Identifying a water beetle; this one didn’t have an English name.
I’VE HAD my Olympus Tough for a few years and it’s proved as reliable as the name suggests so on a Wakefield Naturalists’ field meeting today, when we were looking at leeches and efts (young newts) in a pond at Potteric Carr, I decided to be brave and reach down into the water to see how it would turn out.
Eft; a young newt
Hidden Depths
Leech, this one was about six inches long at full stretch!
My wildlife photographer friend John Gardner suggested using a flash. I normally prefer natural light but, in the murky depths below the pondweeds, the flash works well.
Leaning out and reaching into the water with one hand I found it difficult to avoid camera shake but at least I know that in principle the camera works underwater. Perhaps a rockpool would make a better subject.
OLYMPIC GOLD medallist Alistair Brownlee loves to run on the hills of West Yorkshire: “You want to be inspired by your surroundings, and you want to go out and be motivated training in nice places. I like to run anywhere around Otley Chevin.”
Horbury and Ossett have a mini-Chevin, Storrs Hill; and anyone who has struggled up to it at the end of a school cross country deserves some kind of a medal! An acre of golden gorse overlooking the Calder Valley, in Victorian times it was ‘a favourite spot for Sunday afternoon strolls’.
Storrs Hill c.1890 by Frank C.J. Cockburn, from ‘Cockburn’s Ossett Alamanac’.
Unfortunately the free access that we’ve enjoyed for over a century has been very badly abused and there’s been so much vandalism that I’m not surprised that drastic action has been taken to protect the boundary with Rock House.
The panorama path was recently restored but I was sorry to see the once grassy lumps and bumps being levelled, not only because they were part of the landscape but also because in the process I guess that the hill’s colony of Grayling butterflies has been obliterated. Graylings, which aren’t as dull as they sound, are rare and in July 2002 this was the first colony to be discovered in West Yorkshire.
In the Olympic opening ceremony a grassy mound with a stunted thorn on top was used to represent Britain. Wouldn’t it be great if Storrs Hill could remain open to public access; a place for strolls and, for those more energetic than me, for running?
I HAD a little longer than usual for this drawing of a gardener’s truck parked on a roundabout. It seems a long time since I did an elaborate drawing. Perhaps the time is coming when I’ll take a day off and go somewhere to draw just for fun.
7.30 am; I SAW a Grey Heron flying unusually low over the roof tops and it was only 5 or 10 minutes later that I realised that it was flying so low because it was coming in to land at the edge of our garden pond; a juvenile, still in streaky grey plumage.
It soon flew off when it saw use looking at it. Hope it didn’t eat too many of our frogs and newts during its visit.
A minute later an equally infrequent visitor to our garden had taken its place by the pond; a Grey Wagtail bobbed and pecked around the pond edge.
I THINK of English Oaks like this as being great galleons of trees with masses of dense dark foliage but as I sketched this one in wet-on-wet watercolour I realised that there’s a lot of empty space in that canopy.
This is the last page in my little travel booklet sketchbook and I’m now going to make myself a European passport-sized sketchbook, which is one centimetre shorter than the traditional Moleskine notebook. That should fit snugly into my mini-art-bag, which is intended as a passport wallet.
I’ll be using a whiter paper than this, which will make it easier to scan but I’ve enjoyed using this Hahnemuehle sketch paper. It’s more absorbent than the cartridge that I’m used to so watercolour washes soak in almost instantly, instead of lying on the surface. It gives a mat granular quality to the watercolour. This isn’t all that obvious in my same size scans but you can get an idea from this close up of a part of my drawing just 18 millimetres across in which you can see the individual fibres of the paper.
I DON’T FEEL so bad about the lacklustre performance of the vegetables in our garden when I hear that farmers and growers are having exactly the same problems; cool, waterlogged soils and, even for those growing under glass, low levels of light. Supermarkets are having to order vegetables from abroad to make up for the lack of homegrown product.
But whatever the weather there’s going to be some vegetable that finds the weather suits it. Our leeks and onions which would have suffered in a drought are doing reasonably well but our beans and courgettes are taking their time to get established. Hopefully they’ll catch up as the season progresses.
Ironically this year I decided to try installing a watering system for the greenhouse so that when we go away our neighbour won’t need to come around to water. I didn’t manage to set it up, being short of a particular type of hose connector but, as it happened, I wouldn’t have needed it as when we were away in the Lake District last week the sun probably appeared for only a few hours during the whole 5 day period then the day after we returned their was a month’s worth of rain in a day.
The sunken path in the greenhouse filled up with water and the watering cans ended up floating around. Even the raised bed which the buckets of tomatoes stand on was an inch or two deep in water.
We’d sent a ‘rush hour in the Lake District’ postcard to friends. Little did we know that we’d get stuck in the rush hour on our return journey near Ullswater!
