Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 16th June 2024
No mow magic. Missing moths. Big bikepacking. Gravel agents. There's all sorts going on in today's edition.
Morning. The term ‘Flaming June’ was never really meant as a weather warning: the title came from an ambiguous Victorian painting, where flaming may have referred to the subject’s red hair, or maybe her orange frock. Weather records suggest June is changeable rather than red hot. It has been unseasonably chilly so far this month, and today’s miscellany of stories do seem to have a weather connection.
Cold weather and absent summer moths may be stymying bird breeding, for example, while warming summers and winters over recent times may be boosting a meadow flower that masquerades as a bee. Meanwhile, winter floods, baking summers, and falling public funds for trails and footpaths means local outdoorsists are being asked to help a local family bike trail.
And a chat with bike packing promoter and photographer Markus Stitz tells me how our councils and national parks should be preparing for a big new 2 (or 3, or even 4) wheeled spring to autumn tourism industry.
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Scythe Effects
Reader Jasper Pracheck sent me the above photo. If you’re a bee, this particular orchid is asking you to think another bee has landed on a pink flower in front of you. If you’re a male bee, it may well look like a female bee ready for mating.
So you surge in and flounder around, picking up a small pouch of carefully arranged pollen on your head. Never mind, you think, at least I’ve picked up some nectar and pollen, and hey there’s another lady bee just over there. And you bumble into a similar attractive orchid nearby and neatly pollinate it.
Bee Orchids were once pretty rare round here. As an indication of the speed of climate change (or the slowness of some online resources) you can still read that they’re scarce in the north of England.
Botanist Gerry Firkins chortles, and tells me although they’re an interesting flower, he’s not quite so impressed when folk find them these days, as they’re turning up everywhere.
Or almost everywhere: Bee Orchids are thriving due to the slow death of what Gerry calls “Victorian Mowing” regimes, and a changing climate favouring a once Mediterranean species that has slowly moved north and is now surviving here probably due to warmer winters.
(Some say the Bee Orchid evolved to entice a particular species of warm weather solitary bee, absent from these shores, so the orchid is often self pollinated in the UK. But Gerry reckons the shape of the bee flower probably still entices a variety of British bees, wasps and other insects.)
Jasper’s Bee Orchid was flourishing among the meadow grass of a traffic island in Stocksbridge simply because no-one has shaved the grass this year, he told me. An ecologist friend found another in a similar narrow meadow forgotten by the council mowers on a roadside verge near Meadowhall a few years ago.
Gerry tells me the seeds of orchids are so small and light that they can be blown around in the winds of the upper atmosphere for hundreds of miles. And when they fall to the ground, maybe on a roadside verge near you, they’ll survive if it’s warm enough, and will flower again if no-one mows them to bits before their amazing flowers appear.
He adds that before the advent of more enlightened mowing regimes, Bee Orchid seeds would probably start growing into tiny rosettes among the grass, and then get their heads scythed off by zealous grass mowers.
So if we can just get a bit more relaxed about the old Victorian notion of shorn public grassland, we should see a lot more of these incredible flowering deceivers in the city.
Cargo Bikepacking
Travelling by bike, says bikepacker, photographer and film maker Markus Stitz, gives you a much better experience of a region than watching it flash by from a car. Of course it also has a much lower impact on the environment too, but for Markus it’s mostly about being able to socialise, and meet people.
Markus has worked in many countries after his record breaking ride around the world on a singlespeed bike in 2016, but he’s gravitated towards Scotland, Northern England and recently Yorkshire and the Yorkshire coast, he says, not least became the people of the Yorkshire countryside are so friendly.
A couple of weeks ago he got in touch to say he’d been trying out one of his Yorkshire Coast cycle routes on an electric cargo bike. He’s worked with several local authorities and national parks over recent years to help them bring in cycle tourists.
Compared to his native Germany, the UK still has very low cycling numbers, he says, but interest is growing in recreational cycling, not least because e-bikes make cycling possible for a lot more people who fancy riding for longer distances, or across more difficult terrain.
But finding “somewhere enjoyable to cycle”, as he puts it, is not always easy. So he explores bridleways, forest tracks and minor country lanes and logs long routes for others to ride, with their friends and families maybe.
In Yorkshire, the national parks and Yorkshire Coast BID helped him and his team develop a series of routes to promote cycle tourism in the area. (He tells me the Peak District would be a prime candidate for a similar venture).
The rise of e-cargo bikes, especially among families wanting to transport shopping and kids using an alternative to a second family car, led him to consider how a heavy cargo bike would cope with these routes.
Pretty well, he found out on his recent ride using a Tern Orox on a version of his Adventure Weekender route. You have to consider trail width, and inaccessible access gates: a cargo bike, especially one stuffed with camping gear, is almost impossible to lift over the wooden steps often found on bridleways built for horses, for example. Trailbuilders who’ve neglected dropped kerbs on urban sections also create a problem for larger e-bikes designed for families or people with disabilities.
If a local authority or national park wants to encourage cycling, they should throw away those old ideas that cycle tourists are fit young men happy to lug their sleek touring bikes over narrow gates and inaccessible lumps, he says. Modern cycles, with electric assist, are opening bike packing tourism to older people, families, many more women, and people who can’t ride a standard bike. And if you want to explore the countryside by bike, he says, why shouldn't you choose to do that on a cargo bike that can carry a child or two, and a family set of camping gear?
