished, melting away in front of ours eyes, into what must have been a tunnel entrance at the end of a rough patch.
This gryke gives shelter to the kind of plants that you’d see in a hedgerow or in woodland. A velvety coat of moss on the limestone indicates how far the humid, sheltered zone of the gryke extends. In this particular crevice I noted wild garlic, dogs mercury, meadowsweet and creeping thistle.
A gryke is a crack between the clints (slabs) that make up a limestone pavement.
It might be sheltered for the plants down there but there was a cool breeze blowing down the valley this morning and the slab of limestone that I was sitting on proved surprisingly uncomfortable, even though I was sitting on a thin foam mat, so this is as far as I got with my sketch.
‘Do you do all your drawings from cafes?!’ asks Chris Wildman as I show him my latest lunchtime sketch, drawn as I waited for my quesadilla filled with cheese and Town End farm shop’s original chorizo. I must admit that I’ve ended up with three little sketches from cafe tables on this spread but all that’s going to change because we’re heading off for a week at Nethergill Farm in Langstrothdale, which is about as tucked away as you can get in the Yorkshire Dales. At last, I’ll be working in my 8 x 8 inch wildlife sketchbook again.
Link; Town End Farm Shop, the only place in the Yorkshire Dales where you can buy my little Malham Magic guide! Thank you for stocking it Chris.
If you’re unable to get there, I can send you a copy, price £2.95, post free in the UK; Malham Magic.
At last I’ve found a pen that doesn’t go through the absorbent paper in my Wainwright sketchbook; the Pilot Hi-Tecpoint V5, with an extra fine fibre tip point;
It’s waterproof too but of course the watercolour that I’ve added still bleeds through the page.
Looking at an angle through the double-glazed window at Charlotte’s at Whitley this morning I wondered if I was seeing double but those are the twin transmitters Moorside Edge on Pole Moor, Slaithwaite, ten miles to the west on the crest of the Pennines.
Yesterday I drew Crackenedge, Hanging Heaton, from the Cafe Casbah in the Redbrick Mill, Batley. The place name Crackenedge might be from the Viking krøkjen, meaning ‘crooked or bent edge’.
DRAWING THIS 3D impression of northern England makes me realise how much hill country there is in my new extended study area, which now includes the whole of Yorkshire; Dales, North Yorks Moors, South Pennines and the Wolds. And I don’t intend to ignore the Lake District beyond the north west borders of the county and that for me still slightly mysterious area, the North Pennines, described by Professor Bellamy as ‘England’s Last Wilderness’.
We live a little below the centre of this map so unless we head due east towards the Humber estuary, we’re going to be heading for the hills after an hour or so’s driving in whatever direction we set out.
My current initial research reading is The Naturalists’ Yorkshire compiled by members of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union, published in 1971. This is the second time that I’ve read it, as it was background reading when I worked on my Sketchbook of the Natural History of Wakefield as a student.
It starts with a succinct summary of the geology and structure of Yorkshire which at the time, introducing places and rock formations that I’d never seen, was difficult to grasp. Having spent seven years writing and researching Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time, it now makes sense to me.
The details that I still find a little difficult to visualise are features like the Market Weighton Upwarp, one of the major structural features of east Yorkshire which huge influence on the surrounding geology, and has done since the Jurassic period but which is invisible, except by inference, from the surface.
I’m soon going to get the opportunity to pilot a small Cessna around the county, not in reality you’ll be pleased to hear, but in the virtual environment of the flight simulator Xplane 10. As I write this my computer is halfway through loading VFR Photo Scenery for north east England. This includes detailed aerial photography from Getmapping, who ten or fifteen years ago sent four aircraft off to compile a photographic atlas of Britain.
I’ve got a copy of the atlas which comes in its own attaché case but I’ve never used it as much as I thought I would. Having a three dimensional, interactive version of the same, or rather updated, imagery seems a much better way of getting to know the lie of the land.