WINTER WALKS

 

WINTER WALKS

Snowy Woods

It was probably the winter of 1946/7, when we had so much snow. One of Dad’s good ideas backfired, but I’m glad he was oblivious, or at least didn’t let on. If it was that winter, I was gone 11 but still prey to menacing imaginings.

            There was a brilliant moon and he decided we’d go for a night walk in the woods. The snow had obliterated the path but we walked among the trees, picking our way in the direction we wanted without difficulty as we both knew well that area of the great ancient oak wood near home.

            The air was utterly still, the tree trunks black and straight, and the snow’s crusted surface sparkled. The deep silence oppressed me. I had the strong sense we were being watched. Followed. I wanted to listen for footsteps behind us, but paradoxically the silence was filled with the crunch crunch of our footsteps breaking through the crisp surface and compressing the softness beneath.  I dared not look behind yet I schooled myself to stop and glance back. Nothing but tree trunks. But even the bigger oaks threatened. They were big enough to conceal a follower, a watcher.

My head was full of the echo of my pounding heart.

The nameless presence had already invaded me. My crunching footsteps were its crunching footsteps. My heartbeat was its heartbeat. It was within me. The follower was Fear. I was crushed by its malevolence. Only a scream would release it but my throat was paralyzed.

Dad was entranced by the magical scene and I’m sure he’d have been amazed if I’d sought his hand for reassurance, but my fear prevented all thought of contact. I was held in an isolating island within my foreboding. I laugh at myself now!

 

WIND 

The sharp cleansing of a cold wind is invigorating; the balmy softness of a southerly breeze is comforting. Positively good feelings about my old enemy. No warnings of trouble impending, which for years was the reaction to strong wind which haunted me for so long. On Bardsey my response to wind was an oppressive anxiety of danger at sea for the small open boats our men were in while making the crossing to the mainland, or out pulling pots. And damage to the roofs of the buildings was always at the back of our minds. The clatter of wind -stressed slates above our heads was a reminder.

             Then for ten years as a trawlerman’s wife, haunted by possible widowhood and fatherless children. Whenever the wind got up, there was menace. Nights were disturbed as every gust, change of direction, increasing force, was felt on the roof and sent along an invisible thread to wake my anxiety.

Does all this reflect my earliest memory when still in the push chair I was wheeled alongside a row of old oaks at the roadside, hearing the wind roaring in the branches. One was  wrenched off and lying below. Did it happen then, or was it just evidence of an earlier storm?

And when a bit older and walking, I was afraid of the wind in those trees, pausing at the beginning of the row to pluck up courage and then dash across  to the safety of the far end. I sensed my parents were bemused by this antic. I never said, probably hardly comprehended my fear.

It has taken more than half a lifetime to shed the feeling of the wind’s menace and to enjoy the ever-changing variation of moving air.

 

WALK, mid January

Our lockdown walk this morning was a breath of fresh, calm air after the wet, windy Storm Cristoph which brought so much misery of floods and snow further north. A watery sun shone through small gaps in the thin cloud, but it wasn’t strong enough to make shadows. Great and Blue Tits and Chaffinches were calling fitfully in the hedges, arching thorny briars of dog roses leaned over, still carrying blackening hips; Hazel catkins were shaking loose, aptly named Lambs’Tails by country children. The ivy berries, always the last of the winter harvest to ripen, still weren’t really ready.

We were walking round Luckett Great Meadow down by the Tamar, boundary between Cornwall and Devon. At the far end, the ditch which drains Hampt Marsh was a rushing gushing stream and nearer where it runs into the Tamar, the water was backed up in a muddy lagoon, such was the height of the main river, swollen by the recent rain.

 

An Alder leaning over the stream was a soft purple haze of still unopened catkins.

 

 The river was full. Great quantities of muddy water swirled past, the trees and bushes normally up above the water, were up to their knees but clots of twigs and leaves, abandoned right up on top of the bank showed the water had been about 4 feet higher at its peak. A recently-planted young tree, well up on the bank and protected by a stake and tree-guard, had flood debris draped around its guard. It had had its first christening!

 

Bank-high.

 

 Clumps of snowdrops, widely naturalized in Cornwall, were standing flowering undeterred, on the bank newly scoured by the flood. A Song Thrush sang loudly, repeating his phrases from the top of an oak.

Our usual way back out of the meadow alongside another stream running  from Luckett into the main river was blocked by more backed-up water and a fallen tree so we made our way through the middle of the meadow which has a long wet reedy depression, no doubt an old riverway  until we could go round the head of it and back to the gate. We put up what must have been at least 15 Snipe from the rushes, getting up in ones, twos and little groups with a grating call as they zigzagged away. Crouching down, Tony called me back to look at a recent Field Vole’s dining table, a little pile of fresh, neatly-chewed short lengths of grass stems and leaves hidden in the centre of the raised dome of a clump of rush.

Our usual return was blocked. The river had backed up the gullies.

Snipe.

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Do you want Wintry Showers or Waterholes in the Sun?

DO YOU WANT WINTRY SHOWERS OR WATERHOLES IN THE SUN? 

For Jill in Tazmania  

My friend Jill, visiting us from Australia said ruefully ‘I’d forgotten how BLACK it is in England.’ We’d worked together at a St Ivel creamery in Somerset when we were young. She emigrated with her husband and young family under the £10 Pom emigration scheme in the early 60s and we have kept in touch ever since, exchanging visits, letters and, these days, frequent e-mails and a Christmas Zoom. 

She had come from the limpid light of an Australian summer to a gloomy English Winter. And yes, when I think of it, to look around on a wet, overcast winter’s day it does look black. The hedges are pared back to bare black twigs. Passing traffic has flung mud up onto the banks covering the vegetation with a coating of dark muck, BUT my Ozzie friend! Look closer, and in the depths of the hedge you can discern a few bright green new leaves unfolding; a pale Primrose, unblemished, gazes upwards.

 However, this time it’s been a toss-up whether I think of ‘Wintry Showers’ or ‘Waterholes in the Sun’ and I opt for the latter. If only to forget the chore of dressing with all those layers on a winter morning compared with slipping on T-shirt and shorts in warm Australia! 

In a hot arid climate like Australia’s, water in any form draws wildlife and people like a magnet. My most warming memory of aboriginal children (No! We must call them indigenous these days) was when we drove along a dusty track in the north, apparently miles from anywhere, and came across a group of perhaps eight kids diving and larking about in a pool close to the track. They were laughing and splashing and having a whale of a time as we crept past not wanting to throw up too much dust. What a contrast to the frequent signs we had witnessed in townships elsewhere, of dysfunctional indigenous youngsters solvent sniffing, truanting and petty-thieving. 

Water comes in many shapes and sizes in Australia, and from extreme drought to tremendous floods; from sweet quality to brackish, mineralized until it’s unfit to drink, and even salty.

Leaking bore at Burketown in the Gulf country.

 From our log: “ We reached Burketown before lunch. The sign said ‘Inhabitants 325. Height above sea level 15m. Founded 1889 ‘ The road was metalled as it ran along the main street lined with a garage, pubs, a liquor store and the Shire office. The lady in the office told us the (dirt)road between here and Gregory Downs would be OK for conventional vehicles while it was dry. Just outside town what we first thought was a fountain turned out to be a leaking bore, the steaming water trickling down over a great incrustation discoloured with streaks of grey, black and bright rust chemicals evaporating out of the water. A couple of Brolgas and an Ibis were foraging around in the marshy ground all around.’ This was an artesian bore drilled in 1887 and had been hoped to facilitate the development of a meat-works but the venture failed. 

 

 

 Kim's drawing of a Straw-necked Ibis(on a different occasion.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There are great numbers of salt lakes in the interior. From our log on our way from Ayers Rock back to the Stuart Highway “We stopped to look. The ground was dry and sparkling white. A salty trickle was running into it at one place and the crust near the water broke under our feet showing a moist greyish sludge . Harsh twiggy plants studded the surface and on top of one, not far away was a small bird perching stonechat-like, but it had a bright red breast and belly and a bright white patch under its chin. It was a Scarlet Chat, a ‘first’ for us. The grey foliage and yellow and white daisies of Poached Egg plant straggled at the crispy margins. The dazzling whiteness made the blazing sun seem even hotter.”

