THIS SUMMER we’ve had so much cool rainy weather and few mornings like this; warm but not sultry; clear, bright sunlight and intensely blue skies with fair weather cumulus. With trees in full leaf and verges frothing with Cow Parsley the countryside now has the fullness of summer but grasses, flowers and foliage still have the un-nibbled freshness of spring.
We’ve missed out on this, a favourite spring walk through Wharfedale, in the last two or three years and when we arrive at Skipton we discover that we can’t get to our starting point at Bolton Abbey by bus because the county council has been cutting back on rural services (except at weekends), so we opt for a taxi. But we start our walk from the bus stop and just over the wall, down in a culverted water course, the first bird that we see is a Dipper flying low just above the water under a old stone bridge, which I guess is where it has its nest.
‘Have you seen any Kingfishers?’ a couple ask us later on the walk. No Kingfishers but we’re pleased that despite the recent heavy rains there’s a lot of activity around a Sand Martins colony in the riverbank at Gibson’s Mill, where a pair of Oystercatchers are standing on the sand below and a Grey Heron stalking in the pasture beyond.
Whenever I see Bolton Abbey, whether its on television or on a calendar, I always think that it’s about time we visited it again and at last here we are. Some day I’ll buy the guide book and study the ruins but today we’re here for a riverside walk, so we backtrack along the Dales Way to its official starting point in Ilkley.
Addingham is perfectly placed for a coffee stop and when we reach Ilkley we take a break on a bench in the shade of riverside trees overlooking the Old Bridge where the sign ‘Bowness 82 miles’ marks the start of the Dales Way.
THIS AFTERNOON I wanted to do the simplest of drawings so I’ve gone back to ArtPen ink, a water soluble fountain pen ink, using my Pentel water-brush to turn the line to wash.
We’ve arranged these fragments of flaggy sandstone to disguise the edges of the liner of the restored pond. They should be half submerged but as we’ve had no rain the water level has sunk by about 4 inches.
The Smooth Newts have re-established themselves; I’ve just seen three of them on the shallow margin of the pond, one male waving his banner-like tail at a female. We’ve now seen most of our regular garden birds coming down to drink or bathe at the pond’s edge. Insects drink here too; I’ve just rescued a honey-bee that was struggling in the water. A single pond skater is striding across the surface.
IF YOU represented Lake Windermere as an elongated clock face, today we walked from Ferry House at 9 o’clock to Wray Castle at 11, finishing up at Waterhead, Ambleside, at just past the top of the hour, so about a quarter of the way around England’s largest lake.
This didn’t leave any time for drawing, so I sketched our route from the ferry on the return journey to Bowness.
We had hoped there might be a cafe at Wray Castle, a Victorian country retreat built in the style of a toy fort, but it’s closed at the moment after plans to turn it into an upmarket hotel fell through. The National Trust plans to reopen it to the public . . . and open a cafe there.
Beatrix Potter celebrated her 16th birthday at Wray Castle when the Potter family spent a summer holiday here.
3.30 p.m.; View of Windermere from Costa Coffee at Pringles, Bowness.The small, sometimes winding, roads made sketching from the car difficult.
THE LAKE DISTRICT is so often moody, wrapped in clouds and mist, so today, with ranks of cumulus marching across a clear blue sky and sparkling panoramas unfolding before us, our regular journey was a different experience. After so many years of heading along the Leeds ring road to get on the road to the Lakes, the A65 via Skipton, we’ve found a short cut on smaller quieter roads following the ridges between some of the old woollen towns of the West Riding – Huddersfield, Mirfield, Halifax and Bradford – not far away in the valleys below.
It was so clear that already, as we approached Howarth over the moors, we got glimpses of the sphinx-like peaks of Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent crouching on the limestone plateau of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
Coming this way, along the smaller but slower roads, the Dalesman Cafe at Gargrave, 1 hour 20 minutes but only 40 miles into our journey, makes a timely coffee stop. They specialise in ephemera of the 1950s and 1960s so as I tried a local speciality, buttered Chorley cake, the tins and packages of the period brought back memories for us.
I sketched this shrimping net from an earlier period, still with its canvas bag stencilled ‘W EGLON, NEPTUNE FISH STORES, WHITBY, TEL. 60’. I wonder whereabout in Whitby that was . . .
