Truckland

8 December 2015

I'm on my way to Norfolk to do some serious bird watching and photography. Does this make me a "birder"? Is a birder the same sort of thing as a sniper, a  mouser, ratter, harrier, wildfowler, courser, rabbiter? We say of a cat that she's a good mouser, or a dog is a good terrier,  ratter or rabbiter. A sniper shoots snipe (and by extension any difficult target). Terriers terrify, harriers and  coursers chase hares and wildfowlers shoot wildfowl. The object of the word always seems to come off worst, but the worst we birders do to birds - and this is not trivial - is to disturb them. We do shoot them, but with our cameras, not with guns. There are all sorts of reasons why we are fascinated by birds. The most visible of our wildlife, we love how they look. We love to have them near us, to tame and master them. In the same way that a passion for football is a sublimation of our tribal  warrior instincts, so stalking and photographing birds is for the hunter within us. I freely admit to the latter, and I am heading for my hunting ground.
As I drive past Kettering I am not quite in the geographic centre of England, but between the two north-south arteries of the M1 and the A1M I am crossing the distribution centre of Britain. This is truckland where long lines of massive container trucks mark out the big roads and the huge flat fields grow gigantic sheds, interspersed with non-descript arable crops  . These are the warehouses of the big companies who sell us all our stuff, who service our insatiable appetite for goodies, things, gadgets, white goods. The trucks bring the containers from the big container ports; the goods are unloaded at the warehouses, sorted according to dispatch priorities and then taken by more huge lorries out to all the towns and out-of-town shopping centres, but more and more to the regional distribution centres where they will be taken by an ever- growing fleet of white vans to our homes.
I have good reason to hate this country. It is where my first attempt at serious manufacturing hit the rocks. The biggest customer of the doomed debt laden business of  "Turners' Chairs" was in Kettering. We made the arms for one of their lines of settees. They went bankrupt leaving us with a debt of £1200. It doesn't sound much now, but in the late seventies it was fatal.
Even if  had no prejudice I would find little to enjoy in the dreary landscape, until I get to Peterborough which calls itself "Heritage City - Environment City - Event City" and uses this logo to show how central it is, at least to England and Wales.

I dare say it is a beautiful and exciting city - certainly the cathedral looks good from the by-pass - but I am heading for another flat landscape, because by an accident of history, a massive engineering project in the 17th Century

Arnside and Silverdale

This is stone country. It's everywhere - looming out of the ground in great cliffs and outcrops, strewing the fields with boulders, pacing out long lines of drystone walling in intricate patterns around the woods and fields. Houses are of stone or stone coloured render, and it's not the golden stone of the Cotswolds but grey: all shades of grey from a pale first-light luminous grey to a dark rain grey which reminds you that this is Cumbria - we crossed the border from Lancashire a few miles back. It's the limestone that creates the landscape - a glorious blend of old species-rich woodland, rough grassland, and the endless vistas of clean tide-washed sand which make up Morecambe bay. It's a coast with just one boat, a lonely dinghy at Arnside quay:  lonely because the water is just too shallow.  Where the limestone drops away the meadows, reed beds and saltmarsh take over, making a wonderful habitat for the kind of creature that likes to get its feet wet. And it's for them that I am here - for the fourth time in 2 years. More specifically it’s for Leighton Moss, a jewel in the necklace of reserves that link Britain's wetlands.   

We stayed before in a camp-site overlooking the sea on the edge of the long sprawling, handsome and prosperous village of Silverdale. If you enjoy getting lost in little winding roads which all seem to lead to half a dozen places in no particular order, then take  your time getting the few miles from Silverdale to Arnside. If you are pressed for time then set the satnav and hope it knows the area. At one point the two villages are barely a mile apart, but it can easily take half an hour to get from one to the other if you take a wrong turning. These are by no means de-populated backwaters, but wealthy commuter villages within easy reach of Lancaster and Kendal, linked by a main-line train service and the M6 motorway to the Lakes to the North and the great population centres of Lancashire and Yorkshire to the south and east. On a fine week-end there are walkers and cyclists everywhere, but the country is so varied and rich in habitat that it can easily absorb them.

This time we are in a charming rented cottage in Arnside, on the edge of one of the most outstanding landscape features of the whole area: Arnside Knott. You can see the edge of it from the house - a dense band of trees on a steep slope blocking off the end of the lane. To get there I walk up the road until the houses stop, and a wide view to the north opens up. Here the road, bounded of course by a stone wall, runs alongside the woodland, and there's a gate and a sign saying Arnside Knott. The path is stony, it's thin layer of leaf mould warn away by our feet, and it gets very steep as I trudge up through the dark trees. Soon the wood thins and I am in a scrub area with young yew trees and native grassland. There are paths all round the hill and criss-crossing it. Some are green but most are a pavement of small stones tamped down, rained on, frozen, baked and trodden. The trees - oak, ash, birch, sycamore, yew, hawthorn hazel, blackthorn - are all native (unless you discount the sycamore). Even if you know little about trees and even less about grassland, you can still tell that this is different from your average farmland wood. There is none of the desperate dark green of fertilized vegetation, no rank grass, no nettles, docks, dandelions, buttercups and the other familiar weeds of land made artificially fertile.  All this would be good enough on its own, but as you get closer to the top,  huge vistas open up, and this is why Arnside Knott is famous locally: the views. At one point you can see almost the whole of Morecambe bay to the south, the long low Arnside rail bridge crossing the estuary to the north and then, round to the east, the sand-filled Kent river. All that sand! But that's not all: it's what lies the other side of the estuary which makes the view so outstanding. There's a look-out point where the whole panorama unfolds, and a shiny metal diagram of what you are looking at. There, etched across the horizon is a long list of peaks, of which I only recognize the names Helvellyn and Skiddaw, but since there are over 100 peaks above two thousand feet I'm not too ashamed. 

Having only once visited the Lake District I had not realised how close it is. It took us just half an hour on a rainy afternoon to reach Kendal. We parked at the southern end of the centre and walked up the main street - Highgate. As we walked so our jaws metaphorically dropped at the opulence of the shops. Here is an ultra-traditional male barber's shop with  gleaming accoutrements; here a high end  fashion shop; gift shops, toy shops, homeware, yet another fashion shop, a second, even a third barber's shop, and to cap it all a fantastically posh supermarket from the Lancaster based Booths chain. This is clearly either a very wealthy town or it serves a very rich clientele. Since there is not much industry in the Lakes the wealth must come from the leisure industry, and makes us realise how neglected is our corner of Wales. It's true  the mountains aren't as high and there are certainly less of them, but what we have is just as beautiful and no more wet and windy -  but we tend to have it to ourselves. Selfishly I wouldn't want to change that but certainly the Cambrian mountains  could take more tourists and we might see a more exciting blend of shops than poor Llandovery can boast at present.

On our last day we walked down to the station and took a rail trip across the estuary and back to the Edwardian era at Grange-Over-Sands. Alas the old Lido is in ruins, but you can still imagine yourself arriving on the exciting new railway, twirling your parasol as you walk the promenade, taking tea if not by the sea then at least by the sand, admiring the exotic ducks and the specimen trees in the parks, and perhaps listening to a brass band playing under the gorgeous pagoda. It would all have been new then; the trees small, the town full of builders, the shop signs glistening with new paint, because it was the railway which built Grange, and it's still the quickest way to get to it from the south.

North Devon

 

 

It's 6. am and the sun is just rising to a clear sky.  The video footage shows a small black car pulling up to the barrier. A man reaches out and presses numbers on the key pad. Nothing happens. He tries again. Nothing. He gets out, goes round and tries to lift the barrier. It's not possible without breaking it. He tries the key pad again. The he gets out and walks round the building until he sees a sign on the other side - the way in to the campsite - where he sees a notice saying that the barriers are shut between 11pm and 6.30 am. Half an hour before the campers can escape. He locks the car and walks off down to the beach.

When the office staff get in at 8.30 they watch the video and see the man come back for the car at 6.30, punch in the numbers which raise the barrier and drive off. They note down the number of the car and check it against the owners . It's the Stenning car so they go to where the Stenning party is camped and ask if there is an emergency. Someone wishing to drive out at 6 O'clock is so strange, it must be an emergency!

All I want to do is get to a place called Isley Marshes while the early morning light is still good. Now it would be past its best and more people around to disturb the wildlife. Still,  I get to see and photograph the beach before the people arrive. It's beautiful. I lean on the railings and watch the few gulls who have reclaimed the territory.