 

The salt makes a thin white crust. It can break and reveal a sticky grey sludge underneath.

Salt Lake on the way to Ayers Rock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crimson Chat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The rocky scarps within the tropical rainforests create waterfalls plunging into cool shady pools, overhung with creepers, making romantic swimming pools.

Waterfall and plunge pool in the Hammersley Ranges, Western Australia.

 

Pandoriana vine.

The arid interior depends on natural wells and deep artesian water tapped by wind-pumps. 

The familiar sight of a clanking wind pump.

 

  Sometimes the highly mineralized bore water although given to cattle, is really unfit to drink and it makes a terrible cup of tea, tasting of iodine. 

The highways authorities dig scrapes known as tanks to collect rainwater for use in road construction and maintenance. Seasonal rains can be collected in shallow ‘dams’ All of these sources of water attract wildlife and of course any stock being run on the grasslands and ranges

.From our log: “ Thursday Aug 17th’95. We have pulled off now for an early stop at Cumberland Dam. There is a strong but not cold, wind blowing, keeping the flies away.This was once a gold town but now the only remains are a red brick chimney built by Cornish miners and a few rusty iron machinery relics among a sparse scrub. 

There are a couple of shallow dams here and where there is water there will be birds. The Bauhinia trees were flowering and were full of Woodswallows and Honeyeater. We sat quietly in the shelter of a bush near the water as a big flock of budgies flew down to the waterside. Like green jewels flashing in the sun, they landed in bunches momentarily before whirring up again and others came down to sip for seconds before flying up again in a rush of wings. They were very flighty. Were we too close or were they always this watchful? 

A pair of Pardalotes were carrying food to young in a hole in the bank. Crested Pigeons, loads of finches, parrots and an extended family of Apostlebirds came down to drink while we sat there.

 Later in the afternoon a mob of cattle came to drink. The pushier ones slithered down the bank and into the water, to slowly wade up to their withers, grazing on the wrecked remains of a clump of waterlilies. They’d obviously done this before so we were able to discard our plans of how to rescue a bogged cow!” 

 

The cow enjoying a drink, a cooling dip and a mouthful of water lily.

 

White-breasted Woodswallows.The Woodswallows aren't related to our swallows.

 

Apostlebirds. These engaging extended families always seem to stay together. They are between a blackbird and a jackdaw in size.

 

 Often the only sign of water remaining in the creeks of the interior are the waterholes of varying sizes, from a rapidly drying puddle to a length of perhaps a kilometre of stagnant water stained green, brown, red, due to the algal growth and suspended solids. The shrinking edges marked by hexagonal cracks in the crust, broken into by the deep footmarks of cattle, the two toes and tail drag marks of kangaroos, the light pitter-patter of birds’ feet, all making their way to drink. Knowledge of the whereabouts of these natural waterholes and their seasonal appearances has passed on from generation to generation by the indigenous peoples, enabling them to navigate in their nomadic travels throughout this vast country. 

 

Cattle taking advantage of sparse shade in grazed-out country round a waterhole.

 

 

Grazed-out pasture land.

Melaleuca or Paperbark in flower near a waterhole.

 

 The fringe of river gums, coolibahs and paperbarks vary according to location and terrain, and all bear the marks of past inundations – a rusty tidemark, exposed roots and debris of twigs and leaves draped up against the tree trunks. The water is always a focus of birdlife especially early and late in the day when Corellas, finches, parrots of all kinds will come from the outlying bush to wash and drink, while the specialist water-side birds never stray far from a more-or-less permanent waterhole with a sizeable population of fish -- Pelicans, Spoonbills Herons. 

Other areas of water shrink daily in the heat of the dry season, making a precarious balance between water and grazing within daily reach of the cattle. The distance between the two vital supports increases all the time; the area around the water becomes pounded into a silky dust The surrounding grazed-out area punctuated by a radiating fan of narrow tracks trodden into the bare earth gets ever greater until the youngest and weakest stock cannot manage the distance. They cannot forsake the water and stand forlornly, perhaps listlessly chewing a twig, waiting....