“I want to sensiblise people to the needs of cyclists and cycling,” Markus says, creating a useful term using his German-inspired English for those still insisting on blocking the way for many modern riders, with terrible gates and ancient horse-only access barriers.
If planners sensiblise their routes, all kinds of tourists will come and use them. “What I’ve learned, is that if you don’t make it easy for people to cycle, people won’t do it.”
Markus reckons Sheffielders with many non-standard bikes can access his Yorkshire Coast routes via the Transpennine Trail and some train services. The routes themselves should be accessible for most standard and non-standard bike, he says, although there may be a small amount of pushing involved around Hull. and the Grosmount gravel route may not suit everyone.
The Kinesis UK Yorkshire Coast Dirt Dash gravel bikepacking event (In association with Route Yorkshire Coast) is on 13/14 July from Whitby.
Gravel Agents
Thousands of bike riders have been drawn to the Lady Cannings trails every week in recent warm summers, say Ride Sheffield, the voluntary MTB group who’ve worked with site owners Sheffield Council to develop and promote the Cannings off road trails.
But those hot summers - and floods in recent winters - have combined with the millions of wheels that have pounded the purpose built trails so much that repairs are now needed on the Cooking On Grass trail, opened in 2017.
Volunteers have already helped maintain other trails, but Cooking On Grass, built for relative beginners to the sport, needs professional rebuilding, so Ride Sheffield are seeking around £40,000 to keep the trail rideable for all mountain bikers, including novices.
Cooking on Gas is popular with families just venturing into the sport, not yet ready for more challenging trails further out into the Peak District, so Ride Sheffield hope users not yet part of the local MTB community will chip in a few pounds to help, along with companies who want to help more people to get out and discover the local countryside by bike.
Ride Sheffield say they’ve raised over £20,000 already from grants and donations and give examples of how you can help: £500 would cover 20 tons of surfacing material, £100 would rebuild a small berm, or bend, while £25 would cover a metre of trail repair work. See: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/cookingongas
Another Cold Evening
After last week’s rainy Nightjar expedition without any Nightjars, Sheffield Bird Study Group invited me along for a drier evening at Redmires.
There were plenty of waterside midges again, but as we climbed up the Long Causeway towards Stanage Pole, the midges diminished, if not the other wildlife. The ornithologists called out Blackcaps, Wrens and Siskins before a popular Whitethroat and Stonechat passed us by. (“Beautiful” said one observer).
A Short-eared Owl flew over the darkening Cotton Grass on the higher moors, and a couple of tame Red Deer watched us watching them over the heather, before scampering off in the gloom towards Stanage Edge. And a very keen-eyed observer noted a twitching shape in the moor grass that turned out to be a Mountain Hare.
It was cold, but there was no miserable drizzle this time as we waited in the moonlight for Nightjars. A couple of Woodcock flew by a few times, and finally walk leader Richard Hill identified the churring song of one, then two, Nightjars, one maybe only a few dozen yards from us. And then they flew away.
Still a bit chilly, or maybe early in the season, said Richard. Nightjars eat moths, he added, and there were no moths to be seen until we got much lower down off the moors.
So if you’re keen to see (or hear) one of our most spectacular nightbirds, choose a warm evening, and maybe check for plentiful moths first before you head up to Redmires. And if you’re not sure what you’re listening for, said one of the SBSG team, just imagine a half broken washing machine on spin cycle.
Selected What’s On Out There (from Sun 16th June)
See our full listings service here. And please share with your outdoorsy mates too. I try and update the What’s Out There post every few days so you can always find good stuff to get up to. If you appreciate all my work on this, please subscribe!
14th - 22nd June - Migration Matters Festival
Sun 16th - Steel City Trail 10 - 10km (approx) trail run at Parkwood Springs
Sun 16th - Tree Walk at Parkwood Springs
Sun 16th - Wadsley & Loxley Commoners Muck In Morning
Mon 17th - Graves Park Digging Deeper For All - Geophysical ‘Looking Deeper’ morning walk and evening talk
Tues 18th - Sheffield Ramblers Walk - “Who Left The Gate Open” urban landscapes with Terry Howard (5m, meet Cathedral tram stop)
Weds 19th - Sheffield Sustainability Network Netwalk (Rivelin Valley)
Thurs 20th - Graves Park Digging Deeper For All - Wallflower Walk (booking required)
Thurs 20th - Green City Action Grimesthorpe community allotment volunteer days
Fri 21st - Sheffield Cycle Tours from Russell's Bicycle Shed (Neepsend) - to Meadowhall
Sat 22nd - E-bike Demo Day at A Different Gear
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Another lovely read!
Around where I live (Norton) there are grass verges which have been mown along the edge but left in the middle, plus many verges which haven’t been mown at all. Graves Park also has areas mown round the edges but not in the middle. So I wonder whether the council has forgotten them, or whether it’s a deliberate policy.
I know some people get cross about fluffy grass verges (so untidy!!), and some even go out and mow them themselves, but I rather like them. Maybe they’re particularly unpopular with people who want to park their cars on them.
A few weeks back, a lady who knows what she’s talking about mentioned that it was illegal for members of the public to do anything to these verges. This seems such a shame, as you often see guerrilla-planted spring flowers appearing in them, which looks lovely! Wouldn’t it be nice if we were formally allowed to plant up these verges? There are many grassy areas around and about which have been planted up by the council, using Pictorial Meadows flower mixes (viewable on the interweb - I’m sure other seed mixes are available 😉). They are widely admired, and provide a huge resource for wildlife.