A man is walking towards me. He has long curly hair and a pleasant face, wearing shorts. He stops, comes up to me and points at the little stream running through the rocks to the sea.

 

"There's a kingfisher comes here most mornings - just down there."

"Wonderful. At this time?"

"Yes, you might be lucky."

"Very difficult to capture on camera though!"

It's nearly 6.30 so I don't wait for the elusive blue streak whistling past, and walk back to collect the car. The satnav leads me down roads with grass growing down the middle; even one with a gate across it. Bloody thing. Now I'm lost and losing time, but my phone finds where we are and sets me on the right road. We used to have maps, printed on paper. Hey ho.
 

I've unshipped the Brompton bike, loaded it with all the gear and set off to find a good place to set up the telescope and do some watching, but the few curlews and gulls around the water's edge are too far off to get any decent images.

The marshes are edged with ancient grassland full of wild flowers and gorse, and the cycle path runs straight as a die towards the north. I stop to look at a patch of land with picnic tables and a curious building. The building looks like a reconstruction of an Iron Age hut, and nearby is evidence that some poor person has been sleeping rough here.

It's good to watch the curlews preening, but nothing much else is happening so after a while I give up. Driving back along the estuary I see a sign saying "Fremington Quay Café & Heritage Centre" so I drive down a long winding single track road to the small café car park "for customers only." I enjoy a coffee and cake and stroll around. A large dark bird is flying out over the mudflats. It's a Peregrine; female. She makes a few passes over the estuary and then disappears. I wish she had turned up when I had the telescope set up.  Still, not a bad morning.

Newport July 2015

Thursday 31 July 2015

I've done it! It's 9 pm, 21 hundred, the sun is low in the sky and I'm alone with my plastic beaker of wine. It’s just me and the van and this contained wilderness. A small group of people, a male family carrying fishing rods, have climbed the gate just ahead of the van, walked round it and gone. They have violated one of the rules of this place - do not cross locked gates - so they are not going to challenge my slightly illegitimate presence.

I'm in a lumpy grassy space where there is room for a few cars. On one side is a very rough potholed track, on the other is the reserve boundary. It’s a no-man’s land, a permitted access to the reserve, and it’s summer which is the bird-watchers off-season. The birds are moulting or spreading out away from their home territories. Most of the migrants are still in the far north – Iceland, Russia, Spitzbergen, Sutherland, but the advance party are here: a few gorgeous black-tailed Godwits. The birds are in small groups, relaxed, preening and feeding. There is none of the frantic massing; the huge flocks of thousands birds all eager to gorge on the millions of creatures that live in the mud. That’s for November.

On my last visit, when I had bought my telescope at the RSPB visitor centre, I was told I MIGHT be able to stay near the hides at the other end of the reserve. Other end? As far as I knew the reserve was the patch of reed-beds intersected by paths and adorned with notices to inspire children to "Make a Home for Nature".( How I hate all that marketing stuff - the corporate bullshit. I love what it buys though so I don't complain.) The reserve, most of it below sea level, begins at the power station, goes down to the sea wall, and ends at a hide which overlooks a lagoon. Nice place, but not on a par with Pencalcwyth to the west or Slimbridge to the north east.

Back in June, I had driven five miles along small fenland roads which made abrupt right-angle turns and then arrowed out straight, drawn with a ruler. The villages have wonderful English names: Nash, Goldcliffe, Whitsun, Undy. They show how close we are to the English border. The houses are old and handsome, picked out with roses and hollyhocks. Wildflowers - meadowsweet, knotweed, valerian, sneezewort - decorate the verges. I've learnt how to recognize verges with natural low fertility. In the others there are rank grasses, dandelions, hogweed, buttercups, all the plants which thrive on artificial fertilizer. Now that I know them they seem ugly.

I got to where the sketch map indicated a right turn, but it just led to a few houses with a green space. I couldn't park up in front of someone's house, so I drove on another 5 miles to a little campsite at the hamlet of Undy. I'm the only van there, and walking down to the coast I can see the huge and beautiful second Severn Bridge just a few miles away.