 Caranbirini, Gulf Country From our log.Sep.8th ’95 about 50kms south of Borraloola.

The tall sandstone stacks tower above the waterhole at Caranbirini.

  

 “The waterhole lies between a range topped by eroded domes and spires of red sandstone, and a low rocky hill. The water’s edge is lined by flowering river gums and shrubs hung with vines. There is dense cane grass behind. The surface is covered by water lilies, the crinkle-margined leaves and the dark mirror of water between them makes a foil for the mauve lily flowers standing a foot above the water on sturdy straight stems. A pair of Restless Flycatchers flit from stem to stem as they catch insects just above the water. Their pristine white under parts are in sharp contrast to the shining black back and head. Now and then a plop and a ripple -- sometimes a fish, sometimes the brief plunge of a honeyeater. Seven species of honeyeaters throng these gums -- Barred, Banded, Brown, Yellow, White-throated, White-gaped, Rufous-throated -- all feeding on the flowers and among the leaves. At intervals they bathe and drink, joined by a little flurry of Double-barred Finches from the nearby bush. Diamond Doves step delicately down to sip; a whirr of wings and a party of Bar-shouldered Doves appears; a trumpet call and two Brolga Cranes are circling ever higher overhead. Had they come, seen us and were climbing away to the next waterhole, or had they been here all along, beyond the bend, and now were leaving anyway? A high trill from the cane-grass, and there! His blue tail fanned over his brown back, black eye-stripe making a firm line below his lilac crown, an iridescent copy of the lily flowers, the Fairy Wren hops neatly down a fallen branch and cautiously sips at the water’s edge. The nearby trees are the midday lookout posts for a loose party of Black Cockatoos. Their harsh and lugubrious calls echo from time to time as they fly slowly and laboriously to another tree. They look around with crests erect, but I haven’t seen them come down to drink. They look as though they might be associated with tales of death. Then, un-noticed among the lilies, two couples of tiny Pygmy Geese appear. Their beautiful black and white-scaled underparts, electric green wings carried erect over their backs like a Mandarin Duck, they become uneasy at my movement of interest. They flick their tiny sails urgently as if in warning and then quietly move away a little, picking their way among the lily leaves. Brolga Cranes flying high, trumpeting. Skeins of Ibis in wavering lines flying to roost. Evening gathers and all falls silent. The moon will be full tomorrow night. Her silver lights the water to our left. To the right, the molten bars from the subsiding sun are lighting the bushland trees in a filigree of black and gold and the rock of the sandstone spires still glow warm and red. A zephyr of wind stirs the paddles of the lily leaves, and a mosquito sounds his warning in my ear. Time to go and make smoke at the fire.” 

 

Waterlilies and Green Pygmy Geese at Caranbirini, a billabong left by the changing flood channels of the MacArthur River, Gulf Country.

 

Black Cockatoos.

 

 

 

Some of a family party of Lilac-crowned Fairy Wrens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUBMERGED FORESTS

SUBMERGED FORESTS

It’s so easy to think that everything stays the same. For a start, the coast doesn’t. It comes and goes over geological time according to the rise and fall of the sea level. The remains of forests, overwhelmed by sea level rises  perhaps thousands of years ago, are revealed on some shores as sunken relics occasionally showing at low water or when storms have scoured the  overlying sand away.

Round the Cornish coast there are fragments of sunken forests on the beaches at Mounts Bay near Penzance, and near Rock on the Camel Estuary. 

 ABOVE: The remains of trees growing in peat in Mounts Bay have been known for hundreds of years, appearing and disappearing according to what the sea has done to the beach. Carbon dating shows them to be between 4000 and 6000 years old. Alder , Pine, Oak, Hazel nuts and Acorns have been found and they are thought to have been growing on the margins of a lake.

 Storms alternately hide and reveal peat beds with sticks and branches embedded in it, near the Doom Bar in the Camel Estuary. We went to look at this with our local Natural History group a few years ago.

Car keys show the scale. Numerous twigs embedded in the peat after storm exposed these remnants. We also found what looked like part of a deer leg bone. Someone took it to get it identified and possibly dated but we have never heard a verdict.