A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO we enjoyed Peter Sidwell’s Channel 4 cooking series Lakes on a Plate where the chef tracked down and cooked the National Park’s local ingredients. Despite our regular visits we’ve never been lucky enough to spot him filming on location and get chance to sample the finished product but his new cafe at the Rheged Centre, Penrith, is the next best thing.
As you can see from my sketch, the setting is appropriately scenic there; I sat and drew the waterfall and lime kiln seen through the floor to ceiling windows of the cafe as we tried the pea, mint and watercress soup with a crusty hunk of artisan bread.
But we weren’t quite getting the mint so I asked the waitress;
‘We wondered if it was another herb – tarragon perhaps?’
‘Or perhaps it was dried mint?’ chipped in Barbara.
The waitress looked stunned; ‘We always use fresh ingredients!’
They do; perhaps we were getting the pepperiness of the watercress!
We’re planning a diversion every time we visit the Lake District now because we’re curious to try some of the other items on the menu such as wild boar burger, posh fish finger sandwich, chocolate and churros and lemon meringue posset.
3D Journey
Before we set off home, I bought this 3D map of Northern England from the Pitlochery store by the piers at Bowness. I’ve always been fascinated by 3D models and a maps of the landscape and this one could have been tailor made for me as it is centred on our home in West Yorkshire (our return route is highlighted in red). The vertical scale is highly exaggerated – Pen y Ghent would tower over Mount Everest! – but having driven back today via the Kirkstone Pass, Ullswater and Whernside, this broad-brush interpretation really brings out the character of the landscape. It’s a clear, simple way to see how Pennines, Peak, Lakes and Snowdownia fit together.
At A4 size it’s something you can pick up and look at from slightly different angles, which makes it more vivid than a regular 2D map or even the 3D version of the same area in Google Earth which you can ‘fly around’ online. With this version you can run your fingers over the mountains, tracing your route.
For instance Whernside (737m), a ridge with a sphinx-like northern scarp between the Lune and Ribble valleys, the bulkiest and, to me, the most forbidding of the Three Peaks of the Yorkshire Dales, a dominating feature of our journey is equally conspicuous on the map.
Looking at the map makes me keen to get out a bit more and visit the four corners of my extended ‘local patch’; Snowdon in the south-west, Stranraer and The Rhins in the north-west corner, Cross Fell and Upper Teesdale to the north and, in the corner that I’m more familiar with from several trips to Norfolk, the Wash to the south-east.
I shall keep it knocking about in the studio and keep looking at it to choose the next place I’d like to visit. All within 170 miles from home (at least as the crow flies).
The Last Reef
Another 3D experience on our return trip; we have time to watch an IMAX movie in the cinema at Rheged, The Last Reef: Cities Beneath the Sea. Apart from being there, there can’t be a better way to experience the jellyfish lagoons of Pilau, the high cliffs of a Pacific atoll or the life of sea slugs and flatworms; who would have thought that slugs and flatworms could be so spectacular, like extravagant extra-terrestrials and flying carpets.
I’ll want to make an IMAX a regular feature of our Lakes visits now.
The widescreen, 3D cows of Castlerigg were equally impressive, and almost as wet . . .
A RAINY DAY so instead of walking we try a Cross-Lakes route, taking the small passenger ferry from Bowness to Ferry House, the Mountain Goat bus to Hawkshead and the Stagecoach bus to the Waterhead Hotel at the top end of Coniston Water. At Water Head Pier we waited for the ferry Campbell which makes a round trip of the northern end of the lake, stopping at Hoathwaite Landing, Brantwood and Coniston village.
This damselfly nymph was climbing along the handrail at the landing stage at Waterhead. It still had its featherlike tail gills. On this damp, drizzly day life out of the lake must have seemed almost as wet as in it.
This pondweed(below) with filmy dull green leaves about 2.5 inches long and a yellow green stem was growing from one of the timber piles of the landing stage.
Steam Launch Gondola
Passengers are asked to raise their hand if they want the ferry to stop, so when we saw one sailing by we tried to flag it down. It continued full steam ahead. It turned out that this was another ferry, the National Trust’s steam launch Gondola; a replica in modern materials of the Victorian original which sailed on the lake from 1860 to 1960 when it sank in a gale.
Brantwood
I had a brief chance to draw Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin (1819-1900), as we returned to Coniston village.
WE TAKE the Mallard car ferry to Waterhead then walk along the lakeside path through the woods, following a trail of snack packets as there’s a school party ahead of us, some of whom have brought their own music with them. The way through the woods must be so boring for them without the music and snacks!
Columbine
For us though, it’s a break for coffee and a scone at the newly reopened National Trust property Wray Castle. The steam launch Columbine is down at the landing stage as we wait for the ferry to Brockholes.