So I missed the track and never found out that there were a whole series of brackish lagoons with three hides spread out over a distance of half a mile. The first hide is only a hundred yards from where I am eating my dinner. Tomorrow morning I will be able to be there at sunrise - bliss: I am, and will be, alone in the landscape, and the landscape is much bigger than I thought, stretching along a good 5 miles of protected beach, farmland and marsh, with these lagoons at the eastern end. Like a number of the best bird watching sites it has an industrial heritage, and somehow the stark uncompromising lines of the power station complement the severe horizontals of the marsh land.  

The hide looks west so the evening sun is a backlight. In the morning it’s behind me and the curlews, glowing in the deep golden light, begin to move around, preen, stretch their wings and fly off to feed. I’m practising “digiscoping” – taking pictures with my phone through the telescope.

 

Like everything to do with wildlife photography it’s difficult. These Avocets – later in the morning - were too far away for real clarity of image, but they are very special. The icon of the RSPB, they were one of the first re-introductions after the native population had been driven out by the loss of habitat. The Society set up reserves like this to lure them back, and here they are - quite a common breeding bird round the southern estuaries.

I have no ambition to earn money from photography, but I am intensely driven to come close to the quality of image set by the ferocious competition between the pro users and between the optics companies. No matter how much you spend on gear (and the pros spend in five figures) you cannot succeed unless you can begin to think like your subject. Above all you need a quality I have always found elusive: patience: sit or stand still and watch. Even after a mind and body numbing wait the bird or animal you are hunting may still be too far away. Then you have to learn to stalk. If you are on a reserve that option is seldom available. We are the modern hunters, looking for the perfect shot. We don’t kill but we can cause great damage simply by our presence.

How very much part of the human condition it is to destroy the things we love. It used to be the collecting of specimens – corpses and eggs - which drove the trophy hunters. The story is that the man who shot the last Red Kite in Scotland was very proud of his achievement. Now we kill in much more subtle ways. Our weapons are pollution, road building, farming, house building, and leisure. With one hand I help reclaim their habitat, with the other I want to become part of their world, but they would much rather I kept away.

The Somerset Levels

 

Friday 14 August

Not  good day. A fresh start was supposed to redeem the mistakes of yesterday, which ended badly.

I noticed what looked like a nice pub in the village where I was staying so decided to ride down and have an early evening pint. The pint was lovely. The pub was OK and the people seemed friendly, but I didn’t try to get any conversation going - too difficult. So, I hadn't been there long when I drank the last of my pint, put the glass on the bar said "Thanks, cheers", and walked out. The world was fine and I was a fine old duffer, but so what. I looked forward to my meal  - bacon and veg, and of course some wine. I parked the bike at the back of the van and lumbered around sorting things out. Before settling in for the evening I needed to get it more level, so I got it going, backed up and moved to a slightly more level site. No, that was no good either, try again. Right, go and get the levelling wedges. Oh my God, the bike! It was lying there in the furrow it had ploughed as it  was pushed back. Damage assessment: handlebars badly bent, front mudguard damaged, otherwise not too bad, but bad enough. I would now have to get a new handlebar. Bollocks!

The day began with drizzle, got into its stride, but never quite hit the hard stuff. It has been raining most of the day - nasty insinuating wet stuff: "Don't worry about me I'm feeble, I'm not your real rain." Oh Yes? Then why am I  soaked to the skin. "You've been sweating - you know, when you did that walk through the  woods in the hope that you would get  a view of the marshes." True, but my shoulders don't normally sweat.  The unfortunate conclusion is that not only was the rain steady and unremitting, but my waterproofs no longer keep out the water. And, how utterly miserable that walk was - designed to punish the real bird watchers for thinking they could get the feel of the place in the rain.

You have to hand it to the RSPB. They are expert at gently persuading their punters to keep away from the places that really matter. What I wanted to do was simply to get a decent view over the West Sedgemoor marshes. Well, they did say on the website that it was probably the most important site in Britain for breeding wetland birds. They encourage you to book a guided walk  - but not in the summer. In the summer there are public footpaths that go round the reserve boundaries. But there are no car parks, and no guided walks; none of the "information centre" infrastructure - the desk manned by charming staff, the volunteers desperate to be helpful, the nice café with only slightly expensive food and drink, and all the display information, the leaflets, the posters, the world of the RSPB.  None of that. Just wet trees.

That was before 9. I pootled around for a while, but then decided to go back to the Shapwick Heath and Ham Wall reserves where I had been last month. On the way is the Graylake reserve - relatively small with just one hide, and I was the only person there. At least I was in the dry. The telescope was unshipped, the cameras prepared, the binoculars round my neck, and now all I had to do was look out at the wet reed beds and hope something would turn up. It did! I had a very good view of a pair of Marsh Harriers hunting - too far away for the cameras, but with my new smooth video head on the telescope I could easily track them as they flew in a languid figure of 8 over territory they obviously knew well. One was dark - almost black, but still with the pale head. He pounced, wings up and then the sudden drop. No obvious result. They don't hunt together, but a while later I found them both perching in a tree, looking like mates.

There were a pair of kestrels hunting much nearer, and I got a few pictures which were "almost" worth keeping when I loaded them in to the computer. Kestrels are rare now in Carmarthenshire, so it was good to see them several times in the levels.
 

Then in the afternoon to Ham Walls, the only place in Britain where a pair of Little Bitterns have nested, another good place to see Marsh Harriers, and an even better one to see Bitterns - the normal ones, the ones which were almost extinct in Britain 30 years ago. And I did! Several times. Once I even got the camera on them but it turned out not to be in focus. I also saw our latest immigrant, a bird that was unknown here only a few years ago - the Great White Egret: lovely heron-sized birds with yellow beaks.

I'm still not sure whether talking to the big handsome man with the Cannon gear was a good thing. The Canon men are the elite of the birding fraternity, the ones with the kit the pros use. This one was a prince amongst them - no binoculars, no telescope, just the EOS camera - the big square ones with the 35mm sensors, and the huge lens covered with camouflage material. Camera - around 2k, lens probably 5k, and he's not getting massive close-ups with it, only the kind of magnification you get with a normal pair of binoculars. What he is getting is the holy grail: the detail. He's a very nice man this member of the elite, and he lets me have a go. It's ridiculously heavy but he has no tripod. The image stabilisation is so good and the sensor is so good that he can work at an ISO of 1200  (what used to be called a fast film), a fast shutter speed, and still get crisp detail.

I am discouraged. Why have I decided this is what I want to do? I have so much to learn it's ridiculous, and I'm not even sure I have the temperament for it - all that waiting around doing nothing.

Meanwhile I framed a common summer visitor, a whitethroat,  in a typical August habitat - cow parsley. Slowly the life of the plant is moving out to the seeds and then sinking to the roots, ready for another year. It's just rough brown and green but so much part of the season it's beautiful.
 

Take heart. The forecast for tomorrow is good. I have found a little camp site which charges £7 without electricity, and I will get up early and be back here by the time the gate opens at 6. Good plan.

 

Saturday 15 August

I got lost. There were road diversions and the satnav was not help. In the end I trusted to my own sense of direction and set off at high speed down a little road which seemed to wind for ever, but did finally get me where I thought it would. I was amazed! It was 6:30 when I finally got to the reserve car park, but there was only one car there and the light was stll good.
 

I should explain that there is a golden rule in photographic circles that if you want to do wildlife and landscape you need to catch the early morning or late evening light. I's a rule made in countries with lots of strong sunlight. In Britain, and especially in Wales, the light can be special at any time of day, but very early is still the specialest.
 

Disappointingly there was little activity on outside the main hides - lazy little sods couldn't be bothered to get up and get to work feeding. I went to find a new hide on the other side of the reserve. It had not been built yet but on the way I saw something quite astonishing. There, hiding behind the reeds on a narrow patch of open water and mud were three heron species. The common Grey heron was there with a mate. There were lots of little egrets - dainty pure white birds with a black beak and legs. They have a charming way of feeding by pushing their big feet to and fro in the mud to stir up the crawlies. The real surprise though was the much bigger bird sharing their feeding ground - no less than 5 Great White Egrets. The name sounds ominously sharkish but they are harmless heron-like birds with very long necks, yellow beaks (at this time) and brilliant white plumage.

The Great White is an important bird for the RSPB for it was their long display plumes which used to be used to decorate hats and almost led to their extinction. The RSPB was founded to protest against the trade. They were succesful an dhave never looked back.

