Lonesome pine

After two days in Telford I needed some natural therapy. Gait Barrows National Nature Reserve is two miles from home, and I spent a happy hour this evening wandering over the limestone pavements. This is not a huge place, but amongst the trees and shrubs it is easy to lose yourself and there is always something new to see.

I have not blipped a limestone pavement before, but I'm certain this won't be the last. The plants of limestones was my original specialism, and I am still fascinated by the limestone areas of Britain and Europe (and this was perhaps a factor in us moving to Arnside). The Carboniferous limestones of nothern England are particularly notable for their limestone pavements, the product of glaciation stripping the beds of limestone of all previous soils and the erosive effect of water in the ten thousand years since the last Ice Age.

The limestones are divided up into blocks known as "clints", by deep eroded fissures or "grikes". There are more superficial drainage features called runnels that meander across the limestone. The soils where present are very thin and most of the trees and shrubs are rooted in small pockets or emerge directly from cracks in the rock. Growing in a stressed environment, they are almost as slow growing as bonsai trees, and this pine is illustrative of this, though larger than many quite ancient trees elsewhere on site.

Gait Barrows is unusual in that some areas such as the one shown are not divided into grikes, the massive beds of limestone are carved only by runnels. This helped them to survive the period during the 1970's when large areas of limestone pavement were stripped for sale as rockery stone.

As it was, Gait Barrows was badly damaged by the the then owners, and a campaign was mounted to buy the site to preserve it as a nature reserve. The Nature Conservancy Council managed to buy the site in the mid-70's, and it is now managed as a National Nature Reserve (NNR) by the successor organisation Natural England.

Our meeting in Telford was in part to talk abouit the future of protected sites in England - Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) - a designation applied to 4000 sites across the country that includes all our NNRs. The fate of these sites and the people responsible for looking after their conservation is very much tied up in the impending cuts in public sector funding. Not a happy time, but I'm fortunate to have places like this so close to home, places to seek solace at times like this.

As I was away from home last night I was not able to upload a blip, so if you would like to see yesterday's, please click this link. Despite what I said on Monday, I have still not missed a day's blip!