The Eglons of Whitby
A Google search turns up this reference to the Eglon family from the 1891 census (http://mdfs.net/Docs/Whitby/Census1891/Whitby10), when they were living in four rooms in Elephant & Castle Yard, between Haggersgate and Cliff Street, so very near what is still the fish quay at Whitby. I guess that Neptune Fish Stores would have been there or very near.
4 Elephant & Castle Yard (4 rooms)
Eglon, Christopher - Head - M M 41 - Fish Merchant - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Eliza - Wife - M F 41 - - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Mary E - Daughter - S F 21 - Dressmaker - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, William - Son - S M 19 - Fisherman - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Christopher - Son - M 14 - Errand Boy - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Esther - Daughter - F 12 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, James H - Son - M 10 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Margaret E - Daughter - F 7 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
William, born in 1872, must be the ‘W. Eglon’ named on the bag but sadly his business, Neptune Fish Stores (Whitby) Ltd, was wound up in 1969, at a time when the traditional English seaside resorts had lost out to competition from package holidays to the Mediterranean.
Sunset across the Lake
Barn owl from Walney Owl Sanctuary, which along with a Little and an Eagle Owl was proving a hit with visitors to the Tourist Information Centre at Bowness.
I’m certainly getting in holiday mood today, I’m beginning to feel like a different person, as if a burden has been lifted from my shoulders, as we approach the Lakes and leave the distractions of home and work behind. As the rugged peaks of the Borrowdale volcanics come into view a Buzzard circles above the road.
Bowness can be as busy as a traditional seaside town – the Blackpool of the Lake District – but, as we’ve booked in for a few days at the Belsfield Hotel overlooking the Lake Windermere, we can stay after the weekend trippers return home.
There’s a perfect sunset, a clear sky across the lake. In this old hotel, originally the home of a wealthy Victorian industrialist, you have the feeling that you’ve got away from everything; as if you’re aboard one of the old, opulent ocean liners. When we walk down for our meal in the sumptuous dining room, past the reception desk, we glimpse sparkling water through the lounge window. You feel that the whole hotel might be gliding over calm waters. Hopefully with no icebergs on the horizon. The bustling piers where the ferries come and go are hidden away behind the grassy banks of the hotel gardens.
IT’S OFTEN NOT recommended to transport frogspawn from one pond to another because of the danger of spreading infection but I feel that I’m safe accepting a couple of clumps from a neighbour across the road whose pond always gets more frogspawn in it than it can accommodate. Our new pond has plenty of room, although the tadpoles, now hatched but still no more than short black dashes resting on the mass of jelly, are going to be at risk of being gobbled by the Smooth Newts that are already settling in to the new pond.
The tap water has had a week now to lose the small traces of chlorine that it contained so I was keen to add some oxygenating pond weeds. My neighbour saved me the trouble and expense of a trip to the garden centre by letting me have half a bucket of strands from his pond. Now the newts have some vegetation that they can lay their eggs on.
THIS RATHER GLUM snowman has turned out looking as if he’s working for air traffic control. He’s from an exercise in Create 3D like a Superhero. This lesson was about ‘How to Mirror Objects’ and the way you do that is to ‘flip’ a copy of the first arm you’ve made. There wasn’t of course any necessity to add a carrot nose, coals for his eyes and an Alpine backdrop but I’m enjoying going through the book and I’m now getting familiar with where skies, textures and props like the dead tree can be found when you’re 3D modelling in Vue 10.
We’re making progress with the pond too. Today we partly rebuilt the raised bad behind the pond, the bed we made with the spoil when we dug the pond 25 years ago.
The first birds that we’ve seen drinking at the pond were House Sparrows. They were coming down to the gently sloping edge that we made with access for wildlife in mind.
As I’d expected, when I dismantled the low drystone wall at the back of the
pond, I found Smooth Newts, perhaps 10 of them, hiding away in various crevices and I released them out of harm’s way. I hope that they’ll find their way back to the pond as it begins to settle in and take on a natural look.
There was at least one newt in the pond, in the deepest section, with it’s head under an oak leaf that had blown in. It was as if it was thinking ‘if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.’