I wasn't quite close enough, but there was nobody around so I decided to do some stalking. Crouching low I trod carefully through the shoulder-high reeds until I was much closer. However, there was a dip in the ground and even standing I could not get a good view. Fortunately my Panasonic has a tilting screen so I was able to hold it way above my head and frame the picture.

Walking back, a young man on a bike came towards me. He had a special back-pack which held a tripod with a telescope across the top of it.

"The best place for the birds today is over on the other side." He gestured behind him. "I've just come from there. We've just lowered the water level and there are hundreds of birds there."

"Thanks, but I was hoping to get a shot of a bittern where I saw them last night."

"Oh, there's bitterns, great whites, godwits, all sorts."

"Right - over on the Nature Conservancy side? Which hide?"

"You don't need a hide just walk along the main track and  you will see them - on the right hand side."

It's a fair old walk, stepping out smartly with the heavy kit on my back. After 10 minutes yomping I see a little group with tripods and optics. The man on the bike overtakes me and points up ahead -

"Just by those people there".

Well, he's right in a way. There are great egrets and godwits and greenshank and little egrets, but no Bitterns and they are all too far away to get decent shots, even through the telescope, but again the new video head with the telescope enables me to get some really good views of some pretty spectacular birds. Good enough for the day. Now I need some coffee and a route for the long drive to Combe Martin.

Ogmore and Ewenny

30 July 2015

I'm at Ogmore castle, Bridgend, Morganwg (sounds better than Glamorgan). Ogmore is another of those miss-remembered Welsh names. Orginally Eog Mor - salmon water - when it was a famous salmon fishing river.
It's a fine looking heap of stones; probably the work of some Norman baron consolidating his ill-gotten gains at the expense of the natives. We live with a surfeit of castles so I'm not going to walk round it reading about the keep and the portcullis etc. I'm more interested in the sturdy looking stepping stones across the Ewenny river. (Confusingly the Ewenny joins the Ogmore river just past the castle.)

Astonishingly there is a woman leading two horses across. If she can do that then I shouldn't have a problem. The stones are medieval; worn smooth by centuries of shoes, boots, pattens, clogs, even feet, and reduced from 52 to 38 by natural attrition. They are all more or less the same height so they must vary in size according to the height of the river flow. Surely that would have changed with time? Perhaps originally they were all perfectly level with the flow - unlikely; their present heights are probably quite random.

It turns out that Ogmore Farm above the castle specialises in riding trips on the beach and they use this short cut (and the one detailed below) to get through the dunes.

I get together what I need for a 5 mile walk and set off. When I get to the middle of the river on the stones, I realise that there is some 2 feet of fast flowing water just below my feet. How many thousands have hesitated here and had the same thought?

Pause for thought. Place my feet carefully. Take it steadily and it's easy. I'm over and on over the Ogmore river on a picturesque footbridge to the impossibly cute village of Merthyr Mawr. Translated that would be "Big Merthyr" but it's a hamlet. Evidently the name has been miss-remembered from a Welsh word I can't now find. It's a blend of gorgeous thatched cottages in earthy colours and magnificent mature trees.


My plan is to walk towards the dunes to the south west of the hamlet, follow a path to the west which leads back to the Ogmore river, cross it on a bridge half a mile south of the stepping stones and so arrive back at the castle and the van. A little road leads to the access point for Merthyr Mawr burrows - a huge dune system. Here you walk (or ride a horse - a better option in view of what follows) through sand: soft, well churned sand. It's hard going so I take alternative tracks higher up which are carpeted with an amazing variety of miniature plants. There are blackberry bushes six inches high with 4 fruits on them; tiny wild roses, a miniature form of valerian and dozens more I can't identify. It's a good walk and it brings me naturally down to the river again where I can see the ugly concrete bridge I intend to cross to get back to the castle.

I have a moment of unease when I realise that the bridge is unreachable. It's the access road to a concentration camp pretending to be a sewage works. There is another interesting access to a similarly defended shit-stirring facility at Solva near St. Davids. There the access is via a tunnel, also locked. Hm. Is there something going on they don't want us to know about?


There's a sign on the bridge saying "No Footpath", but horses have obviously gone past recently, so there must be a path under the bridge and on to the castle which I can now see. If I see a path in front of me leading to where I want to go, it's going to take more than a "no footpath" sign to put me off. The sign was right though. The feet it refers to are human feet, not the feet of a four footed beast with long legs such as a horse. This is because the path takes a neat short cut - straight through the river. This is it - the end of the human's path.