 

 Following Storm Imogen a few years ago we went to see the remains of trees which had been submerged then re-appeared on the beach at Millandraeth near Looe. The  sky was so dramatic that I took pictures of the squalls and forgot the submerged trees.

 

 These trees were inundated at various times in the post Ice-age by sea level rises or the silting or blocking of river-mouths. Trees were overwhelmed and then preserved in the waterlogged, oxygen-deprived sands and silts that covered them.

There are more submerged forests in places on the Welsh coast. After the retreat of the ice in the last ice age some 12,000 years ago, parts of the Welsh coast were a land of low-lying hills, with ever-shifting rivers flowing over marshy flood plains. It gradually became wooded with pine and birch and later, Oak and Hazel .  Alternating rising sea levels and sinking land resulted in the periodic but overall, inundations. 

 ABOVE:The great beach of Porth Neigwl near Kim’s home, a notorious lee shore several miles long, has claimed many ships in the past, giving it the English name of Hell’s Mouth.  Backed by slumping cliffs of unstable clays and sand of glacial outwash, and more recent dunes of blown sand, the far end of the beach when scoured by storms, reveals yet another sunken forest. 

A denuded sheet of peat, no more than 12 or 15 inches thick lying on a bed of blue clay is dated at about 5500 years before present (BP) that’s in the Bronze Age. Within and on this peat are the remains of trunks of Scots Pine, fragments of Birch and Hazel bark and numerous Hazel nuts. This ancient forest is believed to have been growing in a marshy hollow within the glacial material. These remains are usually protected by the beach sand, but storms wash the sand away, and even during the twenty years this place has been known by Kim, it is being eroded away.

 

Exposed trunks at Porth Neigwl.

 

 Two great storms, in 2015 and then in 2019 revealed once more the long-known sunken forest near Borth on the Cardigan Bay coast of Wales.This great spectacle was first documented in the 1100’s by the chronicler Gerald of Wales Geraldus Cambrensis. 

 

Borth beach, the remains of the forest being revealed like sharks' fins as the tide went out.

 

More trees showing as the tide went out further.

  

From my notes at the time:

We went to  Borth in Cardigan Bay to look at it in February 2015 a little before low water. It was the biggest and most dramatic spread. Looking across it resembled a vision of scores of sharks’ fins just breaking the surface of a hostile sea.  As the tide went out further we saw two areas of peat and stumps ; the first and smaller area at the northern end of the beach we looked at first. The main lot was further south, opposite the beachfront hotels etc . This more southerly part was huge in extent, with areas of peat exposed, which was eroded in channels at right-angles to the sea as at Porth Neigwl. The trees were either growing in or had been engulfed by, the peat, which was fine-textured and black, and in places they had been bored into by piddocks or a similar kind of mollusc. Some stumps still had remnants of bark, apparently pine and birch. Oak has been seen there too I believe. Some of the stumps were big and with root plates spreading several yards across. Some you could still count the growth rings; upward of 120 years on one. In one place a big stump was growing above another smaller tree, an earlier forest apparently. The trees were pretty close together in places. This forest has been found to have the remains of oak, Pine, Birch and Willow , dated to the Bronze Age, between 4000 and 5000 BP. There are large numbers of very big stumps, their roots running all ways, as well as fallen trunks. 

 

Exposed trunk.

 

Stumps and roots.

 

 

 In one place there was a double row of sharpened, shaped oak stakes stuck in a straight row some 6+ yards long, the rows about 3 ft apart. A label on one said it was sharpened oak, sampled Oct 2014. I’d like to know what they reckoned it was.

 

Upright stakes of ancient causeway. Note the lengthways poles to make the walkway.

I read later that these uprights were the remains of a causeway built in the Bronze Age, with coppiced poles laid between the uprights to form a walkway. I wonder where it was going? Apparently, across a salt marsh towards the sea!  In one area nearby, the remains of ‘fossilized’ footprints were found in 2012 , of cattle and sheep or goats, and, movingly,those of a child of about 4 years’ old, with even the imprints of the toes showing.

 

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