I’m keen to get oxygenating pond weeds in sooner rather than later, if only to give the newts a place to hide.
Wakefield Naturalists
This month’s observations at the Wakefield Naturalists’ Society include a record of an Eagle Owl taking Wood Pigeons at Nostell. The Eagle Owl isn’t of course a native and it’s thought that this one is a local escaped bird. It’s the size of a cat but with wings. The pigeons won’t have seen anything like it before.
Grass Snakes and Great Crested Newts have emerged. On the third of March an early Sand Martin put in an appearance at Calder Wetlands. Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock butterflies are on the wing, the early record for the Peacock proving that they’re overwintering here, rather than coming in as migrants each spring.
EVEN BEFORE we’d finished filling it, a frog had found its way into our new pond, plump-looking, so presumably a female ready to spawn. We had disturbed her as we went hunting for stones to cover the PVC liner around edges. I’ve been putting off the task of reinstating our garden pond for months but once we’d got our materials together and allowed ourselves enough time for the job, it was a reasonably simple process.
The worst part, which we completed yesterday, was dismantling the old pond which had sprung a leak, caused by damage to the liner I suspect. I thought that I’d have some pondweeds to rescue but after six months all that remained in the sump of the pond was smelly black silt and debris which I spread on the garden. I was pleased to find that there were no rodent burrows beneath the liner, a problem which led our neighbours to replace their leaky liner with a fibre glass pond, a more expensive option and more difficult to install.
Pond Liner
At the garden centre we found a Blagdon 0.5mm PVC small pond liner, 3.5 x 4m, precisely the size that I’d calculated that we would need, in a pack that included synthetic underlay. It comes with a lifetime guarantee.
The way to calculate how much liner you’ll need is:
Length plus twice the maximum depth x width plus twice the maximum depth
I took a photograph of the pond and printed it out with the dimensions when I set off to the garden centre.
We asked for advice on covering the edges and the man at the aquatic centre drew us this diagram to suggest a shallow shelf around the edges with stones resting on the liner, half in and half out of the water. The edge of the liner folds up behind the stones and you trim off the surplus when the pond is full. This has the advantage that the upstanding edge of the liner prevents water wicking away to the surrounding soil.
We already had the level of the previous pond to work from, but as I cut the 6 inch by 1 inch deep shelf along the far edge of our pond, I kept checking it with a straight edge and a spirit level.
How to Construct a Pond
With apologies for the illustrations – I’m still experimenting with filters in Photoshop!1. Remove all stones and roots from the hole, trample around to make the ground as smooth as possible then (and this is optional) spread a layer of sand around the hole. Our pond is an inch or two more than 3 metres x 2 metres (10ft x 6ft 6in) with a maximum depth of 45cm (18 inches). That’s sufficient for a wildlife pond but a pond for fish should be 6 inches deeper. It slopes very gradually from the left to allow access for birds and animals. On the other three sides there’s a ledge about 20 cm (8 inches) deep for pots of water plants. 2. Spread a fleece liner across the hole. This is simpler, though more expensive, than the layer of damp newspaper that we used for our first pond, along with an old carpet. Barbara pressed the wet newspapers into place with her bare feet. I guess it’s a sort of therapy. But the soft synthetic fleece is better because it never rots and it adapts easily to the shape of the hole.3. Next comes the pond liner. Make a couple of large tucks or folds (a dressmaker would call them darts) to allow the liner to adapt to the contours but you don’t need to precisely fit the liner into the hole as the weight of the water to do that. Place a large stone, one without sharp edges, at each corner to prevent the liner flapping about in the breeze.
At this stage it’s hard to believe that this will ever become a natural-looking pond.
4. Fill the pond
5. As the pond fills add rocks around the edge.
6. Cut off the corners and any surplus liner around the edges and cover the edges with flat stones and turf.
At the left-hand edge where we had used some mossy rocks, the pond looked as if it had been there for years. We’re going to leave it for a few days before adding pondweeds, to allow the chlorine in the tap water to dissipate.
IT’S GOOD to return and re-walk the same route at this time of year as there are changes daily in plant and bird life. The glossy leaves of Bluebell are coming up in the woods around Newmillerdam and on the lake, frozen over only a month ago, there are three Goosanders, a male and two ‘red-heads’ (either females or juveniles).
