Patience Rewarded

The Indian Summer this week has brought all into focus. And we could not have predicted that the alien farm animals would be taken off to heighten our pleasure. What is really so special about this place? The first thing to say is that the wonderful colouring of the heather in these few weeks is even more enjoyable for those of us who see it close up daily throughout the year as a drably coloured interest-free zone. It's everything else that's self determined and unplanned that allows the purple to make a greater impact. Without them even its purpleness is unimpressive, like a temporary coat of paint for the queen's visit.

The trees spreading onto the heather are the real beauty of Blacka and the age of trees show that this is not a stable situation, it's part of a process towards a more wooded look. And those who exploit the fear of people that this uncontrolled succession might be disastrous are only defending their own role as managers, one that has already been discredited here many times.

If the managers had arrived here fifty years ago instead of just ten with  their farmland strategies, management plans and barbed wire  driven by agri-environment subsidies much of the beauty we see now would not be here. The trees that bring landscape perspective, seasonal character, songbirds, deer and much else to the moor would simply not have been allowed to grow and the farmland approach with many more livestock would by now have been ruthlessly established. And all would be so utterly dull. Just look at the ground on Whimble Holme Hill and on Burbage Moor to get an idea of this, both over-farmed and lacking in essential components of landscape appeal.