You can see the castle, and the van in front of it. I could be there in 5 minutes. One of the women riding across tells me that the only way to get to the castle, is to go all the way back the way I came. Now, being human, being male and being an obstinate old fart I HATE retracing my steps. Normally I will take all sorts of risks to avoid doing so, and am contemplating taking off shoes and socks, rolling up trousers and having a go. However, I have binoculars and camera with me. If I miss my footing they will be ruined and that would be much more painful than going back. I check the bridge again, but its defences are impregnable. I can't actually see the watchtowers, but I'm pretty sure that if I try to climb the fence I will be shot.

In the end I enjoyed the walk back, setting myself a cracking pace, enjoying the feel of my new and wonderful walking boots, and feeling the soothing rhythm of the tramp of my feet. The return trip only took half an hour: I can do this walking thing: give myself a high four and a half!

Just as I was leaving I spotted this sign. I really hope it's a clever pun.

Stolford and the last Mud Horse

Stolford and the last Mud Horse
I’m in Bridgewater, Somerset,  with the van and looking for somewhere to stay. There is a “Certified Location” near where I want to be tomorrow so I ring the number of "Mud Horse Cottage".  CLs are the human side of the Caravan Club – small sites with few facilities but people with some character. I’ve no idea what a mud horse is. A ripe Somerset accent is saying hello. Would they have space for a camper van and one person tonight?

"Oh yes, there's a couple of spaces. When you gets to the gate come right on through. We're down by the beach."

Stolford is a hamlet of 10 or so houses tucked in behind the sea wall on Bridgewater bay. Most of them have pantile roofs and stone walls: it looks French. Looming just to the west of it is the solid cuboid structure of Hinckley Point nuclear power station. From there lines of pylons march over miles of rough grass, marshland, pebbles and sea; the stark metal seeming to emphasise the harsh beauty of the  landscape.

I opened the gates and drove on gravel through the cottage garden to the little walled paddock behind, which sloped up towards the sea wall.  I was the only one there, and I was glad. Deafness and solitude: they feed off each other. The deafer I get the less inclined I am to attempt conversation. I embrace isolation, but I still try. A simple exchange of views or information without too many “sorrys” or “pardons” can make the day.  I realise that I actively search out times and places where I can be alone in a big landscape, and this gives me an idea for a series of pictures.

I make a lunch of packet soup and bread and then lie down, read a few pages and fall asleep. With hearing aid removed, I am deaf to the sound of a thunderstorm rattling the van. I don't sleep for long - never do in the day -  fifteen minutes perhaps. Another rainstorm, some reading, some map perusal, and a few chores later I am ready to survey my surroundings. I lug the telescope through a gap in the hedge, down some rough sand steps and then onto  the sea wall where the whole great expanse of the Severn estuary is laid out before me. Away to the right is Burnham on Sea; on the opposite shore are Newport and Cardiff and in the middle is the aptly named island of Steepholm. Out on the mud there are shelduck, a few curlews; nothing much else. It's a quiet time of year for the birds; a time for nurturing fledglings and moulting.

A  4x4 truck passes me with some sort of contraption on the back and it's making its way slowly out onto the pebbles and rocks. Scrawled along the side of the truck are the words "THE MUD HORSE". Surely he can't be planning to drive out onto the mudbanks? They stretch as far as they eye can see and notices tell us how dangerous they are. But he does - or seems to. He must know where the rocks are. He is perhaps half a mile out from the land when he stops. I focus the telescope on him. After waiting a while – for the tide? -  he unships the contraption and begins to push it out onto the mud, leaning on it for support and paddling with his feet. Unknowingly I have chanced upon Adrian Sellick, the last of the Mud Horse fishermen. Once common in the area and on the opposite shore, he is still doing what his grandfather and father did - set nets across the tide and harvest the catch. I walk round to the fish stall next door and find what must be Brendan, Adrian's father, scrubbing off a strange looking marine creature with a shape like a vertebra - a sole perhaps? He hangs it up on the gate alongside what looks like a miniature shark. There are sole fillets for a pound so I buy one for my supper.