Also putting in its first appearance (for us on our infrequent visits anyway) is a Great-crested Grebe. We’ve seen the Little Grebe or Dabchick but not its Great-crested relative. By the size of its crests and cheek feathers, I’m sure this is a male. It’s unusual not to see them together as a pair at this time of year. Perhaps she’s already on a nest on a quiet corner of the lakeside.
ABOUT THREE-QUARTERS of the lake at Newmillerdam is ice-covered this morning but there’s room for Tufted Ducks to dive, apparently for freshwater mussels, in a spot ten or twenty yards from the shore between the boathouse and the war memorial, where I’ve seen them diving before.
Can there really be so many mussels in the lake?
Nearer the shore we can see these shells, at least some of which look empty. I’ve boosted the contrast in the photograph because of the glare on the water surface.
Amongst the Mallards there’s a single Pink-footed Goose, which hisses as it pecks at some scraps that a visitor has left on the path.
Barbara picks up this feather which I assume is from the goose but looking at my photograph of the bird, a breast feather like this should be greyer and banded horizontally, rather than streaked vertically, so I think this is more likely to be a feather from a female Mallard.
At first glance, as it dives under, the Dabchick or Little Grebe looks like a diminutive duck but, as it keeps bobbing up briefly, we can see the more pointy bill of the grebe. By the boathouse we see a Goosander, a saw-billed duck (the saw-like edges of the bill help it grip small fish).
I’ve drawn squirrel-nibbled cones on several occasions but, as it was too cold to be comfortable to stop and sketch, I picked these up to draw in the studio later.
As we walk back through the conifer plantations, there’s a twittering all around us in the tops of the trees. Even with binoculars I can see no more than a dark silhouette, possibly with streaky plumage, but the shape and the shallow notch in the tail make me think it’s a finch and the size, about the size of a Blue Tit, narrows it down to Siskin. Siskins visit in large flock during winter and often visit conifer plantations.
IF YOU STAND on one of the bridges in Inverness you can see to the bottom of the river but it’s a surprise to find that you can do the same in Wakefield, looking into our lowland River Calder. This is the view from the Chantry Bridge side of the Hepworth gallery.
You’re looking down towards the Roman river crossing – which was probably a ford. The bedrock is sandstone, which might explain the pebbles although the riverbank has been restored using landscaping fabric here, so these pebbles might have been tipped here to protect the bank.
This is the inside of the bend on the river so you’d expect slack water and deposits of silt here however there’s a weir not far upstream so the strong currents will scour the riverbed.
We’re here to deliver books but we manage to time that to coincide with a late lunch (goats cheese and spinach risotto, a good winter warmer on a cold, wet breezy afternoon) at the table with the view of the Chantry Chapel so I get chance to make a quick sketch as we wait for our meal.
One of my paintings, Waterton’s World, a large acrylic on canvas from 1984, is in the Hepworth collection but wasn’t hanging in the public galleries today. Perhaps one day . . .
Actually I say it was a large painting but it was tiny compared to Clare Woods’ mighty composite panel paintings of Brimham rocks which are getting on for the size of the actual rocks themselves.
THIS SUMMER we’ve had so much cool rainy weather and few mornings like this; warm but not sultry; clear, bright sunlight and intensely blue skies with fair weather cumulus. With trees in full leaf and verges frothing with Cow Parsley the countryside now has the fullness of summer but grasses, flowers and foliage still have the un-nibbled freshness of spring.
We’ve missed out on this, a favourite spring walk through Wharfedale, in the last two or three years and when we arrive at Skipton we discover that we can’t get to our starting point at Bolton Abbey by bus because the county council has been cutting back on rural services (except at weekends), so we opt for a taxi. But we start our walk from the bus stop and just over the wall, down in a culverted water course, the first bird that we see is a Dipper flying low just above the water under a old stone bridge, which I guess is where it has its nest.
Addingham is perfectly placed for a coffee stop and when we reach Ilkley we take a break on a bench in the shade of riverside trees overlooking the Old Bridge where the sign ‘Bowness 82 miles’ marks the start of the Dales Way.
