PLANTS ON THE WALLS - SANDSFOOT CASTLE IN DORSET

Near where I live there's a castle. Well, more than one. There's Corfe Castle (which I've written about) and there's Portland Castle (which I haven't).

The definition of a castle is oblique. Maiden Castle (also not far away) is a series of grass covered ramparts where Celts held out against Romans (and lost). There's a mini version too - where I came across a thistle. And there's Sandsfoot - a little ruin of a castle built first as part of Henry VIII's coastal defences. It's mostly fallen into the sea but a couple of year's ago it was stuck together a bit and made safe and a wooden bridge built so you can pretend you are crossing the moat that isn't there on a drawbridge . . . and a two-person balcony where you can stand with a friend and look out at the sea and hope the cliff won't crumble until you've gone home.

And that's where I went to look at plants.

Now, if I owned a castle, I wouldn't want flowers growing out from the stones. Heavens! The fuss people make about a little ivy on a grotty garden wall. And this is history!

How about Red Valerian growing on your roof?

Or leaves peeping over the lintel? (Sometimes I think this is buddleia - then I don't.)

This fleshy little plant may appear to be growing at the foot of a wall but no. It's nestling in the unevenness between the large stones from which the castle is built.

If the walls of my house were rickety with age, so rickety the upper floor had already given way, I wouldn't put sacks of earth along them and try to grow grass there.

But that's what happened when the castle was 'done up'. The grass died.

Other plants have taken their place.

It's getting late in the summer so they're dying too. Turning without moving (in a stuck foot kind of way) I look back under the arch of the balcony to see them.

There's a hole up the middle of the castle; a square, empty space. You can look down into the remains of the basement and up at the sky through the non-existent roof. And you can admire flowers growing in high, broken corners and window spaces.

(I unstuck my foot so see these.)

Plantain. Clover. And a bramble.

(Note to myself. Go back to the foot of the cliff before winter storms crack more of it away - and look up.)

(And down into rock pools.)

(We've been there before. We found a dead goose lying on a bed of seaweed. And I've been observing the castle as the seasons have come and gone.)

For more about 'Stuck Foot' posts - and an invitation to join in.
For the September Tree Following Link Box

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WALKING BACK FROM THE CASTLE

Fish, Gold and Black, swimming among the Elodea crispa plants
in the pond in Sandsfoot Castle Park in Dorset, England.
Thanks to Mark and Gaz at Alternative Eden for water plant ID.
January 11th 2013

When the Castle was done up a bit last year
(and made safe to go inside)
 mats with grass on were laid along the tops of the ruins.
I don't know why. (They're falling off now.)
January 11th 2013

You know the castle in the view? The view we're following? Soon I'll show you round. First, though, I'll set up the year. Not that I've got a good record on this. I say I'll do things then never get round to them. That, or they go wrong. I decide to see what will grow in a particular patch of ground - and the council mows it. I decide to photograph the leaves of a particular tree - and forget all about them until they've not only opened but have dropped off in the autumn. Nevertheless, there are some things which are fairly well embedded in my ordinary Loose and Leafy routine. It's reassuring when we get to January to find the world is still going round much the same - at least, bits of it are! You can't stop the seasons.

Geese on the water. Portland Harbour January 11th 2013.

There's a good account of brent geese on the RSPB site.

For close up drawing to help with ID, plus more info.

So, imagine you are in the grounds of the castle-in-the-view. You've looked at the fish and the weed in the pond. Now you go into the castle itself (it's very small, what remains of it) and walk through it to a little platform overhanging the rocks to see what you can see. There's a lot of noise. A flock of geese (brent geese?) is landing on the water. They set off together for a very quick paddle - you can see where the water is left disturbed in their wake. The herring gulls on the rocks ignore them.

Dessicated blackberries.

January 11th 2013

Then you potter along a bit to look at the elderberry clump we've been following.  The remains of dessicated blackberries still stick out from it over the path. For much of the year, these trees are little more than climbing frames for brambles and ivy.

January 11th 2013
For all that it's a bit odd to recommend a video
about something quite this static,
if you haven't seen the Natural History Museum clip about
lichens as pollution indicators,
click HERE for Xanthoria parietina The Movie!
(And more .)

The lichen on it is a brash and ghastly orange. When it's densely packed like this . . . I'm not sure it's entirely pleasant.

Common Orange Lichen - well named! But it changes its shades; yellow one way and green the other. Sometimes it's very green - but not today; which is surprising because I've always associated the green with damp weather (and there's been almost nothing but recently!)

Xanthoria parietina is an indicator of nitrogen in the atmosphere too. Near the sea, as this is, nitrogen is to be expected. (Sea birds contribute a lot!)

Common Orange Lichen
(Xanthoria parietina)
January 11th 2013

The first picture shows its real colour on January 11th 2013. This is the same photo with the colours changed a bit to emphasise their gradations. (So you notice the bits which are a bit greener. Sometimes, they are greener still.)

Elderberry.
January 11th 2013

The elderberry leaf shoot we've been following for more than a year (!) and which did hardly anything last summer . . . .  There's a new leaf where the old one was. It's got a sort of head-start in height this time round. Maybe it will one day become a branch? This appears to be a long term project!

Ivy Berries
January 11th 2013

The year before last, I followed ivy until its berries ripened but never showed you what happened when they opened and dropped their seeds - so we'll take up with ivy roughly where we stopped off before. For all that it's a common plant, its flowers, berries - even the shapes of its leaves - go much un-noticed. I suspect its seeds are even more of a mystery. (See the post for December 3rd 2011 -  Exploding Ivy and for January 13th 2012 - The Berries Mature.)

Cock's Foot Grass (Dactylis glomerata) January 11th 2013

Grasses - I'm thinking it might be a good idea to make more of a fuss of grasses this year. Grass isn't just grass it's . . . well, here's some flowering already.

And the view.

The view we're following - with Sandsfoot Castle and tree.
January 11th 2013

I'm a little fed up with this view. It never does much except sit there and be beautiful. And I daren't go back to the dent where the willows are to look at the rocks because the cliffs have been so washed by rain recently I'm worried they'll slip down and squash anyone who goes too close.

So I'll pretend I've been back, even though I haven't, and put in a picture I took there before . . .

December 18th 2013

Shells emerging from one of the rocks in the dent. Prehistoric cockles? (Anyone know?)

* * *

January 11th 2013

Some tree followers have been rounding up their year with final posts about their particular tree. I'll soon do a round up of the round ups. Have you finished with your tree or will you be carrying on? Has it been interesting? Will you be choosing a new one?

This, as you can see, is the one in the foreground of my view. I'll be specially aware of it over the next few months because, by summer, it will be obscuring what's beyond - and, by then, the brent geese will have gone.

* * *

Best wishes for 2013

I hope your year has got off to a good start.

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FEBRUARY PRICKLES RE-VISITED AND REVISED

Two problems crop up this time every year. One is . . . well, not exactly a problem - but intriguing; to tell hawthorn and blackthorn apart.

The upright twig on the right is clearly blackthorn but
. . . although I think there is hawthorn coming in from the left,
I'm really not certain.
Behind them, flowering prettily
(as it does all year)
is gorse.

For the most part, it’s easy. But there are bushes, here and there, where I get it wrong. Not that, in the course of world history this really matters - it’s just that the distinctive blackthorn thorns aren’t evenly spread and until the leaves / blossom begin to appear . . . I can stand in front of a bush feeling very silly and cross with myself.

A hawthorn leaf bud breaks open.
See the short thorns?
But blackthorns have a lot of short thorns too - even though the
the remarkably long ones are what we are likely to look for.

The easy bit is that hawthorn produces its leaves before its blossom - and that’s what’s beginning to happen. 

Whereas blackthorn blossoms before its leaves break - which is not what’s beginning to happen yet.

The other problem (and I always feel a bit uneasy about this) is that, for some readers, hawthorn and blackthorn are special trees. It’s not that I object to people finding them special - it’s just that I sometimes think we go adrift from each other at this time of year. I am specially impressed by blackthorn. Hawthorn’s ok too. But I don’t consider either of them to be magical - not in the really 'magic' kind of way. And I suppose I get defensive on behalf of other trees and plants that I keep an eye on for this blog. The elderberry and sycamore,  field maples (if that’s what they are) and the miles of blackberries and alexanders . . . and, later on, dandelions and viper’s bugloss . . . even the seaweed! - I’m sticking up for them. They are as ‘special’ to me as May and Sloe. And gorse of course.

The tree on the right is one I plant to come back to later in the year.
Beyond it is Sandsfoot Castle - built during the reign of HenryVIII.

* * *

About ‘Tree Following’.

I’ve put a box in the sidebar for this. If you’d like to let me know when you post about ‘your’ tree (don’t assume I know automatically because I follow your blog - I might miss it) I’ll put a note there.

Further down the page, there's a blog list of people with trees they are paying special attention to. This updates itself automatically whenever a post is posted so it doesn't take any notice of content - it's simply the  latest on that blog, whether it's anything to do with trees or not!

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All photos taken today, February 25th 2012, except for the hawthorn leaf - which was yesterday.

WHEN A CASTLE EXPLODES

Last year some time . . . a man talking on the radio . . . an English  journalist who’d worked as a reporter in Afghanistan and had made friends with an Afghan journalist . . . who, when he later needed to flee the country . . .  came to stay with him in London . . .

. . .  The British journalist explained what happened when he decided to deflect his friend's mind from the terrors of war and exile by taking him on a trip into the lovely English countryside. Where better to go than Dorset? Where better than Corfe - 

Even in Celtic and Roman Times there was probably a castle on this site.
The first castles would have been made of wood but
William the Conqueror built it in stone here at the end of
the 11th Century.

1635 - 1646 the castle was owned
by the Bankes family which took
the Royalist side
during the Civil War.

where castle ruins perch dramatically high on a conical hill 

After its fall to Parliamentary forces in 1646,
the stones of the castle were used for building
houses in the village.

and where seventeenth and eighteenth century cottages are still grouped around its toes? 

Where fields and woods stretch into the distance, 

the lanes are narrow, the parking adequate and the National Trust has a pleasant tea-room?

It’s a long trek from London; not really advisable in a day but just about manageable when it matters  . . .  even when the sun shines and everyone else has decided this is just the right moment for a holiday jaunt. The roads jam and the cars go slower and slower . . . and drivers and passengers alike grow weary . 

. . but when they see that castle, the jagged ruins against the sky . . . wow! Fatigue is drowned in awe. The heart lifts. There’s beauty! There’s history! There will be cream teas, ice-creams, ginger beer. This is Enid Blyton country. Remember Kirrin Island with its ruined castle? Rooks? Dungeons? Childhood adventure? Corfe Castle and the coves and moors of this part of Dorset were what inspired the Famous Five stories. 

Click to find out about the Swanage Railway

You won’t have time to take a ride on the steam train if you’re only here for a couple of hours but you can watch it puff in and out of Corfe Castle station on its way between Swanage and Wareham and simply seeing it will take you back to the childhood you probably never had . . . back to the atmosphere of the original Thomas the Tank Engine illustrations . . . it will be tantalising, you’ll want to come again . . . but for the moment . . . as you come round the bend in the road and suddenly see what’s there, you will experience a wonderful a gasp of surprise, of exhilaration, of pleasure

The castle was
blown up from the inside
by military engineers
when Parliamentary
forces took it in 1645
after laying siege for
six weeks.

 . . . of horror . . . !

Horror?

“What have you brought me here for? Is this it?”

The shock of seeing through someone else’s eyes.

This man had escaped Afghanistan - a land of war, of explosions, of ruins. For him, ruins do not refresh the soul.

We forget what war is.

The National Trust banners on the bridge between the tea rooms and the fortress say ‘Romance’ ‘War’ ‘Treachery’ ‘Betrayal’. Oh yes! All very jolly!

References
I'm giving an Amazon link for The Famous Five books because I'm uncertain what would be better. The Famous Five, as well as giving great delight to several generations of children and giving many the motivation to learn how to read, have been hi-jacked on the internet by some very odd people (with strange approaches to sex) and sites which seem ok at first glance turn out not to be . . .

In the 1960s some librarians took against The Famous Five books because the vocabulary is limited. Some people were also concerned because children in it come from middle-class families which sent their children to boarding school and employed a cook. They were also concerned that Enid Blyton's approach suggest racist attitudes and that the children she wrote about 'looked down' on travelers and the poor.

My own opinion is that children need stories - not just 'education', that if they can identify with wizards and fairies there's no reason why they should have problems with people who employ cooks and that unless we know how people used to behave towards each other, they will not be able to understand where we have advanced as a society nor what is left to be achieved.

For Thomas the Tank Engine . . . so far, I'm stuck because I'm not finding links to the original drawings, only to photos taken from more recent books in which they were replaced with models from the television series.

* * *

Welcome to Corfe Castle  - is a good site for finding out about the castle, the village and the surrounding area.

The National Trust Site about Corfe Castle  - includes information about opening times and entrance fees as well as about the castle's history.

The Swanage Railway Site - tells you about the engines, history, timetables . . . and more.

Here is the Historic Towns Survey of Corfe Castle - topography, building types, archaeology etc.

A touristy page with a map to show where Corfe Castle is. (Which might be quite handy!)

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