The Mini-Mountain

Ridgegate Reservoir

The second of our Peak District walks was Macclesfield Forest and Shutlingsloe hill. Heading towards the Peak District, we knew there'd be a lot of snow- there were still big snow clouds lingering from Boxing Day night (Boxing Night?), but we didn't quite realise how much there would be once we got up into the hills. Macclesfield had had a bit of snow, but no more than a few centimetres at best. So, when we got out the car and put on our boots at Ridgegate Reservoir, although the road was icy and there was a lot of snow in the forest, even then we didn't understand the amount of snow we were going to come across.
For reference, the walk we did should have taken around 2-4 hours, depending on walking pace and stops. In the very difficult weather, it took us around 6-7 hours. We did stop at the Hanging Gate pub for a fairly long time though.

Macclesfield Forest is owned by the Forestry Commission, and is used as a source of timber and water, from the two nearby reservoirs.It also has important leisure and wildlife connections. Primarily spruce, it provides habitat for goldcrest, crossbills and other coniferous-loving species. We headed up the red route towards Shutlingsloe through the forest, and quickly found that there was a lot more snow up here than there was in the middle of town!

Despite this, it was fairly busy in the forest, until we came to the footpath up to Shutlingsloe peak. Apparently another name for it is the mini-mountain, which, as I found out the following day, when we drove past and visibility across the Peak District was much better, was very very apt. It's 1,660ft high, and pretty much the epitome of a mountain in all but height. Straight up one side, straight down the other- when we came to it, through white-out snowclouds, there were a few people sledging, which made me think it was less steep than it actually was.

The bottom of Shutlingsloe

Then, I saw the path, disappearing up at a 45' angle, and realised we were in for a climb, rather than a walk. It was a trek up that can't really be put into words, so hopefully a few pictures will do it justice...

The top was sheer white-out, with none of the view to be seen. The path down the other side towards Wildboarclough was difficult to find through the masses of snow- there are actually two paths, one that's very steep, and one that felt very steep, but apparently wasn't quite as bad. In the thick snow that came up to our knees at points, it was pretty treacherous. It's not a walk for those who have any difficulty in walking difficult routes, because under the snow there were still tufts of grass, rocky bits and very steep parts of the path. Which I assume we were on, as most of the time we ended up just following previous walkers' tracks, and hoping we wouldn't trip and cause a broken ankle. There was no way of avoiding falling over completely, and more than once we both found ourselves covered in snow after a slip!

The 'view' at the top!

At the bottom the path ran down to Wildboarclough, and a small pub, the Crag Inn. We didn't stop as we had a long way to walk still, heading up through the fields on a footpath. This again, was popular with sledges and snowboarders! A couple of kestrels sat on the electricity wires near Sheepclough Gutter. We found a few more snowmen along the walk as well, and a big buzzard got disturbed on our approach to one of the remote farms found out in a valley.

The walk back from Wildboarclough

It was starting to get dull by the time we got to the last crest of hill and saw the Hanging Gate pub in front of us- caution had paid off, as we would have had a very long walk in failing light across hills if we had stopped at the Crag Inn! This last part of path was extremely muddy though, and a bit of a challenge to get down without getting stuck.

Happily we both kept our boots though, and found the Hanging Gate was tiny, but served hot chips and had a fire to dry our coats out a little bit by.

When we left it was dark, so I don't have any pictures of the walk back along the country lane to the car. It was very straightforward though (literally), and not difficult to walk at all. The snow clouds had cleared by this time (it was about 5.30pm), and the sky was utterly dark, with the stars really bright. The moon was only half-full, but we could see our shadows as we had our back to it walking along, which meant we kept checking back to make sure there wasn't a car on it's way! Thankfully it was very quiet, and we made it back to the reservoir fairly quickly for about 6pm. The last car there, there was none of the tricky parking that we had had to do in the morning!

