Published at 15:35, Wednesday, 09 March 2011

THE western end of Ennerdale is the most accessible part of this exquisite lake when journeying from Whitehaven.

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In late winter, its waters may be still as a sheet of glass in its solitude — or churned into a frenzy of waves by the March gales. Under the lee of a dry stone wall a spring arises of water crystal clear and placidly idles in a sinuous curve, leftwards to the lake.

This is Crag Fell beck and its crystal waters have almost magical assemblages of aquatic plants in bright yet subtle shades of green. There is water cress and water starwort and much more, including a robust and splendiferous water moss whose myriad leaves form refuges for tiny stream animals and rejoicing under the name of Fontinalis antipyretica. Was its possible use in the past to put out fires?

The path along the lake shore is littered by large boulders and at this season just within the shallow waters of its margin and beneath the larger stones, one may find this splendid stonefly larva with the two typical tail appendages and known as Diura bicaudata. Stonefly larvae cannot tolerate even modest levels of water pollution and this simple harmless animal tells us that pollution levels in the lake are very low.

Soon a rather ill-defined path ascends diagonally on the right and up to Anglers Crag, from where the views of the lake and the mountains beyond are just stupendous. Or one can continue along the lake shore path, negotiating around the larger rocks at the base of Anglers Crag. To the left is the deepest part of the lake with the rocks eerily descending steeply into dark waters.

Yet all this is dwarfed by the high rise of Crag Fell up to the right and from late April onwards this becomes very much the abode of the wheatears. These striking small birds with their white rumps, eye stripes and dark face masks begin arriving on our south coast from Africa in March. They work their way northwards and it is always most cheering to see them in our fell country in the spring. They nest among rock crevices on open fellsides, also in old rabbit burrows and drystone walls. The bird has a fantastic mating display. It feeds on insects, chasing them with a bobbing and hopping motion.

Following the shore path on, an interesting shrublet may be seen in early May growing quite near the water’s edge, with pinkish catkins of flowers appearing before the leaves. This is sweet gale, a distant relative of the alder. For many years it was believed that only members of the leguminoseae or pea and bean family, could “fix” atmospheric nitrogen in their roots. Then using a special nitrogen reductase technique it was shown that some other plants could do this including alder and sweet gale. Its other name is bog myrtle and a type of beer can be made from its fragrant resinous leaves.

Soon one reaches the beginnings of Side Wood, a truly ancient forested site facing northwards across the lake and according to my fieldwork evidence, last extensively worked for its coppice products in the late 18th century (see my “Wildside” pieces from these pages of January 19, 2006 and December 11, 2008). Here I mentioned the charcoal burners’ hearths and there are at least two of them, relatively level areas each about nine yards wide, worth seeking out in the wood. The other March I led a group there and we stood around the periphery of one of the hearths or pitsteads. My dog “Tipp” is between the two ladies in blue and the wonderful wild backdrop of the lake.

This government has thankfully retracted on the sell-off of our woodlands. This would have been bad, not only for our wildlife, but in denying public access in many places.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk