Tuesday 17 May 2011

Walk 4 - Bridges and beasts: Snows Farm Nature Reserve

So far, I've done all my walks mid-morning, but I've been thinking that I should try to walk at different times of day, to see things in different lights.  So here I am at 7.30 am on a May morning of hazy sun, walking down the road towards the entrance to the Snows Farm Nature Reserve.  A black cat ambles across my path, which seems like a good omen.  As well as the normal paraphernalia - cameras, binoculars, sketchbook, sound recorder and mike - I have breakfast in my rucksack and feel rather pleased with myself for being this organised, this early in the morning.  I am not really an early morning person, you understand.

The easiest access to the Reserve is from the southern end, so the plan is to walk up through the Reserve from the bottom, along the higher part of the valley, then drop down to the stream when I reach the northern boundary, where I left off walking last time, then continue my walk back down the stream in the direction it flows.

View from stile by Snows Farmhouse
At Snow's Farmhouse I leave the road and the view from the stile holds me still for a few moments.  This is one of the valley's good viewpoints, looking one way into the hills and secret folds of the upper valley and the other way down towards Stroud.  As I cross the field towards the reserve, a bunch of reclining cows eye me askance, as if to say 'bit early for tourists, isn't it?'

The brook crosses the path just before the reserve and I become temporarily geographically challenged as I try to work out whether it's the Slad Brook here, or the Dillay. This end of the valley is confusing, with its various arms, not all of which can be seen from this angle.

The 'Roman Bridge'
Stepping down the bank to get close enough to record the stream burbling over stones, I find myself face to face with the Roman Bridge.  Until quite recently it was news to me that there was a bridge here, never mind a Roman one.  Well, obviously a bridge of some sort, since the path crosses the stream without getting its feet wet, but not a Bridge, with a stone structure and a pedigree and a place in the local history  books.  The fact is, the top of the bridge looks exactly like part of the track, so it's easy to miss the fact that underneath is a small but perfectly formed stone arch which looks like something a long-ago architect made for practice before going off to build the same thing larger, maybe somewhere like York.  It's known locally as the Roman Bridge.  Patricia M Hopf, my source of all wisdom on the upper Slad Valley ('The Turbulent History of a Cotswold Valley') is non-committal about its actual origins but notes that it was once wide enough to take a horse and cart.  Whatever its history, from this low angle the bridge looks as though it's auditioning for a Cotswold Countryside calendar, emerging as it does from drifts of cow parsley, ivy and fern.  Looking backwards from the bridge, I can now see that the path I've just walked on stands out from the rest of the field as a flattened ridge, so I can believe there was an old road here, maybe even a Roman road.

I walk up the bank towards the gate of the reserve under a canopy of alder and hazel trees.  This morning, before setting out, I looked up the difference between alder and hazel leaves because there have been a lot of them in my walks so far and the identification issue has been getting to me. Teeth, that's the point (ho ho).  Hazels have toothed leaves.

Through the gate, down the hill and across the brook into the reserve proper.  There is wild garlic still in bloom down by the brook, though it has long been over nearer to home, plus a tangle of ferns, nettles and tree roots.  Ivy has colonised the trunk of a fallen tree, the ivy still growing though the tree is not, and wildflowers have sprung up along the trunk in the spaces between the ivy stems.

Ivy is becoming one of the themes of these walks.  A little higher up the valley is a pair of ash trees held in a deep embrace by ivy stems as thick as a well-grown sapling. Looking at their sinuous lines, I can see why people of older times thought of ivy as feminine.

Ivy trees
This part of the valley feels very hidden from the outside world, a narrow strip of grassland sandwiched between the bulk of the Scrubs on one side and a steep wooded hillside (oolitic limestone, according to the reserve leaflet) on the other.   The sun is still relatively low in the sky, shining almost directly up the valley.  While I make abortive attempts to photograph buttercup petals from underneath, a kestrel dashes overhead. Rooks are swooping in and out of the trees on the hillside.  There are tractor noises somewhere, but definitely somewhere else.

On up the valley, in a little grove of (pause for study of leaves) hazel trees, I find signs of industrious digging into the roots of the trees, lots of scratched earth and a hole that looks too big for rabbits.  Fox, perhaps?  A little further on, a hank of dark hair caught on a hawthorn branch, low to the ground.  The strands are long and soft.  I fantasise about a mysterious Beast of Snows Farm (a cross between a jaguar and a persian cat).  Not here just now, obviously, or the deer I've just spotted grazing by the treeline wouldn't be hanging about.  The deer doesn't see me at first, and just for once, the wind is from him to me.  I cautiously reach for my binoculars and he raises his head, but doesn't actually move until I put them to my eyes, at which point he legs it smartly.  Which seems to support a pet theory of mine, which is that black binocs might just look a lot like a gun, from the viewpoint of a distant deer.