The Shivering Mountain

Been on a bit of a hiatus over the holiday season, because I've been so busy travelling up and down the country and enjoying the (fairly good) weather! A large part of my holiday I was in the Peak District, so the next few posts are going to be from there.

On Boxing Day (my birthday), we headed to the Peak District from Macclesfield to Mam Tor. Mam Tor is a fairly massive steep hill near Castleton, which you can see from the top, factory belching smoke included. The path isn't the easiest climb, but it's well maintained by the National Trust, so it's not horrendous. Once you get to the top, there's an awesome view- even with cloud- and a nice long walk along the ridge of hills.

The path from Mam Tor

It gets a bit rougher further along, but even in the mucky damp weather we had, it was alright to climb, and very busy! In good weather, you can see really far, almost to Manchester, but we had low snow clouds for the whole day, so we couldn't see that far.

It took us a couple of hours to work our way along the top of the ridge and down towards Castleton, to the east of Mam Tor. The path down was a bit difficult for us to find, as our map was a little dated. There were some pretty steep bits here and there, and lots of winter mud too, but it was okay with walking boots on!
Castleton is small- we didn't go into it really as our path diverted away along the Odin Sitch river and back towards the hills, but we did find some chickens interested in stealing bits of gingerbread...

We also came across a hare bounding through the fields as we walked through the fields! Too quick to take photos of though, it was off in a flash. Heading back up the hills, we came to one of the most interesting bits of our walk; the A625 road. Now, this might not sound exciting at first mention- after all, how can just an A-road be interesting?

Backstory time! Mam Tor is also called the Shivering Mountain, because of Mam Tor's primarily shale geology. Multiple landslips have occurred over time, causing multiple smaller hills to form on the side of the peak itself. The A625 road was built in the 1800s, but closed in 1979 due to landslips distorting the road beyond safety. Once we got there, it was instantly obvious as to why!

Cross section of part of the old tarmacked road. The drop was a good 5ft down

You can see the effort put into trying to keep the road flat and open, by the multiple levels of tarmac put onto the road! It's ruined now, although a couple of cars did follow us up quite a long way along the driveable part of the road... which was concerning, when you couldn't see the drop in the previous picture until you were literally standing on it!

We didn't stick around for too long, as it was fairly late by the time we got to the road, and the snow clouds were starting to close in more and more. So, these are annoyingly the only two pictures I have! By the time we got back to the car though, it was dark. And, an extra-special birthday surprise, it started to snow when we were walking along the last (driveable) road to the National Trust car park for Mam Tor!

You can find the approximate route for the walk we did on the National Trust's page.

St James' Park

St James' Park in London, at first glance, looks pretty standard; but once you get to the lake, there are some really interesting ornamental ducks. In the 1930's, oriental ducks were introduced to St James' Park; today there are over 250 waterfowl on the lake. The most exotic of these are certainly the famous great white pelicans that once ate a pigeon (not for the faint hearted). There are 4 pelicans in the park today; clipped on one wing to stop them from escaping into London and causing chaos- which they used to do quite regularly, flying over to London Zoo to steal fish from the birds there! We were lucky enough to come across all four pelicans on our London adventures.

It's not just the pelicans that are awesome about St James' Park though. There are loads of smaller ducks that aren't found very frequently, and are really very cool. On an island in the middle of the main lake there's a bird breeding sanctuary. Visitors can't go and see the birds breeding there, but on the water it's easy to spot red-crested pochard, wigeon, mandarins (ducks, not small oranges), egyptian geese and possibly my new favourite, the fulvous whistling duck. The park also has booming populations of canada goose, swan (black as well as white), shag, heron, coot, moorhen, mallard and heron. Despite being in the middle of London, there's a huge range of birdlife! There's about 114 species annually, with around 90 extra rarer birds on top of that that sometimes visit.

 

The squirrels are well known for being some of the boldest, tamest around in this park as well. Bring peanuts at your peril, because they're absolutely everywhere, and won't hesitate to come and mob you for free food. They don't care at all if you creep up to get some close photos, although they are very curious! Too close, and they'll swipe at your camera lens.

 

It then leapt on my arm before skittering away when it found it had made a mistake

The pigeons are very tame too, and always on the lookout for food. We didn't even have anything to feed them, and they were all over our feet!

The best time to see the waterfowl is between November and April, because the drakes (male ducks) are in their breeding plumage, so are really brightly coloured. There are a couple of small cafes in the park to go and warm up in afterwards if it's a chilly day, so it's definitely something awesome to go and check out if you're ever in London for the day!

We went on a bear hunt...

This isn't really my normal sort of post, but at the moment London is covered in bears. Paddington bears! There have been a lot of sculpture trails in the past (you name it, there's probably been a sculpture trail of it), but these ones are pretty cute to go and visit a few. We actually came across another couple who were running around visiting all the sculptures within one day, who had already visited 20 when we found our first in Covent Garden at 10.30am! They were hoping to end up at the O2 dome by the end of the day having seen them all.

Covent Garden, Rainbow

The bears are in London from the 4th November to the 30th December, so they're still around for a while to go and visit over Christmas! There's 50 spread across London, a lot of them around Soho and Marylebone, so that's a good place to start if you want to see a lot in one go. There are also London Buses all over the place too, so tying the two together as one big sculpture trail could be a great day out exploring bits of London you might not normally end up in! We were heading towards the British Museum anyway, so a cheerful bear was an extra bonus to find outside.

British Museum, Bear Necessities

After running around the British Museum for a couple of hours, and then back to Covent Garden for lunch, the next place we happened across a Paddington was Regent's Park. I've got another post coming about Regent's Park itself, and its fantastic collection of ornamental waterfowl. This little bear was sitting outside by the Cabinet War Rooms though, providing more interesting stuff to look at outside the park as well as inside it.

Regent's Park, Paddington Jack

After wandering around Regent's Park a little bit, we headed back towards South Bank for the evening to see the Christmas Market via Big Ben. We managed to find another bear by surprise, which I think was my favourite one of the day. He was attracting a lot of interest when we turned up (which I think made him easier to find), but we managed to snap a quick picture when a few people wandered off again.

Westminster, Good News Bear

Jays

I've been quite surprised, after moving back into Hertfordshire, at the number of jays roaming around. Down in Dorset and up in Birmingham, a jay was a fairly rare sight for me; magpies and crows were much more common, and it was quite exciting to see a jay bouncing along a tree branch, or picking up leaves off the floor. Here though, while I keep expecting the terrible chak-chak-chak racket to be one of the former two birds, it normally always turns out that in fact it's a jay.

Image from RSPB.com

For all the commonness of them here, they still seem to be completely under the radar of most people- the first bird I tend to go for when the question's asked 'what's that big colourful bird?' is jay. I am always surprised by their unknown status by most when you take into account a jay's striking plumage; they must be one of the brightest large birds found in a garden, almost on a par with the green parakeets of London. I find these aren't quite as bold though, even if they are really very very noisy still!

Image from Wildlifephotographic.com

Jays are actually one of the biggest planters of acorns, collecting and planting up to 3000 acorns each in a month! This may be the reason for why I've been seeing so many around recently, as it's peak acorn time- and there are a lot of trees around where I live too, their preferred habitat. Jays, like all corvids, are clever birds. Although they don't use twig tools to get at food like crows do, a study by Cheke et al (2011) showed that they could actually learn to use tools if they wanted to. Multiple birds in the study learnt to use tool when they got an immediate reward, but less understood how to receive a reward when multiple different tools and stages were needed. Individual differences obviously had an effect. This was only a small study though, using five different birds, so conclusive evidence that jays can or cannot use tools to extract rewards shouldn't be taken from it. It can be said that they are very clever birds though!

Map from Birdforum.net

Jays are spread really widely across the world; the one we have in this country is the Eurasian jay (or just a jay, it's the original jay after other species in different countries are named). They're pretty birds, and I do enjoy seeing them, but they can make you jump with the noise they make!

The day I fell in a bog

I was in Guildford for the weekend visiting my boyfriend- with sunday being pretty good weather (November, and didn't need coats! Not expecting a snowy winter this year...) we decided to head out on an adventure and see what we could find
Heading north out of Burpham (where his flat is), we walked along Clay Lane towards Jacob's Well and Worpleston. The area was completely new to us; the only reason we knew of Worplesdon is because the train from Woking stops at Worplesdon sometimes. There are vegetables growing on the platform too, which is pretty cute.

About halfway between Burpham and Worplesdon is Whitmoor Common, our adventure spot of the day. Whitmoor Common is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) on the edge of the Bagshot Beds, a sandy soil formation. A mix of sandy and peaty soil means that there's a mixture of dry and wet heathland plants on higher and lower areas. It's fairly big, and pretty boggy in the winter- especially this Sunday, when it had just rained all day Saturday. We had to take a couple of backtracks heading into the common, because it was just absolutely impassable without wellies! The mud and puddles meant I got some pretty cool macro shots with my camera though.

Despite balancing somewhat precariously to take these, it wasn't until we were walking back along this path a bit further up that I fell over. I was pretty lucky that I mostly just got a bit wet, and not absolutely coated in mud. We carried on though, finding a slightly less sodden path- and a rope swing too, which we quickly took advantage of!

Heathlands always have very diverse flora; there are the big plants like heather (and each heather is slightly different- you don't have just 'heather', there's also bell heather, cross-leaf heath and ling, so quite a range!) and a few trees like silver birch. It's very easy to miss the smaller plants though, that are extremely varied once you actually start looking. It's the smaller plants that allow such a high diversity of other organisms to survive on heathlands too- bees, ants and other insects really depend on smaller plants.

The heath turns into wet woodland at the northern edge. Perhaps it wasn't supposed to be quite as wet as it actually was. The lichen makes quite nice patterns on the north side of trees where it's colder and moister; there's less on the southern side of trees because it's more prone to drying out in bright sunshine.

You can see the orange lichen on the north side of the trees

By the time we made it out of the woods, it was starting to get quite cold and dark- the evenings draw in so quick these days! Just made it home before a few drips of rain.

More adventures from Lickey Hills

I have more adventures from Lickey Hills- same trip as last time, just a few different pictures. I took too many pictures that weekend that are way too nice to not use!

Lickey Hills covers 524 acres on the edge of south Birmingham, and has some pretty interesting geology that my friend Laura could tell you a lot more about in her blog. That means you get a lot of different trees depending on the soil types around- the south-west of the park is mostly deciduous trees like oaks, beeches and birch, while the eastern side is more coniferous. The southern end of the park actually counts as Ancient woodland is really important for some communities, as they house species that colonise and disperse slowly, so aren't supported in new forested areas. Ancient woodlands support flora such as bluebells- in the spring, Lickey Hills is covered in this purple flowers!

Inside a den to avoid the rain!

At the top of the park by the visitors' centre there's an awesome view across the whole of Birmingham (you can see the University of Birmingham's Old Joe!), and lots of heathland. Apparently people head up there in late summer to pick bilberries from the bushes there, although I've never been around at the right time to gather some myself. The heathland also supports common lizard and adder populations, which like to bask on hot summer days.

They always have loads of fun activities on up at the park, especially at the weekends. I'm probably most biased towards suggesting the GeoChampions (again, Laura knows more about this than I do), who look at the geology of Lickey Hills and do all sorts of fun things with that. There's volunteer work parties that clear scrub and brush too though, and kids events on- especially during holidays. There's a tai-chi group that meets on sundays by the Monument too! Basically it's a pretty cool place, and if you've been to the woods a lot, there's always new reasons to go with their events happening so often.