Water!

This morning's sky was again grey and unappealing. Forecasts for rain around the country were not convincing when they came to mention the east face of the central hills. Here it's been a summer of dry cool and cloudy weather. The ground has rarely been as dry. Even the track to the sheep enclosure, where it's always wet below the spring on Totley Moor, has been bone dry for some time. The slight drizzle in the air could be all we get. Still, even with several hours of heavy rain the streams will not fill up.

How do the animals manage? Deer can get where they wish easily and lower down some of the streams have useful amounts. The cattle have followed a well formed deer track to the stream below Bole Hill and some of them have followed the dry bed until it was joined by some trickles coming down the slope. There they have made a pretty thorough job of wrecking its appeal. The sheep enclosure is simply one of dreariest places imaginable.
This SSSI, unit 70 of the Eastern Peak District Moors, is characterised by its miserable looking sheep who defecate all over the grass a process well understood of converting flowering plants (that never flower) into brown stuff that comes out the other end. The stream there has been dry for months and the grazier has put a galvanised tank at the top of the hill which I believe he occasionally fills. I've been there twice over the last ten days and each time it was empty as it was this morning.
Sheep were waiting around patiently (see top). When water does come it will be too late for some.

Last year the grazing programme had problems and most of the year the land was free of sheep and cattle. This hillside was glorious mass of harebells and other flowers and waving grasses. After ten minutes searching this morning I eventually found one harebell. Why this land was designated SSSI is a bit of amystery to me. My best guess is that it was a piece of administrative tidying up at the office. I've seen the latest NE report from last year and it touches on various insider terms such as sward and thatch and then suggests that it would benefit from a higher density of grazing. God help us all, where does NE find these people and what kind of dogma has been instilled into them? The report mentions that the interest here is birds and the fungi. I like seeing the fungi in autumn but when I do it is frankly enjoyed as a compensation for the sheep dung all around them and the utter dreariness of the rest of the year.