I've now reached a point where the slope down to the stream below me is so steep that it's almost like standing on the edge of a cliff, and the view up and down the valley is stunning. Pause for breakfast (egg sandwiches) and to watch a group of horses, on the opposite slope, indulging in early-morning rolling in the grass.  The layout of the valley is clearer from up here and I'm able to disentangle my earlier geographical muddle; the hill on the other side is The Scrubs, the valley branching off from it must be Driftcombe.

Snows Farm anthills
According to the reserve leaflet, 300 species of wildflowers grow here in the reserve, but most of them seem to be lying low at the moment.  There's quite a lot of bird's-foot trefoil around, and some little blue things with white flashes which I've also seen growing on Swift's Hill (my wildflower skills are on a par with my tree identification) but not much else.  According to the leaflet, I could also be seeing dogwood, rock rose, columbine, milkwort, thyme, yellow wort, harebell and common and spotted orchids.  Think it's a bit early for orchids, though. What I do notice is that the ground here is covered in small, solid, grassy humps, as if the land has a bad case of grass acne.  What's that all about then?   The leaflet is silent on this point.  (Later on, I discover they are in fact anthills, which makes this field a veritable ant city.)

Onward and upward, I locate the ruins of 'the Old Shop' - four low, broken walls, one of which has a tree growing out of it.  The reserve leaflet says the old shop supplied bread and (coyly) ‘other, more colourful services’.  According to Patricia Hopf, it may also have been an aleshop and a brothel.  All essentials under one roof, then - forerunner of the Tesco Metro.  Only not quite.  Now, it is fast disappearing under the onslaught of tree roots, brambles and moss.  A couple of great tits have set up home in a hole in the back wall - I can see them nipping in and out with great regularity and a calm disregard of my presence, so it looks as though they have a brood to feed.

There are more dark hairs clinging to the stile outside the Old Shop, so the Snows Farm Beast was here too.  With strange beasts in my thoughts, I notice a truly HUGE triangular bird box in a nearby tree and wonder what it's designed to attract.  Owl?  Buzzard?  Vulture?

New ferns: jewellery designs?
While I'm taking photos of the unfurling fronds of new ferns, which make shapes reminiscent of Viking horns or bits of Celtic jewellery, another deer ambles past.  I tend to be a bit blase about seeing deer because they sometimes come into our garden so I have a vague feeling that they aren't Real Wild Animals.  But they are, of course.  This one trots smartly away as soon as I stand up and start taking an interest in him.  A wildlife artist friend of mine has a theory, based on the practice of Native American Indians, that animals can feel a direct gaze, that you are a much less threatening presence if you aren't using your central vision.  Apparently, if you want to see wildlife, the trick is to learn to use only your peripheral vision, to see out of the corners of your eyes.  Which takes some practice, if you don't want to trip over your own feet.

It certainly doesn't work too well while trying to navigate around this reserve.  Finding the way is not straightforward; there are unexpected fences and the path disappears regularly.  I find myself following sinuous little animal paths.  There are signs of animals to be seen - a large hole which must surely be a fox's earth under the roots of a beech tree, a series of molehills, a lot of deer prints in the mud down by a tiny tributary stream running down to the main brook.  The brook itself is fenced off here; I wonder what the local animals make of these fences which cut across their paths, even cutting across the brook in places.  I give up on trying to locate the human path and climb dangerously over barbed wire to get down to the brook.  From the other side, it's easier to see what's what and I can spot the fence marking the upper end of the Reserve, and the path and footbridge I should have taken.  I can also see a flock of interesting sheep with shaggy, dark brown fleeces and little horns.  Now I know where the mysterious dark hairs came from.  So much for the Snows Farm Beast.

Beasts of Snows Farm
I walk back along the brook, crossing and re-crossing it to avoid inconvenient fences. The pattern is the same on this side: woodland at the top of the hill, grassland on the slopes, trees lining the stream. Hazel, alder and hawthorn, some of the hawthorn still just about in bloom.  At one point the stream goes into a steep gully so that I can hear it, but not see it.  There are buttercups in profusion here, as well as thistles and thyme.  Crossing the stream for the last time on a plank bridge, I realise with a shock that I'm back below the gate where I came in, having completely failed to recognise the place when seeing it from a different angle.  This rather sums up my feelings about the Reserve.  Despite the signs of previous human occupants, despite the sheep and the fences, it feels subtly wilder than the other parts of the valley that I know, and familiar things seem less familiar here. Although it isn't very big, and I've walked from one to the other and back, I don't feel as though I've got a handle on it at all.  A place which would stand quite a bit more exploring, I think, or even some sitting still and looking, which I don't seem to have done very much of, so far.  Maybe next time.

Google map of this walk














Friday 6 May 2011

Walk 3 - The tree cathedral: lower section of Dillay Farm

I'm back at Dillay Farm on a breezy day of early May to walk the lower part of the valley, from the farm to the boundary with the Snow's Farm Nature Reserve.  This is partly because I wanted to spend more time with this part of the stream on my last walk and couldn't, and partly because I'm determined to find the Nature Reserve boundary this time so that I can be sure I've walked every inch of the stream on Dillay Farm land before moving on (do we detect a little obsessiveness creeping in here?).

Things have changed noticeably since I was last here.  Weirdly, we've had almost no rain in the last six weeks (the thunderstorm which chased me out of the valley last time turned out to be a flash in the pan) and it's been unusually warm.  Spring seems to be rushing headlong into summer at least a month early.   The field of dandelions I passed on the way here last time is now a field of something else entirely, though still spring-yellow.  I wonder if I will see the difference in the level of the Dillay.  Dillay Farm gets its water from springs in the valley, Mrs Barrington tells me, and if the dry period continues too long they could be badly affected.  I know that our own little stream, a very minor tributary of the Slad Brook, is much lower than usual.

Nearly all the trees are in leaf now, though some only just, and everything looks significantly more luxuriant.  Down by the footbridge, thistle flowers are coming into bloom, intriguing with their slightly surreal shapes.  Hawthorn blossom is new since last time.  The laid hedge which lines the stream at this point has a lot of hawthorn in it and looks quite lovely. There seem to be a lot of insects around today; I whip out my sketchbook to try to capture the intricacy of a filmy-winged fly sitting on the ivy-covered trunk of a tree, apparently basking in the hazy sun.  Naturally the fly moves as soon as I've got my pencil poised, but then settles on the knuckle of the hand I was about to draw with. Very cautiously, I trace the lines of its wings and it clings there just long enough.

As usual, I'm getting distracted by detail.  Further downstream, just before the track, the ground is boggy and already covered in a carpet of new plants. There are so many different shapes of leaves that it's mesmerising; I recognise only buttercup and birdseye but there are many others.  If you took a square foot of this bit of ground and worked out what all the different species in it were, it looks to me as though it would be dozens.  The odd flower is almost too much, too bright a splash of colour in amongst all this line and texture.  Must move on, because I am supposed to be focusing on the lower part of the valley.

In amongst all this richness is another death.  A pheasant met its end a few yards away from where I'm standing, fairly recently, I guess.  Two beautiful sections of wing remain, with even the smallest top covert feathers all intact, and a few bits of bone, absolutely picked clean.  Sitting on them are two bright bottle-green and blue-green flies.  A sight both beautiful and slightly ghoulish.  Their jewel-like bodies are exactly the colour and quality of dichroic glass, which gives me an idea I may follow up.  I'm very tempted to collect one of the wing sections because it's so complete, including the joint on which all feather structures swivel. You don't normally get to see a working wing up close (at least, I don't) and it would be marvellous reference material for drawing.

I cross the footbridge near Rose's cottage and pause to frown at the map.  What's on the ground here doesn't entirely seem to fit with the official version and I'm wondering if that's why I got confused last time.  I decide that the only thing to do is to follow the footpath running along the side of the valley which crosses into the Nature Reserve; that way I'm bound to find out where the Reserve is, and I can then drop down to the stream and walk back up it to the farm.  This looks easy on the map...

I'm now walking on a beautiful, secret path which looks as if it's auditioning for the part of 'the Old Way' or 'the path to fairyland' in some story or other.  It runs uphill between trees close-hugged by thick cords of ivy and through a carpet of wild garlic flowers.  A good opportunity to try out a recent inspiration: my plan is to use my small camera to get ground-level views of plants from underneath, as a small animal, such as a bank vole, might see them. We always seem to be looking down on flowers, or at them from the side on occasion; how would it be to see a wild garlic bloom towering above you?  Difficult, is the answer.  The camera simply can't be persuaded to focus on the plant itself though it produces nice sharp pictures of the trees above.  The sort of view that only a profoundly long-sighted vole would get. Ho hum.  Back to the drawing board on that one.  However, getting down close to ground level for this exercise means I notice some small droppings and a hazelnut with a neat section gnawed out of it.  I pocket this to consult my mammals field guide with in case it should turn out to have been chewed by something more exciting than a squirrel, but without much hope.
Vole's-eye view of a bluebell

Must move on.  The footpath now runs quite close to the stream, shaded by a wall of low, leaning-over trees.  I quicken my pace and immediately pheasants and other birds explode out of the undergrowth ahead of me.  A wren, braver than the others, shoots up right beside my feet.  I've noticed this with 'my' birds in the garden at home - birds seem to be hard-wired to react to abrupt movement.  If you amble along gently they don't seem too bothered.  There are plenty of them in the trees here - I can hear numbers of great tits going 'teacher, teacher, teacher'.

Even down here near the stream and in the shade the path is very dry and has cracks in it.  Ahead of me an earthworm is crossing it, determined, but painfully slow.  The distance I am about to step over in one stride will take him several minutes at least to cover.

Now the path is climbing away from the stream through a handsome bit of woodland with a side order of scrub in the spaces between.  Here drifts of bluebells still blow although they've been over for a fortnight or more elsewhere.  Everything looks very sharp-edged and new and I'm having the same problem as before - the more I look, the more I see, and the slower I walk.  New ferns shooting up in exquisite curlicues; orange tip butterflies; pheasants in the scrub; a snail browsing on a nettle leaf.  How would one express a snail's eye view of things?

At last I come upon the entry to the Snow's Farm Nature Reserve.  There is a token bit of fence, into which someone has jauntily stuck a cock pheasant feather, an information board, and a mass of wild garlic flowers so that it really does look like a 'snow farm'.  Now that I know where I am, I try to find a way down to the stream, which is easier said than done thanks to the nettles colonising the shaded hillside.  I spot and follow a tiny animal path which leads straight to a shallow bit of the stream bank where it would be easy for animals to drink.  Whose regular path is this?  Slots in the earth bank opposite suggest deer.

I turn away from the nature reserve and walk back up the stream, which is flowing through a cathedral of taller trees here, their branches clad in new leaves forming a fresh green curving roof.  And down on the bank amongst the spring greenery is another kill - a small deer, this time, by the look of it.  There is fur everywhere, a section of backbone with pelvis and back leg bones still attached, and a tiny, perfect hoof.  I estimate from the length of the leg bones that this deer probably stood about 3ft high at the shoulder, and wonder what killed it.

Further on, I make a semi-successful attempt to record the sound of a fat bumblebee, striped yellow and orange, which is a new one on me.  Must remember to look him up. He's buzzing around by a small spring which is running out of the ground and down into a trickle of a tributary which flows into the main stream.  Looking at this I suspect I can thank this dry spell for being able to walk along here without wellies; the ground has the air of a natural bog. There are some very striking fern shapes growing up here, all new-minted and perfect.  It's frustrating trying to photograph them because as far as the camera's concerned it's all just green on green.  Not having a brain, as such, it can't focus on the shape the way I can.  Mind you, my brain has some trouble when I try to draw one of the ferns.  My eye can follow the strong shapes, such as the sweep of the stem, but when it gets to the areas of low contrast and high density of detail, such as where the different leaves fold over into each other, my brain kind of goes 'bler' and gives up the struggle to focus, and the resulting drawing is frankly crap.  It takes a couple of goes before I get a reasonable result, by which time my eye has sorted out where to look, as it were.  Now with my brain 'tuned in' to drawing, I could happily stay for hours trying to get it right, but time is going on and I have to drag myself away.

Harassed pheasant
The next part of the valley floor really is a bog and one which my walking boots can't cope with, so I have to move higher up the side of the hill following another animal path.  This leads me to yet another killing - a pile of pheasant feathers this time.  It's definitely nature red in tooth and claw around here.  Further on, I attempt to stalk a very handsome cock pheasant in order to take a photo of his beautiful red comb appearing over the undergrowth.  He bobs in and out of cover, uneasily aware of me but not ready to fly away, and I suspect that given what might happen to him if I was a real predator, what I'm doing probably constitutes harassment.

As I arrive back at the stile by Rose's cottage, I notice that the stream flows in a pipe under the track and scramble down the bank to get a recording of the resonant glopping noise it makes coming out of the pipe.  I pause to collect the pheasant wing and as I walk away, the wind riffles through the feathers and makes the whole thing vibrate and buzz weirdly, as if the ghost of the bird was trying to escape from my grasp.  While I've been in the woods the haze has cleared and it has turned into a blue and gold afternoon.  On the grassy hillside below the farm the ewes are calling their lambs (now appreciably fatter then when I last saw them) to them as I pass by.  I spot a spent cartridge on the ground, reminding me that man isn't necessarily just an observer of the whole predator-prey thing that goes on in this apparently peaceful valley.

Google map for this walk