Wilder than Exmoor ?

Not Exmoor

Those who watch the BBC2 series about Johnny Kingdom will know that much of the programmes' content concerns the presenter photographing red deer on Exmoor. Having only seen brief excerpts it's hard to comment, but what has struck me forcibly is that the landscape on Blacka Moor inside the boundary of the industrial city of Sheffield appears to me much more wild than the pictures of Exmoor as seen on television. Red deer have been on Exmoor for many years but visually the experience of seeing wild stags roaming Blacka is more of a thrill. The combination of animals and landscape here is something quite exceptional.

Anyone coming to Blacka will have the advantage over visitors to Exmoor that they will not be in danger of coming across a character wearing ill-fitting camouflaged clothing creeping along the ground carrying vast quantities of expensive camera equipment. Blacka Blogger is a retiring person whose camera is a simple inexpensive Fuji that fits easily in a jacket pocket.

Not Blacka Blogger

On the BBC website for the programmes there is a link to "Breathing Places" in 'your own area'. Following this and entering a postcode you can get to Blacka Moor. Yet oddly enough despite the fact that it is found on the Johnny Kingdom pages there is absolutely no mention of deer. Instead it draws attention to the upland breeding birds which are not as strong a feature on Blacka as on numerous other local moors!! All odd but not altogether unexpected. The information came from SWT.