A Day out to the Seaside

A Day out to the Seaside and a Visit to Two Nature Reserves.

As we had a good weather forecast for today we decided on a day out.  We had rather an inauspicious start, however, when the battery on the Kia was dead; good job we had the Polo to go in.  We fancied 'the seaside' as we love the Lincolnshire coast.  In many ways we are very lucky in where we live: we can walk out across fields and through woods from the house, we are on the doorstep of the Lincolnshire Wolds and practically on the coast.  Although always low and flat, the Lincolnshire coast varies enormously, from long stretches of perfect sandy beaches to muddy estuaries with extensive salt marsh and mudflats beloved by waders, especiall in the winter and during spring and Autumn migration.  Birds love Humber mud; and the Wash too.  There are other large areas of marsh and mudflats along the coast too and this makes it a truly wild place; wilderness indeed.  Inland of the coast is the Lincolnshire Coastal Marsh adapted by human hand over centuries for cattle grazing and salt production.

Looking forward to a walk along the beach and a paddle we thought of a car park just north of Anderby creek and south of the 'flesh pots' of Mablethorpe.  We were keen to avoid parking in village or town and putting at risk either ourselves or local residents.  We were soon parked up at the Marsh Farm car park and off out onto the beach.  It was a stunning day and, although there were a lot of people,  the beach is so extensive there was no problem with social distancing.  With the near cloudless skies and temperatures in the 20s we could have been in the south of Spain.  I was quite happy to indulge myself with some photography and we did enjoy that paddle.  A perfect walk.

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On returning to the car we were ready for our pack-up which we ate sitting on the edge of the car boot.  We didn't tarry too long as the car park was rapidly filling up.  Soon we were driving back though Alford and up into the very edge of the Wolds to the small and remote Lincolnshire Trust reserve of Mill Hill Quarry.  The reserve consists of a disused chalk pit and a spinney.  Already in use by the mid-eitheenth century, the quarry produced stone for the marshlands roads and later, agricultural lime until work ceased in the late 195os.  Two old lime kilns survive, one in particularly good condition.  The reserve is very good for chalk loving plants and sunny loving butterflies such as wall, common blue and small copper.  It was the butterflies that I was hoping to photograph, but other than one or two orange tips and a very brief glimpse of a common blue there was nothing about.  We are very fond of this reserve; it was one of the first reserves Heather and I visited together while on a teachers' training weekend at Gibraltar Point and when our son was only a couple of moths old we lay him on a blanket in the shade while we enjoyed a picnic and flower and butterfly hunting,

We did better on the plant front and species we saw include: 

• White dead nettle
• Bluebell
• Daisy
• Milkwort
• Bugle
• Ground Ivy
• Ladies Smock
• Cowslip
• Speedwell
• Birdsfoot Trefoil known commonly as eggs and bacon
• Dogs Mercury
• Ladies Bedstraw
• Jack by the Hedge
• Ramsons
• Red Campion
• Forget Me Not
• Wild Arum
• Catsear

I had expected to find orchis but there were none out at all and no common spotted orchids at another nearby reliable location.

Birdsfoot Trefoil

Bugle

A round about way home took us to Red Hill, another disused quarry high on the red chalk overlooking the Bain valley.  This is an excellent location for reintroduced marble white butterflies in July but I had hoped that there would be some common blues, but again it was a very poor day for butterflies.  Again this reserve is excellent for pyramidal, common spotted and bee orchids but again there were none to see.  I am beginning to wonder that, although we have had two months of nearly unbroken sun, we have had weeks of seering, cold easterly winds and no rain either.  Perhaps things are held back this year.  I did find a beautiful bloody cranesbill across the road in the Coronation meadow and a single female broad bodied chaser dragonfly in the quarry.  Most unusual this so there must be some water not too far away.  There were also a few corn buntings on the telephone wires.

Climate Change and the Lincolnshire Coast.

I have recently read the excellent book 'Wilding' by Isabella Tree and also a book that she references: 'The Hidden Life of Trees' by Peter Wohlleben, both of which made me think of another book I read a while ago: 'Feral' by George Monbiot.  Although not the main thrust of these books, they all make reference to Climate Change.  Isabella Tree's book describes the rewilding of their family farm, Knepp, in Sussex.  Although a large estate, Knepp, is on Wealden Clay and at the turn of the millenium it was becoming increasingly difficult and uneconomic and impossible to make it pay.  What Tree and her husband did was radical: they gave up farming the land, sold all the farm machinery and allowed the land to rewild itself.  If that is all they did, however, a climax vegetation of close canopy forest would have been the result.  They decided to introduce large grazers.  Gone, however are the wild cattle or aurochs, tarpan or prehistoric wild horses and wild boar so they used instead the nearest equivalents they could: longhorn cattle and Tamworth pigs along with exmoor ponies, and fallow, roe and red deer.  The resulting climax vegetation is not close canopy forest, but open wood pasture.  The benefits to nature have been staggering.  A whole array of wildlife has colonised the estate and Knepp is the only place in the UK where nightingales and turtle doves, both species on the verge of extinction in this country, are increasing in number.  It has also become the UK's best site for the extremely rare purple emperor butterfly.  This excellent book links perfectly with Monbiot's 'Feral' in which he explores the theory and benefits of rewilding on a national scale; Knepp puts Monbiot's theories into practice and proves that they do work.

The link to climate change is through the importance of trees and their associated mychorrhizal fungi, now known as the 'wood wide web'.  Trees and the wood wide web are, perhaps, the most important carbon sinks that the planet has at its disposal which makes the wild fires we have had this year, even in the arctic, worrying and the burning of the Amazon is nothing short of criminal.  The North Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that nine of the 10 warmest Julys on record have occurred during the 21st Century, with only one year from the 20th century, that being 1998.  Scientists are confident that these extremes are the result of a rapidly warming planet if not caused by, at least exacerbated by human activity. One possible solution to climate change could be trees.  Not only do the trees themselves absorb carbon dioxide, a principal green house gas, the ‘wood wide web’ of fungi associated with trees is also a massive carbon sink. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) recommends 30,000 hectares of woodland should be planted annually, more than double the new trees planted last year.  And it said this may have to rise to 50,000 hectares if other carbon reduction targets are not achieved.  The government has said it plans to "rapidly grow forest cover".  Another recent report  has said that switching to a plant-based diet can help fight climate change.  The report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) states that more people could be fed using less land if individuals cut down on eating meat and the land could be used more effectively to store more carbon by growing more trees.  Rearing livestock actually releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  The panel also argues that we are wasting too much food and that greenhouse emissions associated with food waste is as high as 8-10% of all global emissions.

A BBC news item from 3rd September reports that Greenland's massive ice sheet may have melted by a record amount this year; it has lost enough ice to raise the average global sea level by more than a millimetre.  Scientists say they are 'astounded' by the acceleration in melting and fear for the future of cities and coasts around the world.  One glacier in southern Greenland has thinned by as much as 100m since it was last filmed in 2004.  In a recent report the UK Environment agency feels that it would not be beneficial to protect 114 miles of coastline because of flooding and more than 1000 miles of coast are at risk of erosion.  They make the point that in 50 years up to 1.5 million properties in England could be in areas of flood risk.  Already the village of Fairbourne in North Wales is being abandoned to the sea.  One of the at risk areas over the next 50 - 100 years will be the Lincolnshire coast and coastal marsh, including Grimsby.  With this in mind I have begun a project to photograph the coast and coastal marsh with a view to publishing the work in book form to record the area as it is now; it will certainly be different in 50 years time.  As much as possible I have been cycling and walking to carry out this project in order to keep my personal carbon footprint as low as possible.  I was interested to find that, when I visited Donna Nook, the sluice at Pye's Hall has been removed to allow flood waters from spring tides and storm surges to flood an area now constrained by a new seawall inland of the old one.  In order to created this flood prevention measure farmland has had to be taken out of commission, but this is preferable to properties being flooded and homes lost.  One recent report states that trillions of dollars are needed to avoid the effects of climate change, but this is still cheaper than  the cost of inaction.

Mablethorpe Time and Tide Bell

On 22nd August, needing to take Jet for a walk and also wanting to go and find the new Time and Tide Bell Sculpture north of Mablethorpe we headed down the coast.  It wasn't long before we parked up on a quiet car park at Theddlethorpe.  It was warm and sunny as we made our way through the dunes, wide at this point, and out onto the wide expanse of beach.  

We turned south and before long could see Mablethorpe in the distance.  All around were piles of razor shells, which we collected to make plant labels for the garden - much better than plastic.  We also had excellent views of a wheatear already making its way south to Africa, its summer over.  Other early migrants, terns, could be heard calling as they fished just beyond the tide line.  After about a mile we reached the time and tide bell.

The Time and Tide Bell is a sculpture by artist Marcus Vergette’s placed on the shoreline to the north of Mablethorpe in June 2019. It is the seventh such bell to installed around the country since the start of the project in 2009 and the only one in Lincolnshire. At high tide the waves ring the bell adding an extra dimension to the artwork.  The beach to the North of Mablethorpe is vast and entirely unspoiled. The tidal bell adds an unexpected piece of art to be discovered whilst fitting in with the natural surroundings. 

A Day With Green Hairstreaks.

I had been waiting for a reliably sunny day to visit Donna Nook on the Lincolnshire Coast to try for the small colony of green hairstreak butterflies that can be found here.  Although the cold easterly wind persisted, I knew that the site is on the sheltered side of the duens and should be warn and sunny.  It was.  I wore a hat but it was my winter beany which I soon discarded.  Being somewhat follicly challenged, I now have a sunburned head.  That apart, though I had a wonderful day and the best I have had there with the hairstreaks.  At one point I had three pairs of displaying insects around me which also readily settled on the hawthorn blossom.

Avocets could be heard calling from the pools on the adjacent rough land and a cuckoo paid a very close visit.  My first of the year; this is always a good spot to find them.  Whitethroats called in the bushes.  Splendid.

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