Stocks Reservoir

click photo to enlarge
When I was a teenager living in Settle (then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in North Yorkshire) I reasonably frequently cycled the several miles to Stocks Reservoir (then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in Lancashire), a large area of water in the Forest of Bowland. The purpose of my journey, up hill and down dale, was bird watching. This had to be done from the road that cuts across a narrow arm of the reservoir and from the few public footpaths that allowed a view of the water and its margins. Elsewhere were signs saying "Keep Out", others warning against the risk of fire (many square miles of forest surround the reservoir) and yet more reminding people that the man-made lake was their drinking water.The tone of all this was decidedly unwelcoming.

How times change. Today, though the risk of fire is no less and it is still a water supply, the area around the reservoir features cyclepaths, visitor attractions, bird hides, footpaths of varying lengths and a general welcoming atmosphere greets the visitor. Moreover, fishermen are to be seen on boats, criss-crossing the water in search of their prey. Look carefully at today's photograph and you'll see a pair in their boat, an insignificant dot in the big landscape under a even bigger sky.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Fishermen on Stocks Reservoir, Lancashire
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 42mm (84mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Trough of Bowland

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The Trough of Bowland is a valley and pass in the Forest of Bowland, an area of mainly heather moor in Lancashire that is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty* (AONB). In wider British terms and certainly in world terms it is not a very significant feature. However, when you are in this area of rolling upland it comes as something of a surprise to find the road winding its way up to the watershed by a stream, and then the same road falling away as it snakes down a valley on the other side of the summit.

We drove over it recently on a day when sun alternated with cloud and the flourishing bilberry leaves were glistening among the heather. This combination of blue sky, cloud, greenery and the sinuous road prompted me to pull over and take a photograph looking up the Trough. A conveniently coloured car - red - passed and added a point of dissonant colour and scale to the composition.

* Quite how heather moor can be described as "natural" I don't know. Were this landscape to be as nature intended there would be significantly less heather and bilberry, a lot more scrub, and underfoot would be significantly wetter. The whole area would be much more species friendly.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Trough of Bowland, Lancashire
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

districtnk and all that

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Driving through Lincolnshire a few weeks ago I noticed a new roadside sign. It welcomed me to an area known as "districtnk" - that font, that spacing, those colours! I looked around with some trepidation, thinking that I'd entered a gulag-ridden outpost of the the old USSR at co-ordinates n,k on the map held by the Supreme Soviet in Moscow. However, when I saw the sign again I realised that North Kesteven District Council had "re-branded" itself - whatever that means - and this was their new welcome sign. Furthermore, it proclaimed that the district comprised "100 flourishing communities" (not 98, 99 or 101, but 100 - what are the chances?), and, because they knew that the new title was so opaque that it couldn't stand alone they spelled out the council name in full at the bottom. Gone was the old coat of arms, replaced by a symbol that made it look like they were sponsored by BP. I hope they didn't pay very much to the consultants who came up with all this because if it's supposed to show the council as progressive, modern, go-ahead, etc, for those of a certain age it suggests just the opposite. Perhaps the next step in the re-branding is for districtnk to start re-naming some of those "flourishing communities" after Soviet leaders, after which they'll move on to giving the schools numbers instead of names.

Signs, as a couple of my recent posts have suggested can be puzzling and fun. One notice I remember, that I didn't photograph but wish I had, was in an area of waste ground and said simply, "Danger! Deep Active Sludge" - succinct, memorable, and to me, completely impenetrable. Today's third and final (for now) offering was taken a couple of years ago near Bleasdale Tower in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire. It was presumably erected by concerned parents who wanted the farm vehicles to drive with consideration. The way they expressed themselves certainly caught the eye, but I wonder if, in the longer term, it had the opposite effect to what was intended. I say that because, though I must have passed it a dozen times as I walked the area over the years, my experience was of children and dogs nowhere! Not a one, just like on the day I took this shot.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm (42mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

The rhododendron tunnel

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As a child I used to love the rhodies (as we called the rhododendrons) that grew wild in certain spots on Yorkshire's Craven uplands. Their purple blossom that filled the woods in May simply outshone all the other flowers. Not only was there more of it, but the individual blooms, to an impressionable boy, were just so large. At any time of year they provided dense thickets that were great for dens and hide and seek, and the glossy evergreen leaves even provided pretty good shelter from the rain when you were caught without a coat - as boys often are!

