THE DAY I LOST MY NERVE

On the tops of the cliffs at Burton Bradstock there are sheep fields with dry stone walls.

This morning I emailed a friend to say I was about to walk beside the Broadchurch cliffs near Burton Bradstock.

Quick fire he replied; he'd be frightened to go to the Broadchurch Cliffs but for someone living in Midsommer it would probably feel like a holiday.

Explanations.

The cliffs along the short stretch of Dorset Coast between Burton Bradstock and West Bay are integral to the plot of the television drama 'Broadchurch'. They loom over it. They set the atmosphere.

In the first series a boy's body is found beneath them. (Not a spoiler - the start of the story.) I'm not sure what happened in the second series because it was all a bit of a blur - so very much overloaded with events and surprises it's forgettable; all but the scenery. - the scenery can never be ignored. We're into the third and final series now. It's about rape. It's not cheerful TV. The music is drone. It never lets up. The action is slow. Little happens. But it's well plotted and well acted so each hour-long episode flies as fast as twenty minutes. (Come to think of it, there are three advert breaks in each so it probably is only twenty minutes.)

Midsommer Murders is a long-running detective series set in rural Oxfordshire. There are so many people murdered in every episode it's a standing joke there's anyone left to kill. For the residents of Midsommer, one dead boy is nothing. (They are different genres.)

That's all fiction.

What is not fiction is that these cliffs are terrifying.

They are so terrifying I didn't take any photos.

I didn't walk beside them.

I didn't walk beneath them.

I ran away.

The sea was magnificent.

The waves were enormous.

The roar was exciting.

There was a small crowd of people waiting for the tide to turn so there would be enough safe space between cliffs and water wide enough to pass through safely.

I was terrified. It wasn't just that the cliffs might crumble (which they might) . . . I couldn't stand the feeling of being loomed over. Nature-bloggers aren't supposed to scream inside and flee from their subject matter. But these cliffs are big and red and cracked and gold and they ripple like tall curtains from sky to beach.

I don't like them.
(Shame you can't see them!)

Fortunately, cliffs have grassy tops as well as pebbly bottoms so I walked along up high instead - where there were gulls and fulmars and larks and crows and sunshine and drizzle.

Of course these tops are the earth and rocks which would fall to the beach if the cliffs were to crack, so the choice was not between living and dying but between being crushed by hundreds of tons of rubble or being part of the rubble hurtling down. But light is good. And it's reassuring to imagine one might be able to leap fast enough to cross an unfolding chasm and run inland if necessary. (Through the sheep-field.)

I didn't walk far. When I reached the mouth of the River Bride, I turned back. Rain threatened. 

If I could have turned it into a sunny day for you, I would have.

The River Bride is a pretty little river - and pretty creepy too. Here, as it fights its way into the sea, it carves the most extraordinary shapes. (Its birth at Little Bredy, six miles inland, is the setting for the first Broadchurch rape.)

Dorset is a weird county. It's one of the most beautiful places on earth yet the fiction it inspires is cruel.

Take Thomas Hardy. He wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs.

Mayor of Casterbridge - a drunken man sells his wife to a stranger.

The Trumpet Major - a young woman is sexually harassed by the nephew of the local squire. 

Tess of the d'Urbervilles - a young woman is raped, her baby dies, there are all sorts of complications, she eventually kills her 'seducer' and is executed.

Because I didn't walk below the cliffs I can only show you views from the top!

I had a nice walk though.

P.S. If this were a literary blog I would be wanting to know why there's a cheerful picture of someone hanging out washing on the front cover of Tess of the d'Ubervilles and how come Penguin can describe The Trumpet Major as 'Lyrical and lighthearted'.

The links between literature, landscape and sorrow can be pretty weird.
Humans are weird.
Wouldn't you say?

P.P.S. Readers who've never visited these cliffs may be disappointed there's no picture to show what it's like to look up at them. I just say they frighten me because they loom and might fall over. . . . So I suppose I'll have to go back soon and have another bash at being brave. Not brave for long, you understand. Just brave enough to aim my camera at their stark and dark and rippled faces - before running.

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THE RAGBAG

November 24th 2014

As you know, I'm distracted and busy so proper posts are somewhat adrift. But . . . well, do you have photos which start off stacked and ready to use but which drift down like half-used balls of wool in a knitting bag?

I do!

So for this post I'll rescue a recent few and bung them here.

First is the section of Dorset cliff which begins at West Bay and runs east towards Portland. It's where Chesil Beach begins (or ends, depending on which direction you're coming from). (So for all that these soft and golden and fast eroding cliffs are beautiful and impressive, look at at their feet.) For a while it runs along like an ordinary beach slam up against the shore but gradually and extraordinarily it drifts off into the sea, first leaving gaps and pools then peeling away completely leaving the Fleet Lagoon between it and the land. And as it goes East, the lagoon widens and the beach rises till it becomes a looming pile of up to fifty feet running parallel with the continuing cliffs and fields till it launches off on its own for a couple of miles then is stopped short by the very different grey stone cliffs of Portland. (Apologies for long sentence.)

Here at the beginning, the pebbles are really gravel. But if you were to follow the beach along you'd find the pebbles get bigger and bigger so by the time you arrived at Portland you would find not only that your legs would hurt horribly but the pebbles would now be flattish and smooth and many colours - pink and brown and grey. Most of them would be about the size to rest comfortably on the curved palm of your hand.

I don't think it's possible to explain anything of what this is all like. You have to see Chesil Beach to make sense of - and even then it's pretty hard to grasp and even when I see it every day I never fail to find it extraordinary.

There are so many extraordinary things to wonder at; things which go beyond the merely geographical - like what is that man doing on top of the cliff?

He was there quite a while. Is he practising golf strokes? Is he? And, if so, why there? . . .

Now we'll flit to the New Forest in Hampshire. Whenever I mention the New Forest I need to make it clear this is a very old forest. (Developed from pre-existing woodland in 1079) And here is a very old tree beside the village of Fritham. And on the very old tree there is lichen. Indeed, the tree seems to be plastered in lichen . . . and moss . . . and I wish I had had time there to look at it properly while I was there. But I didn't. It was a 'Hang on can you wait a minute while I take a picture,' sort of moment. Snap. Snap. And we were away. Hurray for cameras that's what I say! In a sense I was able to bring the tree back home with me to look at it here.

December 17th 2014

November 1st 2014 - but fairly confident ragwort will be flowering there still in December.

And a third extraordinary. I don't know when autumn ends and winter begins. Whichever it is, it's not still summer. But some flowers flower and flower. And some flowers, like this Oxford Ragwort like to flower in extraordinary places. In Poole, Ragwort has taken a shine to the railway. This plant is growing through the zig-zag slats there to dissuade pedestrians on a level crossing from veering off down the tracks. And it hasn't noticed it's season is over. It's carrying the Ragwort banner, ploughing on well after its companions have died down.

Closer to home, out of an urban setting, nearly always there will be an Oxford Ragwort plant flowering in winter. Personality!

Ain't nature wonderful!

Related Posts

CHESIL BEACH

Nothing But Stones

Thrift on Chesil Beach

NEW FOREST

Redwood Trees in the New Forest

On My Other Blog - Message in a Milk Bottle

The same beginning but with Portland in the distance.

External Links

Chesil Beach on Wikipedia

Chesil Beach - lots of info. provided as advert by commercial company specialising in measuring underwater noise.

The New Forest on Wikipedia

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BEWITCHED BY BLUE

Chicory Flowers

I could do nothing but post about chicory.

Here it grows up to about four foot high.

Hoverfly on Chicory Flower

I am not the only one who loves it.

Bee on Chicory Flower

Though my admiration does not extend to bathing in its pollen.

Willow Herb

There's a lot of blue and pink and purple around at the moment. The sky switches between blue and grey. If you look into sun-glare, it looks quite dramatic.

Except for leaves dropping from the tree in the autumn,
new ones arriving in sprin
and growing again through the summer,
this view stays much the same through the year.

This is looking up to where these plants grow.

I'm pretty much alone . . . but not quite . . . look behind me and a solitary herring gull swims away.

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A WALK FROM THE BEACH

These yellow bladders belong to Spiral Wrack (Fucus spiralis) OR (!) suggests another Ispotter - Bladder Wrack (Fucus  Vesiculosus)

I suspect I have too many photographs for this post. But the purpose behind it is to take you from a beach, up a narrow path, to the top of a little cliff beside Portland Harbour in Dorset. To walk it, it would take about three minutes - unless you stopped to look at some of the plants and creatures on the way, which is the theme of this post. What I introduce you to is very selective for the number of plants and birds and shell fish and seaweeds and insects . . . pretty much infinite!

Egg Wrack - (Aschophyllum  nodosum)

Many of the rocks on this little beach are covered in seaweed but others, further back from the water, are bare.

We don't have enough words for stones. This is larger than a pebble but smaller than a bolder. I'm trying to think - the rough, exposed bit in the foreground . . . about two and a half feet high? If this weren't supposed to be a blog about plants I could do post after post about the variety of rocks on this one little story-book-style beach.

This is a massive cliff about thirty-five miles to the west of 'our' beach. You can see the passing of millennia in its stripes. Our little beach is not dramatic like this. Its cliff is a toddler in comparison. But wander a little way along (there are lots of little ins and outs) and you can find yourself sinking in a sticky grey mud of a kind which makes the cliff above dangerous. It's at Charmouth - more or less where the study of fossils began. Many of the rocks on our beach have imprints of the fossils that have fallen out of them - like this one on my other blog.

Back to where we were. We'll walk up the path from 'Our Beach' . . .

I've mentioned before how many of last years blackberry leaves have stayed on their bushes through winter. I took this photo on 27th April 2012. Since then, the rains and winds we missed in the autumn and winter seem to have come all at once so I anticipate this leaf will have blown away by the time I go back to the path.

Here is a close up.

Hoverflies are beginning to make their appearance.

Close up -

This one being Myathropa florea - which may make this a good moment to mention the identifications on this post.

I have sought help from two sources. One is from the members of Ispot - where identifications can be made at the same time as a visual resource is being built up by the Open University. As always - if you haven't already taken a look . . . do so!

This time, I've had the additional help of Chris Webster who has a wonderful collection of hoverfly photos on the site 'British Hoverflies'. (There's a link in the tab for IDs at the top of the blog.)

This may also be the moment to wander off the path even further to mention National Insect Week, 25th June - 1st July. (There's currently a banner link at the top of the sidebar.) There will be more information about this nearer the time.

I'm beginning to sound like a notice board!

Dandelions - wonderful from start to finish. Beautifully shaped leaves, wonderfully cheerfully, bright yellow flowers which turn into clocks. Everyone likes to take pictures of the clocks. They are a bit overdone. I realise that. But the reason they are over-photoed is because . . . well, just look!

How can they be resisted?

Close to the top of the path - is the clump of elderberry trees I'm following. Now rains have come, the lichen which has been bright yellow throughout the dry weather, is rapidly turning green - it's what it does!

Common Orange Lichen - Xanthoria parietina - turning green because the air is damp.
When we have dry weather again, it will go back to being bright yellow.

The leaf we have been following since it was a shoot is difficult now to get to because of the undergrowth which has grown in the way. It's also smaller than the other leaves opening around it . . . but it's still visible in the crook of the V shaped branch straight ahead.

And at the very top of the path we have come up

alexanders (with the yellow flowers) dandelions (with their clocks blown away) and fennel (the feathery leaves). If this year follows the pattern of other years, chicory and vipers bugloss will grow here too in the summer.

* * *

TREE FOLLOWING

This is such a long post already, I'll do a double catch up of tree followings next week.

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SEA AND SEA AND ROCKS AND STONE AND SEA - THE NEXT CONTEXT POST FOR PORTLAND

There’s a lot of sea around Portland. Lots and lots of sea and lots of sky and lots of light - and I can never get it right when it comes to photographs. Detail is often blurred out and I rarely get things perfectly in focus.

But then . . . maybe this is precisely how the photos should turn out. Because this is how we do (or, rather don’t!) see here. We nearly always have to squint. The light is bright and stark and white - except on the days when it is dull and misty. It swings between the two.

Portland has its own weather system. You can see it from miles away in each direction - sitting in the sea with clouds making a bee-line for it. Often its top wears them like a hat.

This contrast of light is echoed in the landscape. The Grove (the Young Offender’s Prison I mentioned in my last post) is on the Eastern Cliffs. Just around the corner, you come to this 

on your left

straight ahead - this

(If you peer into the picture, you will see, in the straight-ahead distance, one of the lighthouses I showed in a previous post.)

and, on your right - is this.

Fishing and quarrying have been the main industries on Portland for centuries. The sea remains the sea but the quarries have changed and defined the landscape. Some are still working. Still they churn up and dig out - and magnify the glare which comes down from the sun (and the mist!) and the sea.

Portland is shrinking, cutting bits off itself and sending them away. It’s been doing this for a long time!

When London had to be re-built after the Great Fire in 1666, stone quarried on Portland went to re-build St Paul’s Cathedral and many other grand buildings which are still there today. (Christopher Wren was the local MP!) London wouldn’t be the same without them. One almost might say London wouldn’t be London if it weren’t for Portland.

It is a particular feature of Portland stone that it works well in big blocks but not so much in small ones. The hacking and lowering and transporting of these huge rocks was a time consuming business - expensive too!

Looking over the edge of the cliff . . . this is where the stone went from, lowered by crane into barges. This kind of crane was used for boats as well as stone - and there's one down there still. (Though not left over from the seventeenth century!) In an earlier post, I published a photo of one at Portland Bill. Taking a look at that might be easier than peering into this picture but there are other things of interest down there too - a ‘pillbox’ from World War Two (a concrete hut with slit windows to see through when guarding the coast) and great hunks of abandoned stone. These hunks add to the lunar nature of some of the landscape. On the western side of the island, so much un-needed, waste stone was tipped over the cliffs, it has accumulated into a great slope which looks almost as if it is a natural feature of the scenery. (I know I am building a great list of items for future posts - but this will feature in one.)

There’s an old quarry railway down there too - at least, you can see the long, straight, white line where it used to be.

To give an idea of scale -
there are two people standing on the track.

It was not easy to construct this railway - one of the great challenges being to build a cutting (now filled in) on a gradient gentle enough that engines could climb to the little town of Easton - but it opened in 1901 and for fifty years the trains transported passengers as well as stone. Freight trains continued until 1965. The rails have gone now and it has become a good flat track for walking. (Once you get down to it!)

There are wild goats here; and fulmars were swooping around their nests while I was taking these pictures. (They build them in the vertical faces of the cliffs, inaccessible to humans.)

And as for plants - they get everywhere!

Whether to the right

or to the left

People come in coaches to see the lighthouses of Portland but there are few visitors along here. There are enough walkers (mainly local with dogs) to make you feel safe - you are not too remote. Sometimes they will stop to talk (one told me there are sometimes ravens in these cliffs . . . ) but, mostly, people will smile, call a short, quiet greeting and continue on their way. It’s a good place to think. There will be a long gap before the next passer by.

Sometime, when the weather is sunny and warm, I’ll take you down to the old railway track and we’ll look up - and probably say ‘Surely this can’t be England?!’.

* * *

Special thanks to Stuart Morris for the friendly way he helped with information about the railway. He is the author of

Portland, an Illustrated History.

(You can buy this through Amazon. Here is the link.)

For a Link Page to lots of Portland Material - Click HERE

For Photographs of Stone Quarries on Portland - Click HERE

If you’d like to find tourist information or where to stay on Portland - Click HERE

To see where Portland is on a Google Map - Click HERE

* * *

All these pictures were taken within a twenty minute span on 27th May 2011.

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BLOOD AND BUDDLEIA

So, there I was, rammed up against a wild rose, with a thorn in my hand and a thorn in my coat and a thorn in my scarf and unable to break free - when a woman came by with a dog.

"Have you found something interesting?"

"I've found I'm stuck to this bush," I said, speaking over my shoulder.

I felt more explanation was needed. I mean, how did I come to get stuck to the bush?

"I was photographing this branch."

I nodded at the flailed branch on the catkin-ed tree, hoping to interest her in my monitoring project. Failed. I could see she was trying to see the point. I could see she was trying really hard. And I could see it wasn't working. She walked on.

My hand was full of blood. My phone was red with the stuff. And both were horribly sticky.

I wasn't even meant to be photographing that tree. I was meant to be photographing buddleia. I don't like buddleia. That's why I'd been putting it off.

"It'll be in shade by now," I reckoned - and I headed down to a beach where I could walk unembarrassed by my bloody hand (which wouldn't stop dripping) and the red, sodden tissues with which I was trying to stem the flood.

(Rose thorns hurt so much more than blackberry ones! Blackberries scratch but roses make deep, triangular gashes which hurt right inside the wound for days - in this case three.)

* * * * *

Another day . . . and back to Buddleia.

Cultivated buddleia may be alright. (Though I'm not sure even about that. I used to think it was lilac gone scraggy.) Wild buddleia, well, its leaves are dull and boring when grown and the flowers hang tatty too long.

There is only one place where I like buddleia - a stretch of broken bushes culminating in an exceptionally tall tree. (Barbee has already noticed!)

Buddleia doesn't seem to object to being flailed. Smashed down one minute - sprouting the next.

Two photos:-

One from the 5th December.

The other from the 17th January.

You can see the branch has been broken. You can see the bush hardly cares. Leaves were already sprouting robustly before the heavy frosts (which have knocked down the nettles and much of the ground elder). And after the frosts? Another burst of leaves! (You can see it in the bend of the branch.

The hedge is embedded with bits of branch. The ground is strewn with them. Grasp a branch still attached to the tree and ask it to help you balance - it falls off in your hand. But the plant lives on. (Incidentally, although I don't like Buddleia, I do like its trunks and woody bits; wonderfully varied in colour (depending on the weather) and fibrous and shapeful . . . ).

And here is another reason for not liking Buddleia.

It has its own campaign of destruction. The photo isn't good because it is north facing, in shadow, on a dull day. (I'll go back when the sun is shining and try to do better!)

But, I tell you, I wouldn't like to live in one of the houses which rest on this wall!

And I always feel a bit nervous when near it!

* * * * *

So. What about the beach? (The beach where I walked after being attacked by a rose.)

It's very beautiful but it's a graveyard for trees too.

Here, seen when the tide is out, are the gardens which fell off a cliff one night a few years ago. Householders woke one morning to find the ends of their gardens missing - lawns and greenhouses and horse chestnuts had been sheered off and were down on the beach below.

To the north of here, there is a huge coastal defence which protects a road. To the south, the mouth of The Fleet (a tidal lagoon) was relocated when a new bridge was built to link Weymouth with the Portland causeway.

When the sea wants to eat the land, it seems it can't be stopped. It has to bite at something. If you protect one bit of the shoreline, you are likely to put another at risk. Tidal dymanics are difficult to understand and knock-on effects hard to predict. None the less, it's a political issue. Should this stretch of coast and the land alongside it be protected at the expense of others? Poor old Council - responsible both for commissioning the flailing of trees and hedges on the land - and for deciding whether or not to let trees and houses and gardens fall off the edge of it!

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For the Post After This - Elderberry and Hawthorn

OH NO! NOT THE TOMATOES!

Ah!

The tomatoes.

The Il Pantano Romanesco - I'll recommend that highly.

It . . . ('they' would have sounded better) . . . was large with firm, succulent and tasty flesh. And it didn't have those huge cavities which turn into holes when the juice empties out - as most tomatoes have . . . especially, I find, the ones which turn up in salads in cafes.

Money Maker didn't do too badly.

Gardeners Delight - nice big trusses and tangy tasting fruit . . . though without much depth of flavour. I'll blame that deficiency on lack of sun.

Perhaps the size of the crop can be glossed over?

I'm pretty tired today. Ceres was up all night trying on clothes for a party she's going to at the weekend and I was up all night telling her to go to sleep.

She'll be wearing a pair of sleeves. Other things too, of course - but it's the sleeves which fascinate me because they aren't attached to a clothe - just a pair of independently living sleeves.

What is even more fascinating, perhaps, is that she practises wearing them.

_ _ _ _ _

P.S.

.

The picture at the top is of Castle Cove cliffs.

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The castle at the bottom is the 'castle' - Sandsfoot. It was built by Henry Vlll as part of his coastal defence. It was also used as a mint. Most of it has now fallen into Portland Harbour; all of it into disrepair.

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These photos have no relevence - but I took them this morning (22/09/08) and like them.

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The Tomatoes - I'm thinking if I put lots of photos of the same ones on my blog, it will look as if I managed to grow more than I did.