"I must be mad," I often think. Why would anyone set themselves the task of walking on Blacka Moor early every morning? So often it is wet or muddy or there's a bitterly cold wind or you can hardly see a thing. Yes I'm definitely mad to do this. It's only when I look at my fellow man and see what he chooses to do that I hesitate.
But then we get a morning like today. We could see straight away that the sky would be clear once the sun climbed above the layer of cloud near the eastern horizon. And already a herd of ten stags was visible, also probably looking forward to some of the sun's warmth on their backs. There had been a hard frost.
And so it was. A postcard today from a fellow Blacka lover arrived from Australia where he's experiencing the pleasures of unrelieved summer sun. Still I believe our pleasure was greater when the sun did burst through.
The stags eventually made their way to the edge of the trees not too happy with our presence.
2 comments:
That tree stump at bottom left of one of the pictures looks suspiciously large to have been felled without a felling licence. How much felling took place? The upper limit without a licence is trees less than 8-10cm diameter at chest height, and no more than 5 cubic metres per quarter. Does anyone check that SWT are observing these limits?
Mark, I'm afraid it's happening all the time. They're chain-saw happy and like to say they've done something apart from sitting at desks producing paperwork. They see their role as 'managing the reserve' and when you challenge them they fall back on phrases like 'it has to be managed' To them this means cutting down trees. I'll ask them about licences but I'm sure they've never heard about them and will claim some authority or other from the NE mafia.
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