Here's the info:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/3337013/Last-round-up-for-the-mud-horse-fisherman.html.

How lucky I am to be here where an old way of life goes on beside an ugly new one - the doomsday box and its metal veins alongside an ancient skill being superseded by supermarkets.

Back at the van I unfold the Brompton bike, and loaded with optical gear, I set off eastwards, parallel to the shore, along a rough track which should lead me to the Steart peninsula. It does - as long as I am willing to take in pebbles and grass as road material. After perhaps 45 minutes I reach the little tarmac road heading northwards towards Steart village, and more importantly to the huge new area of saltmarsh which the Wetlands and Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency have established. I am at the "Steart Gate car park" and the signs pointing south say "main car park 3.4k" "Polden Hide 3k". The one pointing north says "Breech 2k" These are big distances for a nature reserve, but this is more than a reserve, it’s an answer to rising sea levels: don’t fight the sea, channel it.  Breech is where they've let the sea in. I get to within half a mile of it and find it's closed to protect the nesting birds. There's another path on the west side which leads up to the northern point of the peninsula.  There, cycling across a field of grazing cattle, dodging the cowpats, I find the old tower hide looking rather forlorn. Climbing the stairs expecting to be alone again, I am surprised to find a young man with a Swarofski telescope and various charts and papers. I scan the view with the binoculars and see two Shelduck. What is he doing observing 2 common ducks with a 2k telescope? It turns out that Steart is a major moulting ground for Shelduck and if I look closely out beyond the shore I can just see a small flock of the white and brown birds. These he tells me can still fly and are probably the locals. He expects them to be joined by up to 3000 migratory birds later in the summer when all of them will be flightless for a few weeks. The survey is to get the details - how many, when and where.
It's a long haul back on the roads - a huge detour south - but it feels good. The sun is shining again, it's warm and  have my lovely piece of fish for supper, with some veg and rice, and the last glass of a carton of wine. More reading, and as the light declines, a DVD of "The Shining". I get halfway through but find it boring.

The Steart Marshes

The people who live in Steart village must be used to being surrounded by the wild. Over the centuries they had built the sea walls and drained the land to keep livestock and grow crops. Now the land is being deliberately flooded – farmland to saltmarsh. From human food to bird food. Perhaps the people were too baffled by this change so they retreated into the twentieth century tradition of mechanical, high energy farming. It was and still is all about maximising yield, and using oil-derived chemicals to wring the most food from the land. That was a concept they could understand: you put fertiliser on and crops grow better. You get paid more for your harvest. The price of fertilizer goes up, so does the price of food. How could they adapt to a philosophy of fertility reduction and the encouragement of weeds?

Impossible. They had, I guess, sold most of their land so the obvious thing to do was to invest the proceeds into producing food on a much smaller area. In this tiny village there are now at least 3 farms devoted to intensive poultry – concentration camps for chickens. I had to make way for an 18 wheeler, one of the biggest articulated trucks allowed on our roads. It was delivering feed. Enough to fill several of those skyscraper silos - probably the dry, dusty meal which is the chickens’ only food. Why would they want more? It contains all the nutrients they need.  
A few miles on I find this sign:

Why are the ducks free? Because there is not enough demand for their products from the supermarkets? I’m still amazed by the contrasts here: a pocket of industrial farming surrounded by its polar opposite. A bleak and beautiful landscape, a string of charming villages, and always above and beside them the symbols of man’s war on nature, the metal and the concrete, and ten thousand chickens.
I’ll be back. I’ve seen what’s been done and it’s amazing. The destructive power of the highest tides will lose itself in this great wetland. The plants, insects, invertebrates, all the strange creatures which like living in salty mud – they will multiply and feed new flocks of migrant birds. I will come with my telescope and someone will tell me what to look for: the odd man out, a stranger consorting with a crowd of regulars, a spotted redshank among the ordinary redshank. Ordinary? They are wonderful, magnificent birds, but they are common so we look between their legs for the oddity. I will hunt it down with my optics and shoot it with my camera. Bang, click, it’s there in the bag. But like a fish thrown back it will be none the worse for the encounter.
Collecting things is a very male pursuit and I never thought of myself as a collector of anything. I love photographing the birds, but they don’t have to be oddities. I just love the experience – getting up close to nature.