Delays

Apologies for the paucity of posts this week. There are many posts queuing up. I'm just temporarily lacking the time to assemble them.

Spectacular

Friday's jackdaw event was one of the best ever. For anyone who doesn't know about this I can recommend it as being just one of the most spectacular wildlife sights observable in the district. It's also one of the hardest to photograph, at least with a fairly cheap camera like mine.

It's on a par with the displays of breeding sea birds at suitable cliff sites in Spring or the wheeling aerial dances of starlings before roosting.

You need to be at Stony Ridge at daybreak at this time of year, some 40 minutes before sunrise. Of course the easy way to see it is to be driving into Sheffield on the A625 from Derbyshire, but the distractions could cause an accident.

Cycling on Footpaths

The cyclist here is on the Strawberry Lee bridleway. It's interesting because she (?) is looking straight ahead. Usually I find cyclists up here are looking down. I approve of bicycles. For a start they are quieter and slower than cars and I prefer a slower pace to life. I would sooner ban cars than bikes. It's some years now since I was a cyclist, but to me they belong on roads and made up tracks. Seeing them on hills and moors never seems right. I'm uneasy about off road bikes in the countryside. Not surprising seeing that for the first half of my lifetime you would never have seen anyone on a bike on a country path, only on tarmac roads. Then along came heavy duty tyres and mountain bikes and all changed.

Cyclists are permitted by law to ride their bikes on designated bridleways. Not elsewhere, and that includes Rights of Way, informal footpaths and other routes and open areas which can be crossed on foot.

It's easy to see when this restriction has been ignored on the typically soft peaty earth of Blacka. This has been the subject of discussions at recent RAG (Reserve Advisory Group) meetings. It was decided that we would like small signs to be strategically placed at certain path junctions just where there had been or was likely to be a problem and that these signs should simply say "Walkers Only". One of the reasons for this was that not only the cyclists would be aware but also other visitors would know that cyclists should not be there.

Unfortunately, despite the issue being raised several times over a number of years, SWT have made no move to implement this - a situation not unusual with them. On Sunday afternoon (yesterday) three cyclists were observed on a route which was not a bridleway and not even a PROW. The result is a further mashing up of a pleasantly informal path. If SWT had put signs at the beginning of the route it could have had an effect. Nobody wants a wild place to be littered with signs but this can be reviewed after a time and anyway they would be positioned at entrance points.

The problem with cycling here is chiefly the impact the wheels have on a path. A bike is much more efficient at eroding the surface of paths than a walkers boots for obvious reasons. It maintains constant contact with the ground, the two wheels tend to cover the same ground and it is more inflexible, harder to make adjustments (for example to go from stone to stone as a walker might). But I think my reservations go further even than that. There is something about the speed at which a cyclist travels and the fact he invariably and of necessity is looking at the ground in front of him. This singles him out from the walker whose pace is slower allowing him to look all round as he's walking thereby feeling more related to the country he's going through. Too often the cyclist unless he stops sees little of his surroundings which tends to disconnect him from where he is. This doesn't apply on a tarmac track or road, where normally the ground is smooth and consistent. A horse rider is not constrained in the same way. The horse itself looks after most of the decisions about where to put its feet.

But the most worrying thing that has happened in recent years has been the development of 'extreme' cycling. I always feared this would be the next step. Practitioners of this believe they should be allowed to go anywhere and at whatever speed they want. Cycles have been driven off the road by selfish car drivers. Are walkers to be driven off the footpaths because some cyclists treat them as race tracks?

Views West, Views East

For residents in Sheffield's western suburbs the view to their west will take in the high land including Blacka, Burbage and Houndkirk. This is highly valued by many people, and much referred to by estate agents, some houses having been designed and built positioned to take advantage of the favourable outlook. Others have had windows later put in to contrive the same advantage.

When up here on Blacka we see the other side of this. Unlike Burbage and Houndkirk, Blacka is aligned so that its main views are to the east. It's true that the northern outlook takes in a good part of Houndkirk and that the very highest point of Blacka's pasture land allows a glimpse of some land further to the west including Higger Tor. Topmost parts of Bole Hill also give a more panoramic view. But for most visitors who stop to look around them the eye is more often drawn towards the outlying parts of Sheffield, Dore, Totley, Holmesfield and neighbouring attractive stretches of green farmland leading towards Chesterfield.This gives Blacka a different character to some of the nearby moorland which looks out towards Derbyshire's High Peak. So despite the appealing wildness of Blacka itself its views are more vulnerable to what goes on in the swathe of land that protected by green belt restrictions last century. At its best this view to the east adds appeal setting the wildness in a context of green farmland on a pleasantly human scale.

More recently larger structures have appeared, out of scale with the small groupings of houses around Dore and Totley. Clearly the planning process has failed in its duty to protect us from inappropriate development. Do the planners even bother about the impact on the view from the green amenity land or do they just think that its an unimportant consideration because nobody actually lives here?

Nobody?

November Light

We've had very little bright sunlight lately and that may be to be expected in November. But when there is sunlight to be had in the middle of the day the quality is excellent due to the sun being lower in the sky.

Early morning light is our usual preference nearer to the middle of the year. Sun almost overhead at midday is less attractive, giving a consistent but less interesting light. This time of year offers delicate and more varied effects throughout the day. But only when the clouds break.

The hinds were unaccompanied. They enjoy having sun on their backs and weren't to be easily disturbed by the larger than normal number of visitors most of them with dogs. Those who were aware of the deer being present were keen to make sure the dogs did not cause problems.

As Well To Be Sure

There are a number of wood rotting fungi of similar appearance. But it's best to look more carefully than we did this morning, beyond just taking a snap of something attractive. For example if this is the Velvet Shank it is edible but if it's the Sulphur Tuft it's poisonous. The Brick Cap meanwhile is inedible but probably won't do you as much damage. Tomorrow we must look for the colour of the stem.

Building Up

With mild weather dominating it's best to take the opportunity to get plenty of food inside you before the colder stuff comes along. The stag was not going to be easily distracted from his feeding although the smaller hind prefers to know what's going on.