Better Dead Than Alive

It's only when the bracken has abandoned its annual effort to conquer the earth that we can start to love it. Then its bronze patterns become just a delicate part of the overall picture rather than the dominant upstart that threatens to engulf it. In larger scale views and particularly at sunrise the effect can be simply stunning. Autumn is not proper autumn without the golden carpets of bracken on Blacka underneath assorted yellows on the birch.

Think again you heathland fundamentalists. It's what nature produces unassisted that we value most.

A Good Night's Work

The deer will have been out all night so by the time the early morning walkers step onto the moor they are often on their way back to their hidden refuge like the good night-shift they are. On the day before we adjust our clocks, arriving at 7.30 am we can see them still feeding. There were two stags and some hinds. One stag was straining his eyes to pick out our presence in the dim light.


Later, on our way back the sun had risen and it was possible to see him better now clearly heading for home.

In The Dark

Darker mornings like these can be rewarding, a welcome change from the high contrast of bright sunlight and often right for autumn colours. But they cruelly expose the limitations of the camera, mine at least. This red deer was obviously a stag, his head had the male characteristics and none of the softness and big ears of the hinds. But his antlers were hard to make out.

He may have been a young animal or one with distorted antlers. I don't recall seeing him before, and it was not easy to see him today.

One of the incidental pleasures coming from looking back to the surroundings of Blacka is the sight of the cows grazing the adjoining fields.

As with flocks of migrating birds seen against the sky they dispose themselves across the setting in a way that is never exactly the same but could also never be anything else. But today's dim light does not score as many points as yesterday when their positions were extended by lengthy early shadows.

Today's comparative gloom did manage to lift briefly as the clouds parted to allow a few seconds of brightness.

Managing The Peak District - Who Decides?

A process is going on at this moment which will affect the way our local landscape looks and how we are able to use it. The Eastern Peak District Moors Estate is publicly owned by the Peak National Park Authority. It covers a seriously large area that amounts to one of the most significant recreational spaces in the country, easily accessible to a huge population living close by, especially those within the city of Sheffield and the town of Chesterfield.

The PDNPA has decided to offer a partnership role to an organisation who will manage the estate on behalf of the national park. This kind of thing is not very different to what has happened in Sheffield where the council gave large parts of its countryside assets to Sheffield Wildlife Trust on a lease. In the case of the Eastern Moors estate the PDNPA has put the management out to tender. Two consortiums are bidding. One is the RSPB with the National Trust and the other is SWT along with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. Nobody who knows anything about SWT on Blacka can have any wish for them to be involved in any further stretches of our countryside in this way. They are simply not competent.

Having found out about this process quite late in the day, the first thing that concerns us is the vision that the potential manager will be expected to implement. This vision can be seen here. There are some things in this statement I might approve of but where is the accountability at this stage? Was there wide consultation in defining this vision? Perhaps there was, but if so why were we not aware of it and able to participate in its formulation? And reading the text it's obvious that the issue of consultation has again been fudged. The part of the document that deals with consultation makes no sense whatsoever, viz:

"Continued consultation both in house (and with statutory bodies such as EH when appropriate) regarding management works (such as burning, flailing, heather cutting and scrape creation)."

The brackets just confuse the issue. Who is being consulted? Are the public who know and use these areas involved? What else is being consulted on? How did this get into print when it's logically absurd?

Deer Country

The autumn adds special features to this area of Blacka. Bracken is a plant that's at its best when dead. The early morning sun enhances it to a status alongside many precious museum artefacts visited by far more people.

The deer this morning were off quickly before we could approach, but numerous deep atmospheric bellows could be heard echoing down in their favourite valley.

It must have been cold during the night and frost could be seen coating the moss and bracken.

Later a short shower gave us a rainbow over the trees,

Roadworks

The Highways Department project on Hathersage Road goes on....and on. The cost must be astronomic. Is it really envisaged that this will make the road safer? I've already expressed my view that any 'improvement' to the road is most likely to influence drivers to go faster and that's the last thing we need. In the duration of these roadworks so far the whole stretch has been slowed down because of traffic lights and this has significantly calmed the road and made it more pleasurable to drive along. Waiting at the lights might even have persuaded some people to look around them at the scenery. Can we not learn from this? So-called 'road improvement' is not what we should be doing. Reducing speeds and making people wait is the answer. This is why this blog supports a reduction to 40 mph, cattle grids at intervals and removing walls to allow all animals to wander at will. Oh, and speed cameras set to catch anyone driving 1 mph over the limit. This is a National Park not a racing track. Anyone wishing to drive recklessly should contribute to a fund for the purchase of a purpose built track well away from where the rest of us go.

The Hollow

Sooner or later all visitors to Blacka arrive at The Hollow. It's a sheltered spot surrounded by slightly higher ground and trees thus offering some protection from keen winds. For this reason it's a tempting place to linger on certain days in the year.

Running through is the stream, often only a trickle in drier periods, but a raging torrent on mornings after a deluge in the night.

The waters disappear to the east.......

Those who want to see where it goes can wander through the trees to come to the top of the plunge down into Blacka Dyke. This also is a thrilling spot after heavy rain.

The only serious eyesore in the area is the powerline thoughtlessly routed through here many years ago.

Just to the side of The Hollow is a small grove of trees planted by The Ramblers in the 1970s.

This can be lovely in autumn.