I knew that the bushes grew only on the millstone grit side of the Craven Fault, but at that time didn't appreciate that the soil's acidity there was best for the plants, unlike that on the limestone side. Nor did I know that they weren't native to Britain, but had been in introduced by Conrad Loddiges in the 1760s, and that many cuttings were acquired in the Himalayan foothills. And I certainly didn't know that the luxuriant undergrowth of Rhododendron ponticum that I enjoyed so much was viewed by foresters and naturalists as an invasive weed, and that attempts were being made to control its rapid spread.

When I lived in Lancashire I came across it on the acidic soils of the Forest of Bowland. On more than one occasion its impenetrable mass blocked my way as I walked through woods. On the November day of the photograph above we came across a lot of it, still full of green leaf (and the odd rogue flower bud) where other trees and bushes were bare or brown. This tunnel, near the village of Scorton is mainly composed of arching rhododendron. I asked my wife to walk ahead so I could frame her with the branches and also silhouette her against the light of the lane beyond.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 68mm (136mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Found poems and beech trees

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The idea of the "found" poem is intriguing. We are used to reading poetry where meaning has been forged over time, worked, re-worked, and built with tears, anguish and quiet desperation. So the idea that one can simply find a piece of writing, composed for a particular purpose, that unwittingly offers the poetic experience seems, at first glance, quite unlikely.

In his poetry workshops published in The Guardian newspaper earlier this year David Morley looks at the found poetry "lying asleep" in field guides and the prose of natural history. He discusses how it can be shaped so it "escapes its origin and finds a fresh tone." The examples he shows often don't depart at all from the words of the original, though in others the finder-poets add their own contributions. The example below is from the article quoted, and is offered to complement today's photograph of the beautiful autumn beech trees at the edge of Pedder's Wood, near Grize Dale, in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire.

Beech by Peter R White
Wilkinson, John and Mitchell, Alan (1978)
A Handguide to the Trees of Britain and Northern Europe
Treasure Press, London

Beech (Fagus sylvatica)
cannot make roots
in saturated soils but
drive them through
dry layers to
reach
moisture.
Hence although
a thirsty tree it is
not found in wet
hollows nor on clay soils.
Male flowers are little
balls of stamens
on slender stalks.
Female flowers are green
with white filaments and
are on
short stout stalks.

Beech
live for barely 250 years
then die
and
fall
to pieces
suddenly.

photograph & (some) text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8.
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The beech tree

click photo to enlarge

In the south of England pollen from beech trees can be detected in remains dating back to 6000BC. No longer restricted to its southern fastness, the beech is now widespread in Britain, introduced in the midlands and north for its beauty and its unique qualities.

The sturdy, tall beech tree has long been used as a windbreak around exposed farms. In Yorkshire, on the chalk Wolds, and in the limestone Dales, lines, "L" shapes and squares of trees can be seen serving this purpose. They mark the location of farms in the valleys, on the hillsides, and standing against the sky. As well as giving shelter the beech trees provide kindling, and add a background sound to the day's toil and the night's rest, as the wind rustles the leaves and moans in the branches. Throughout the country beech trees can be seen planted in copses on hilltops, in small groups or single specimens at crossroads, in churchyards, or in woodlands. Lowland areas often have carefully manicured beech hedges, thick, green and impenetrable in summer, their brown leaves of autumn clinging on deep into the winter. Country houses frequently planted avenues of the tree along roads and tracks, and grew plantations to provide wood for estate joiners and carpenters.

The iron industry of the Weald used beech trees, as did the furniture makers of Buckinghamshire, turning the wood for the legs and spindles of Windsor chairs. The largest group of beech trees in the world is to be found in this county, at Burnham Beeches. Pollarded examples here are known to be five hundred years old. Wildlife thrives in beech woods. The "mast" that the trees produce is eaten by mice, squirrels, and a variety of birds, and the massive trunks and long, spreading branches provide homes for creeping and flying creatures. I photographed these beech trees in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, on a sunny January day. The shallow soil and outcropping rock had been no impediment to the growth of the trees on this hillside. But it had meant that the root system was, of neccessity, near the surface. It is said that the spread of a tree's roots matches the spread of its branches, and, looking at these beech trees you could almost believe it. I took my photograph with a wide zoom lens at 22mm (35mm equivalent), with the camera set to Aperture Priority (f6.3 at 1/200 second), ISO 100, and -1.0EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen