Crocuses!

Dear Readers, I managed to persuade my husband to come out for a quick walk around the block at lunchtime – he’s still working full-time, and will sometimes sit hunched over his computer for ten hours at a stretch. But today was bright, and sunny, and not too cold, and so we went for a quick trot around East Finchley’s County Roads, just to see what was happening.

Well, first up it appears that putting gravel into my plant pots deterred the squirrels enough for at least some of them to survive. I can only plant them in my south-facing front garden, because at the back it’s too cold and shady. When they’re happy, though, they burst forth with open arms. Now all I need is a big fat bee to come and enjoy them.

More front-garden crocuses (or possibly crocii?)

Off we go to see what else is happening. Just up the road the winter jasmine is coming into bloom – this is a very fine example, which runs almost up to the gutter of the house. There are just a few flowers at the moment…

Winter-flowering jasmine

…but  in a few weeks it will look like this:

And then there’s the flowering quince, of which there are several examples on the County Roads. I love the way that the flowers come before the leaves.

The hedge on the corner is full of privet berries – none of the birds seem to like them much, but maybe it’s because they’re black, and birds are much more attracted to red.

Privet berries

This lovely magnolia on Durham Road will be so beautiful in a week or so – I  must remember to pop back. It always amazes me to think that magnolias are some of our very oldest plants, and were originally pollinated by beetles because social insects hadn’t evolved yet.

Magnolia buds waiting to pop

Across the road there’s this plaque – it’s cool that it says ‘AD’ (so at least we know it’s not 2,024 years old) but I wonder what happened to the year? 

And as we walk down Hertford Road we find a mahonia in full bloom. The smell is fantastic, like lemon and rose with a bit of honey thrown in. Again, all we need is a nice fat bee.

There are some polyanthus about…

and somebody has made a nice green roof for their wheelie bins, covered in a miniature forest of sedum…

And then, right at the end of the road there’s the mimosa, looking just about as fabulous as any plant has the right to look.

And so, I recommend getting outside every day, even if it’s just for a quarter of an hour. You never know what you might spot!

Dear Readers, after our trip to the glass exhibition yesterday we went in search of coffee and a sandwich, and en route I looked up at the spire which sits behind the Royal Courts of Justice. And there, just a blob until I put my camera on maximum zoom, was a peregrine falcon. Those of you with long memories might remember when I did a street tree walk around here, and spotted not one but two peregrines who’d been nesting here, plus a fledgling. I even managed to get a shot of a food drop, where a parent bird drops food to teach the youngster how to hunt.

Food drop!

Mother, father and fledgling

I was so pleased to see that at least one peregrine is still here, and hopefully they’ll breed successfully again. Peregrines are increasingly hunting not just pigeons but our little green parakeet friends, and they also hunt at night when buildings are floodlit, as they often are in London. I am always impressed by the adaptability of animals to an urban setting.

Anyhow, we then went for a walk around the London School of Economics – my husband  studied here for a year, but there has been a lot of building, and new buildings popping up. First up there was this remarkable….well, I’m not sure what to call it, but it was above the door of the Old Building. It’s made of very fine wire mesh, and is called ‘Final Sale’, so I guess I can see what all the climbing up the shelves is about. The piece is by Russian artists Andrey Blokhin and Georgy Kuznetsov. As this is the School of Economics I guess it’s appropriate.

Above it is the coat of arms of the LSE – the motto, ‘Rerum cognoscere causas’, means ‘to know the causes of things’, and the critter is a beaver, viewed as a hard-working animal. However, in 1922 William Beveridge, then Head of the School, mischievously remarked that this reputation could have been overstated:

“The beaver is also reputed to be industrious, though one writer at least has been found to assert that this reputation is undeserved; ‘that for five long months in winter the beaver does nothing but sleep and eat and keep warm’ that ‘summer-time for him is just one long holiday when the beavers are as jolly as grigs with never a thought of work from morning to night,’ and that in fact, he never works at all except in September and October when his dam must be built and when the Final Examination of the University are held.”

Around the corner from the Old Building there is now an open space (one could almost call it a piazza if it wasn’t for the drizzle), and  on the corner of the Clements Building there’s a mural called ‘Spectra’ by Tod Hanson. It’s based on Booth’s Victorian poverty map of the area, with the square that we’re standing in depicted by a red square. Lincoln’s Inn Fields is the green space at the top, and the Thames winds in and out in blue. However, the  colours don’t actually reflect the colours of Booth’s map (it was used to designate different areas of London according to their poverty levels, with black being ‘Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal’ and dark blue being ‘Very poor, casual. Chronic want’. I wonder if the artwork has missed a trick? While there probably isn’t ‘chronic want’ in the immediate vicinity amongst those who are homed, there are plenty of homeless people. The design resembles a pie-chart (very appropriate for economists).

And just across the road is ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ by Mark Wallinger. It is indeed just a globe turned upside down. It does enable us to pay more attention to the countries of the global south, but I wonder if it would have been even more interesting if it had used the Peter Projection which shows the actual relative sizes of the countries (though I’m not sure if this would work on a globe as I think this is what causes the distortion of the countries in the first place). (Head explodes).

‘The World Turned Upside Down’ by Mark Wallinger

Now, the whole reason for coming to the LSE was to visit what used to be their splendid bookshop, but it never returned after Covid. However! Right opposite The Old Curiosity Shop  is a lovely, bijou bookshop called The Gilded Acorn. It has an astonishing array of books, both new and second-hand, and we both staggered out with some new things to read, even though my bedside book pile resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I got Katherine Rundell’s ‘The Golden Mole’, which I’ve been meaning to get for ages, and which describes a whole host of interesting creatures, and Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’, which is full of things to ponder on. More on this later, I’m sure!

The man who runs the shop is very helpful, and I can only imagine that things are tough. If you value bookshops, this is definitely one to pop into if you’re in the vicinity. There is nothing like actually holding a book in your hand and paging through it, feeling its heft and breathing in that new book (or old book) smell.

https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/TheGildedAcorn

Anyhow, by now the drizzle has turned into proper precipitation so we decide to head towards Charing Cross to get the Northern Line home. But goodness, there’s been some shenanigans going on on The Strand. How lovely that it’s pedestrianised! I daresay that the taxi drivers aren’t as chuffed as all that, but there’s lots of seating, some planting, trees have a bit more room to breathe and you can just wander into Somerset House as the mood takes you. St Mary le Strand church looks very relieved.

‘Judge and Jury’ (2023) by Chris Day

Dear Readers, Two Temple Place is a new-to-me venue for free exhibitions close to Temple Station in London. The building itself is a Gothic masterpiece commissioned by William Waldorf Astor in the 1890s, at which point he was the richest man in the world. It was designed as the London pied-a-terre for the reclusive magnate, and contained the largest strong room in Europe, while Astor had his rooms upstairs.In 1999 the building was acquired by Richard ‘Tigger’ Hoare, who founded the Bulldog charity in 1983 as a ‘charity to support charities’, giving millions of pounds to small charities who might otherwise be in trouble or unable to fulfill their plans. Hoare died in 2020, but gave the building to the Bulldog Trust, to put on free exhibitions and events for the public, and in particular to showcase publicly-owned collections, and to give experience to curators who are early in their careers. I notice that they have some lovely events – Stained glass collage for families, fantasy nature sculptures for families, a stained glass walking tour, and lots more besides, and many of them are ‘pay what you can’.

Anyhow, the exhibition for this year is ‘The Glass Heart’, and it showcases some very unusual pieces by glass artists who might not otherwise get exposure in such a central and increasingly well-known venue -we first visited back in 2016, to see an exhibition about Egyptian mummies and death preservation techniques, and the place was deserted (perhaps not surprisingly :-)) , but as you’ll see from the photos t’was not so today.

I’ve just centred on a few pieces that I particularly liked here, but I’d encourage you to visit – I suspect that during the week (and outside of half-term, which is this week in the UK) it would be a lot more relaxed. The exhibition is on until 21st April, and the museum is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. except on Mondays (closed all day), Sunday when it’s closed at 4.30 p.m., and Wednesday when it’s open until 9 p.m.

First up is the piece in the first photo, ‘Judge and Jury’. I like it because it’s both colourful and worrying – the way that the glass is constrained, bulging out from its copper-piping shackles, reminded me of prisoners trussed up on their way to who knows where. When I learned that Day is mixed-race, and had spent time researching the treatment of black people in the UK and the US, the piece suddenly made a lot of specific sense.

And then there’s this, by Pinkie Maclure, called ‘The Soil’. It took me a while to notice something fairly obvious about the image, so taken was I by the colours and the leaves and the organisms at the bottom of the work. Plus this looks like it should be hanging in a church somewhere. It’s actually pretty subversive….

….because the image is of a female gardener, urinating in order to replenish the soil. I love the beatific expression, and the gardening gloves. It’s especially fun juxtaposed with the stained glass that actually forms part of Two Temple Place.

One of the windows of Two Temple Place that are always ‘in situ’.

Then there’s the work below, that I honestly thought was made of wood, but no, it’s all glass. This is ‘Toxic Apparatus’ by James Maskrey.

‘Toxic Apparatus’ by James Maskrey (2023)

It’s based on Blast Beach in Sunderland, which was an industrial dumping ground, and the Teeside skyline. The patina on the glass reminds me of the stained beakers and pipettes from my O-Level Chemistry class. What a versatile material glass is! It sometimes feels as if you can do anything with it.

Oh look! A glass dining chair. Not an ordinary chair, however, but one hot-sculpted from uranium glass. I found myself wondering if it would glow in the dark. The artist, Elliot Walker, imagines household items after a potential nuclear disaster.

And then, how about this? At first glance it looks like the standard stained glass from a pub, but look closer…

These pieces were commissioned for the Red Lion pub in West Bromwich, to celebrate the Desi pubs of the West Country – these failing or derelict pubs have been given a new lease of life by Asian landlords from the Punjab who arrived in the Black Country in the 1950s and have saved these local landmarks for the wider community.

And finally, I liked this piece, by Monster Chetwynd, renowned for her reworkings of moments from cultural history. In this glass piece, she’s taken on the arrival of St Bede at the monastery. Bede was only seven when he arrived at the monastery of Monkwearworth to be educated by the abbot at the time, Benedict Biscop. It’s a bit on the clumsy side compared to some of the other work at the exhibition, but there’s something very lovable about it. I imagine that the photo below shows the young Bede with the abbot, who appears to be carrying a very small whale, though I suppose it could be a marrow. In the second photo you can see the glass kitchen garden

Who or what this is I have no idea, but if you know something about the life of St Bede and have some understanding of what’s going on, do share. I’m wondering if it’s the Bede’s mother or father, bereft at the loss of their child, but it could equally well be a blond Elvis Presley.

Anyhow, I love the exuberance and the sense of play, even if I’m confused. I’m often confused.

So, if you are in the vicinity of Temple station and fancy a look at some very interesting glass (and a very interesting building) I really recommend popping into this exhibition. And they have a café and a bookshop.

And the Glass Hearts thing? Here it is…

Peter Layton, Founder of London Glassblowing,  ‘Matters of the Heart’ (2004)

And here it is in action, accompanied by the usual hubbub of a London exhibition. Enjoy!

Great Tit (Parus major)

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, have you heard it yet? That call of tee-cher, tee-cher from the highest branch of a shrub, signalling that a great tit is starting to declare his territory? Interestingly, the birds seem to have a different intonation according to where they are in the world. Here’s a Belgian bird…(from Wallonia)

Here’s a Spanish one (from close to Santiago de Compostela)

Here’s a French one (from Nantes in the Loire Valley)

And here’s one from the UK

In her piece in ‘Nature’s Calendar’, Lulah Ellender points out that spring starts a lot earlier than we expect, if we have our ears open. Lots of other birds are starting to sing too. There are song thrushes in Coldfall Wood, and in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery (apologies for the wobbly camera, it might be best to watch this with your eyes closed if you’re prone to sea sickness)

And the robins, who’ve been singing all year, suddenly have a new bounce in their step…

Everyone else will be starting to sing too. There’s the fluting of blackbirds, usually from a television aerial or the very top of a tree. This early on, Ellender points out that it will be the younger males, searching for a territory or defending one that they already have against other young whipper-snappers. The established males don’t bother singing until March.

The more high-pitched song of the dunnock – this mousey, discreet little bird can be found sitting high on a branch, singing its head off from mid February onwards…

And if you listen carefully, you can definitely hear blue tits. This recording starts off with one of their rather cross-sounding alarm calls, followed by their reedy, metallic song.

It’s much too early for most species to start nest-building (though there is a lot of confusion about in the natural world, as we know), but in some species the loudness and complexity of the song is an indication of the health and vigour of the male bird, and gives the females a chance to check them out before things really get going later in the year. Males sing less once they actually have a mate and a territory (though many still sing to announce that they’re still alive, and their territory is still occupied). But what all this activity signals is that spring is on the way, hard to believe for some folk in the North of England who are expecting a shedload of snow this week, but true nonetheless.

Song Thrush singing in East Finchley

Male Cirl Bunting (Emberiza cirlus) Photo by Paco Gómez from Castellón, Spain derivative work: Bogbumper (talk) – Cirl_bunting.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10654353

Dear Readers, back in the early 2000s I had a first stab at a biology degree, with Birkbeck University in central London. Part of the degree was a field course at Slapton Sands in Devon. I loved the field course, but for whatever reason I wasn’t part of the in-crowd – in the end, I hung out with a young woman, Rose, from Zimbabwe, who was determined to take her qualification and her skills back to her country. On one afternoon, the lecturer running the course asked if anyone wanted to go and look for the cirl buntings. Most of the others rolled their eyes and said they had too much work to do (plus they were recovering from the previous night’s hangover) but Rose and I were keen, and so off we went, sneaking along the edge of a hedgerow until suddenly we saw a little brown bird flittering in and out of the hawthorn, followed by a little brown bird with a striped yellow face.

“That”, said the lecturer, “Is one of the rarest birds in England”.

Cirl buntings are common enough in mainland Europe, but in England they have retreated from quite an extensive population across southern England to 118 pairs in Devon in 1989. It was clear that without support they were going to become extinct, but fortunately there was RSPB research on what was causing their precipitous decline.

Firstly, the loss of weedy winter stubbles meant that there was nothing for the birds to eat in the winter. Secondly, intensive grassland management meant that their main food, grasshoppers and crickets, were hard to come by in the summer. And thirdly the grubbing out of hedgerows meant there was nowhere for them to nest. What to do?

Armed with the specific knowledge from the research projects, the RSPB worked with local farmers and incentivised them to grow spring barley crops, which meant that there was food-rich stubble left to feed the birds through winter and into early spring. It was a success – the project started in 1993, and by 1998 the population had increased by 83%. By 2016 there were over a thousand pairs of Cirl buntings, still located in a small area around south Devon.

In order to set up a second population, some birds from the Devon population have now been translocated to the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall, with 65 pairs now established.

This sounds like a success story, but is it?

Cirl buntings are homebodies, a bit like house sparrows – they move no more than a mile from their breeding areas to their wintering areas. They are totally dependent, as Sara Hudston says in ‘Red Sixty Seven’, on this hedgerow, this patch of stubble. They are totally dependent on farmers continuing to be supported to farm in a particular way. If the farmers revert to their previous practices, I have little doubt that the Cirl bunting will, once again, be on the verge of disappearing from England. And what a shame it would be not to hear its call, which Hudston describes sounding like ‘a sewing machine rattling down a hem’. See what you think (this recording is by Francesco Sottile, from Calabria, Italy).

Female Cirl Bunting (Photo By Paco Gómez from Castellón, Spain – Escribano soteño-HembraUploaded by snowmanradio, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18819254)

Dear Readers, on Tuesday I took a trip to deepest darkest Enfield with my friend L to see Myddelton House Gardens. Enfield is one of those places that is no distance from East Finchley as the crow flies, but is a complete pain to get to on public transport, so I was very glad to be able to get a lift and we seemed to have timed it perfectly for the spring flowers – my photos don’t really do it justice, so if you’re in London and fancy a trip in the next week or so, you won’t be sorry.

The gardens were the work of Edward Augustus Bowles, who was born in 1865 and, after a projected career as a priest changed course to become one of the greatest self-taught botanists and horticulturalists of the 20th century. In particular he was known as ‘the Crocus king’, and people travelled from all over the country to see his collection. He brought back all sorts of wacky plants from his world travels (we’ll see a few examples later) including one which many people would probably prefer that he’d left where it was.

The house was named for Sir Hugh Myddelton, the engineer who created the New River, part of which bisected the gardens until as late as 1968.

I should like to point out that before exploring the gardens there are very good toasted teacakes in the café, and furthermore the gardens are free to visit.

Onwards!

The snowdrops are spectacular – there are a number of varieties, plus winter aconites and hellebores and early crocuses. I love these spring ephemerals, they lighten the heart.

There are spectacular specimen trees, including some fine conifers, and we saw (but as usual I wasn’t able to photograph) a pair of goldcrests piping about in the foliage.

My friend L likes these stone troughs, and I agree, they’re perfect for stonecrops and other small alpines.

No apologies for a few more winter aconites , and the berries of some stinking iris, so bright against the whiteness of the snowdrops.

And what on earth is this? Bowles collected some very unusual plants, and some of these are contained in what are described as ‘Lunatic Asylum’ beds.

This is the Anchor plant (Colletia paradoxa), a South American plant which is part of the Buckthorn family. The plant has tiny leaves, sweet-smelling white flowers and the most impressive thorns that I’ve ever seen – some plant sites recommend siting it away from small children or pets who might bump into it. I assume that the thorns photosynthesise, but must do some more research. And what on earth are the thorns defending the plant against, or is it more to do with protecting against water loss?  I have never seen one before, and was very impressed.

Through the arch and into the kitchen garden, which is looking a bit bare at this time of year…

I imagine that this plaster hawk doesn’t scare the pigeons too much, especially at its current angle…

And look at this iris. I’ve never gotten irises to go in my garden (except for the yellow flag in the pond which, to be honest, goes rather too well), but I do admire them.

And here’s a conundrum, to me at least. This otherwise healthy-looking cherry laurel has curly leaves. I wondered if it had a virus, but L thought that it was a healthy variety. She was right! It’s Prunus laurocerasus ‘Camelliifolia’ or Curly-leaved Cherry Laurel. So there you go. For me, it comes under the heading of things that probably shouldn’t be encouraged, like flat-faced dogs or short-legged cats, but the plant was doing well so maybe I’m being mean.

There are some wild-type daffodils (very rare in the UK, and in the ‘wild’ pretty much confined to a couple of places in Wales, so it’s nice to see them being encouraged here).

Some very unusual snowdrops with long, thin petals – I’m not sure of the variety so shout if you know!

And some spring snowflakes (Leucojum vernalis) – easily mistaken for snowdrops, these have little ‘hats’, with a green mark on each petal.

We think that these are Chionodoxa (Scilla) and very pretty they are too, with their blue petals and red stems. I am envious as after planting about 100 in my garden not a single one has come up, probably snaffled by squirrels.

And then we turn for home. This is a nicely accessible garden in the most part, there were several ladies out for a constitutional with their walking frames.

But what is this all-too familiar plant?

Yes, it’s Japanese Knotweed! We love Mr Bowles, but he was the person who introduced it to the UK after his travels in the Far East. The Victorians did love to plunder the riches of the places that they visited/colonised and to bring prime plants home for their gardens – both Giant Hogweed and Himalayan Balsam were originally Victorian specimen plants that ‘jumped the fence’, and while they might be fine in a garden they are definitely not fine along a riverbank. Hey ho. I was amused to see the Japanese Knotweed in a cage, but I suspect it’s more to stop it flopping and deter people from trampling it all over the rest of the garden. Interestingly, it seems to have worked so far.

Incidentally, that remarkable perennial wallflower ‘Bowles Mauve’ is named for E. A. Bowles, just one of over 30 plant varieties that bear his name. I love that this idiosyncratic self-taught horticulturalist lives on, with some named for him long after his death, such as the Phlomis ‘Edward Bowles’ pictured below, which apparently originated from seed found at Myddelton House Gardens. There are many ways of being remembered, but being immortalised as a plant must be one of the nicest.

Phlomis ‘Edward Bowles’ Photo by Brian Pettinger from https://www.flickr.com/photos/hortoris/4743539378

Dear Readers, I’m in tearing haste today after a very exciting visit (of which more later this week) but I wanted to share this link with you. ‘TreeFm‘ is a set of recordings from different forests around the world – you can either choose a forest to listen to on repeat or cycle through the many different choices.

Here, for example, is a Sichuan Golden Monkey from China

Or Indris calling in the Andasibe forest in Madagascar (spine-tingling!)

Or rain in the Ankasa forest in Ghana!

Or birds in the Bitza Nature Park in Russia

Or bees and birds in the Haut Diois-Forêt de la Sarcenna in France

Or the birds in the Nelson Lakes National Park in New Zealand

Or birds in Pilgrove Park, Bristol in the UK

Or a forest close to Rio Azul in Patagonia

I rather like this slowed down night in the rainforest of Panama (another spine-tingler)

And how about the Minnewaska State Park in New York State in the US. Lots of birds, bees and possibly frogs.

There are lots and lots and lots of recordings for you to have a listen to, and I guarantee that they’ll reduce your stress levels.

If you have a listen, let me know your favourite!

Photo by By Martin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12503487

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, it’s one of those days when the wind is whistling over the top of the chimney like someone blowing over the top of a milk bottle. Outside, the pond is full of ripples and waves, and I’m continually mistaking the turbulence for an early frog (wishful thinking if ever there was!)

On East Finchley High Road, Tony’s Continental has taken down its awning, which is always a sign that it’s going to be a gusty day. I just hope that the oranges don’t go skittering down the road. And they have a lovely new sign, but this is an old photograph.

Tony’s Continental – no awning today!

One of the effects of global warming has been an increase in extreme weather events, and for us in the UK, the way that rising temperatures have affected the Arctic is particularly relevant. In her piece in ‘Nature’s Calendar’, Rowan Jaines describes how climate modellers are predicting that the warming to the north of the UK is likely to drag the polar jet stream north, meaning that more storm systems will be drawn behind it, and that they are likely to stay for longer. At the moment it feels as if there is barely a gap between storms, with Storm Henk following Storm Gerrit within a few days, and then Storm Isha being followed up by Storm Jocelyn. The next storm is Kathleen, so let’s see when she arrives. In a normal year we would have six or seven named storms, but this year we’ve already had ten and it’s only early February.

Still, the UK has likely always had its fair share of windy weather, and I find myself fascinated with local vernacular names for breezy, gusty conditions. When I was in Scotland (Dundee to be precise) it was often described as ‘blowing a hoolie’, ‘Blirtie’ means a day of sudden blasts of wind or rain. ‘Fissle’ is the sound of the wind as it rustles through leaves. A ‘gouling day’ is a windy, stormy day. When the wind begins to ‘kittle’, it means that it’s starting to increase.

In Yorkshire, ‘brissling’ describes a brisk wind, while a ‘faffle’ is a light intermittent wind. ‘Peerching’ (surely from ‘piercing’) describes a bitterly cold, biting wind. A ‘waft’ is the slightest puff of wind, barely a breeze.

Once, every region would have had its own words for its own very specific geographical and meteorological features, and these were intrinsic to a feeling of belonging and connection. Robert MacFarlane writes about this extensively in his book ‘Landmarks‘. He describes the need for a ‘Counter-Desecration Phrasebook’ which would preserve these place names, with all their specificity and detail, and argues that they make us look more closely, pay more attention. Take, for example, ‘fizmer’ – ‘the rustling noise produced in grass by petty agitations of the wind’ (East Anglia), or a phrase collected by author Nan Shepherd from the Cairngorms – ‘roarie-bummler’, meaning ‘fast-moving storm clouds’. What different conditions these two words/phrases describe, and what pictures they conjure up in the mind! And how much more precise they are than ‘breezy’ or ‘windy’.

There is something about windy weather that is both agitating and exciting – the cat is restless when the chimney is singing, even though she’s deaf, and the birds on the feeders seem to have a restlessness about them. The wind has its own voice, after all. Let’s close with Jaine’s thought-provoking conclusion to her piece for this micro-season.

“With this shift in the weather, our UK winters will begin to sing different or more intense songs from those we have been accustomed to. The howling winds of this microseason perhaps mark a shift in the auditory texture of winters to come. This opens up a space of unknowing. What if we heard the movement of high winds as anarchic Nature reclaiming, momentarily, the streets of the cities? As it tears through the urban fabric, setting off car alarms, throwing rubbish around and playing alleys like flutes, might we hear a song of rebellion? In this space of unknowing, what might our ears tell us that our eyes, in the dead of night, cannot perceive?” (Rowan Jaines pg 38)

The Submerged Forest of Borth (Photo By Eveengland – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107065007)

Dear Readers, as you might remember from yesterday I’ve got a bit of a throat infection at the moment – my voice is coming back (Hooray!) but now I have a cough (Boo!) and so I am confined to quarters for the rest of today. Fortunately, for inspiration I have my ‘A Tree A Day’ book by Amy-Jane Beer, and the entry for 4th February mentions the Borth Submerged Forest in Wales.

I am always fascinated by the things that the sea suddenly reveals after storms, or at particularly low or high tides, and at Borth, on the Ceredigion coast in Wales, what come up are the tree stumps of an ancient forest of hazel  and oak, pine and birch. The trees have been carbon-dated, and it seems that they died between 4,000 and 6,500 years ago. It appears that the sea level rose, and a thick layer of peat formed – these anaerobic conditions may have killed the trees, but the anaerobic conditions that they produced also protected the remains from rotting. Interestingly, a walkway dating from about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago has also been found, indicating that after the forest was destroyed, the local inhabitants found ways to live on in the increasingly boggy conditions. Human and animal footprints have also been found, along with the burned stones from ancient hearths.

Nearly every civilisation has ‘deluge myths’ – tales of how the sea/rain destroyed a city, or a whole civilisation. In this part of Wales there are tales of Cantre’r Gwaelod, a city that disappeared beneath the waves. It’s described as a walled city protected by a system of dykes and dams. Alas, one night one of the watchmen tasked with closing the sea protections got drunk, and the water poured in and inundated the city. It may be that this story is built upon Ice Age memories of sea level rise and the dangers that it presented to coastal communities. There is also a story that the city continues to live on beneath the waves, a kind of Welsh Atlantis. I find these stories very evocative – they are so full of yearning, a wish that things that are destroyed may continue against all evidence to the contrary. How human it is to wish for such things.

The remains seem to be revealed and then recovered by storms (Storm Hannah in 2014 and a storm in 2019 uncovered a whole swathe of the forest) and more enigmatic depositions and removal of sand. Sea defences to protect the existing village of Borth have been put in place and there is some thought that the sand and debris that used to cover the forest up are now being diverted elsewhere. Whatever the cause, archaeologists and palaeobotanists rush to look at the remains before sediment covers them again.

Let me know if you’ve visited Borth, or seen anything similar – the UK seems to be full of submerged villages, some of which (like Dunwich) apparently have church bells which still toll from under the sea. We have got a lot of coastline, and the sea has been giving and taking since the islands were formed, so it’s no wonder that stories, part truth and part fable, have grown up and buried themselves in our consciousness. I find it all very intriguing.