Monkey Puzzle
While a second school party disembarks and heads for the treetop walk (now that does look fun) we decide it’s time for tea and a toasted teacake on the terrace by the house, where I draw this Monkey Puzzle. Monkey Puzzles, Araucaria, evolved at a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and you can appreciate that only the tallest sauropod, standing on its hind legs, would be able to browse the scaly foliage on its top branches.
Deep in the Wood
The last time that we were at Brockholes was in 1987 when I launched my children’s book Deep in the Wood. Barbara and I organised the event with the Lake District National Park, informed the local press and booked ourselves into a bed and breakfast at Hawkshead. All the publishers had to do was supply the books and we’d seen them a few days before and their top rep had promised to do that.
‘Have the books arrived yet?’ I asked in eager anticipation when we called in at Brockholes the day before the event.
‘No, no sign of them, have you got copies with you?’
I had yet to even see a copy so we phoned the publishers who told us that, yes, they were going to send them but when they went to the stock room they found that the book had sold out in the first few days of publication, so they couldn’t!
They rounded up a few copies from around the office and sent them on via overnight courier. I think this was when I realised that my future lay in self-publishing!
As it happened, it rained heavily all weekend so we had sufficient books for the few visitors who braved the weather. As a consolation, the Lakeland National Park Authority invited us to take a stall at their annual national show at Chatsworth. Princess Diana opened the show and on her tour of the marquees took a brief look at our stall. But she didn’t buy a copy of the book for William and Harry. She seemed rather shy but we’d been instructed not to talk to her unless she spoke to us first. I was equally nervous; I’d been determined to be drawing when she came to the stall but I just froze as she stopped to take a look. This awkward moment ended when a child, peeking in through a gap in the canvas behind our stall, waved at her. Diana smiled and moved on.
In fact the only person who she talked to in the whole marquee was a watercolourist, who was the only exhibitor who had her back turned to the public, as she was working on a painting. Diana leaned over to take a closer look and confided to her; ‘I’m hopeless at that!’ (unlike Prince Charles who has painted watercolours for years).
Birds at the feeding station included Nuthatch and a juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker.
Return Trip
Langdale from Brockholes landing stage
The return ferry, taking an anticlockwise route around the northern end of Windermere via Ambleside back to Bowness gave me an opportunity to draw the landscape, and add some watercolour.
Hills to the north east of Ambleside
Western shore of Windermere, Ambleside to Bowness.
Bowness on Windermere, Cumbria, 5.35 pm 1/7/12 OS REF. SD 402967
VIEW FROM our 2nd floor room at the Belsfield, looking south to Storrs (108 metres above sea level), the little knoll below the Jackdaw to the left of centre of my sketch, two miles (3km) away, on the eastern shore of Lake Windermere. I’ve heard it said that Storrs means ‘the stony place’ but the Old Norse storõ refers to a young plantation or wood, a common element in Pennine hill-country. It makes sense here because this Storrs is flanked by Birk Head wood on it’s eastern (here left) shoulder, Black Beck wood on its western (lake) side slope.
A Jackdaw flying over the flat roofs of the apartments doubles back and drops down to join two more Jackdaws on the top branches of a sliced-off conifer. One of them turns to it in begging pose, lowering its head and wing-flapping. This begging bird appears from this distance to be an adult so perhaps this is a female demanding food from her mate.
Gargrave & Grasmere
We stopped at Gargrave(left) for lunch where I drew the view towards the river from the Dalesman Cafe. I was just starting to add colour when I noticed the ink ran immediately as I started adding the grey wash for the sky. I realised, luckily before I washed any of the pen and ink away, that I’d drawn with the ArtPen I keep loaded with ArtPen ink (water soluble) cartridges, not the one I keep filled with waterproof Noodler’s ink.
We stopped at Grasmere in the afternoon where I bought a couple of Hahnemüehle Travel Booklets from the Heaton Cooper Studio. These are to fit in my latest, and smallest ever, art bag; a small format camera case-sized Lifeventure Passport wallet. Even so, one of these 9x14cm stitched booklets only just zips into the case.
You can see in this wobbly first sketch, of the chimney of the Lamb Inn, drawn from the shelter of the Miller Howe tearoom, Grasmere village, that the ‘High Quality Sketch Paper, 140 gsm’, isn’t as white as the cartridge in the Pink Pig sketchbooks that I normally use. A suitably mellow background for my holiday sketches.
These booklets are an indispensable companion for retaining notes, thoughts, stories, impressions, sketches and anything unusual that comes your way.
Says the label. It makes you want to pop one in your pocket and set off on your travels.
This is the view from our table in the dining room at the Belsfield, overlooking the landing stage at Bowness. You can see why we keep coming back!
