Adapted from Ordnance Survey, Yorkshire LXXXI.SE, Revised: 1907, Published: 1910 OS Ref: SD857 821, 54° 14′ 04″ N 2° 13′ 15″ W Copyright Openstreetmap
Bilberry Wood was planted in the mid-Victorian period, at about the same time as Nethergill was built as a lodge.
Heather
Heather, also known as ling, Calluna vulgaris, grows in the drier parts of the wood, including on tussocks raised about the boggy areas and, here, from a crevice on a fallen pine trunk. Heather is an indicator of dry acid soils. The abundant heather and bilberry here are a sign that the wood has been only lightly or moderately grazed.
Lightly-grazed pinewood with tall heather is classified as National Vegetation Classification community W18.
On our last visit to the Dales, I walked around Bilberry Wood in Langstrothdale, using my Olympus Tough TG-4 to take short movie shots of every plant and fungus that I found. So how am I going to put those 42 random shots together to make a coherent two-minute film?
The Freeform Project Panel in Adobe Premier Pro is proving useful: I can drag and drop thumbnails of the clips around the screen, so I’m arranging them in groups, such as habitats, flowers and mosses. Once I’ve got them in a suitable order they can go straight on to the Editing window and I can add titles and a commentary.
I’ve already scrolled through each clip and selected the best few seconds of each one, by adding an ‘In’ and an ‘Out’ point to each clip, so there shouldn’t be any redundant or out-of-focus footage in my first rough cut of the movie.
The Alicante is supposed to be flamenco dancing. It’s difficult to get a tomato to look convincingly as if its flamenco dancing. I decided to limit the props for each variety to footwear. Obviously Tigerella has got those tiger feet.
The greenhouse looks like a jungle that has been lashed by tropical storm but we’ve never had a better year for tomatoes. As I was drawing the bowl of our beef and small plum tomatoes, I tried to draw each as an individual character. The calyx – the little crown of bracts – on each tomato was rather like a top-knot, which got me thinking about making them into cartoon characters.
Summer is over, it's turning cool,
It's time to go back to the Woodland School . . .
Owl seems to be sleeping, but I've a hunch,
He's dreaming of Dormouse for his lunch.
Just one missing, and that's the Mole,
Whoa! Here he comes now, popping up from his hole!
A birthday card for Florence (she’s the one in the woolly hat).
“Last week I was in Ilkley,” the waller tells me, “and had some lovely sandstone, but I’m making the best of this.”
The irregular fragments of limestone in the Greenfield Valley, Upper Wharfedale, don’t stack up as neat layers but there’s plenty of material available. Another waller is repairing a section and he simply digs up a piece he needs from the turf alongside the wall.
The hogget hole allows sheep to pass through. This one can be blocked by the slab lying beside the wall on the roadside verge. A hogget is a young sheep.
Wether Fell, seen from the causey stone path behind the Wensleydale Creamery. Gayle Beck at the foot of the slope in the foreground. A Roman road runs along the top of the fell.
I’m reading David Joy’s 2019 book Discover Your Woods, Trees in the Dales so this afternoon I had a walk around Bilberry Wood here as Nethergill Farm. There are pines, larches and firs but the only broadleaved species that I notice is rowan.
Birch, Goat Gap Cafe, Newby, 4/9/20
Rushes and sphagnum moss grow in the damper areas, with heather and polytrichum mosses on drier hummocks.
At the more exposed western corner of the wood, a swathe of pines has been flattened, the fallen trees revealing that they were shallow rooted.
The only bird that I notice is a wren, flitting about amongst the ground vegetation and it appears that a wren spotted my iPhone which I’d set to take a time-lapse sequence, flashing on the screen for a single frame.
Bumblebee on Devil’s-Bit Scabious
There are ferns, bracken and a few brambles but the ground layer consists predominantly of various kinds of mosses. Tormentil straggles around, dotting the ground with its four-petalled yellow flowers.
Squeeze stile on the causey stone path, between Gayle and Hawes church.
There are a few fungi and, as the name of the wood suggests, plenty of bilberry.
A Swaledale Ram in profile. Like a gunslinger or a boxer in the run-up to a contest he’s got a steady gaze and half smile. In keeping with this tough guy image he’s wearing a sheepskin jacket and understated ear pearcings. Rather like the action heroes of the 1960s – Patrick McGoohan’s ‘Number 9’ and Sean Connery’s ‘007’ – we’re introduced to him simply as a number: ‘1624’ (the year in which Louis XIII built a hunting lodge at Versailles and appointed Cardinal Richelieu as his chief minister).
There’s a hint of ‘Eye of Horus’ makeup. Also known as the Wadjet, the Eye of Horus was a symbol of protection, royal power and good health, but the horns are more reminiscent of Ammon, later know as Amon-Ra, who often wore ram’s horns.
This idea caught on and Alexander the Great was depicted wearing ram’s horns and Michelangelo added a small pair of horns to his statue of Moses.
I’m used to sheep looking sheepishly at me when I try to photograph them before hurrying off to join the rest of the flock but this ram held his ground and looked right back at me.
Hens are so expressive and this one had a fed-up demeanour about her that suited the wet afternoon. Perfect weather for geese though. I’m guessing this is the gander, puffing himself up indignantly as we stop to take a look at the little flock.
