Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 30th June 2024
The growth of meadows in the Outdoor City. News round up. What's On Out There. And what it feels like to run 93 miles around Meersbrook Park.
Morning. I visited a vast meadow this week to see how some modern landowners, including the council, are returning to the ways of the farmers of centuries ago. Why? Partly because many of the park-loving public, like you, know that a public green space doesn’t have to be a green desert. (Maybe the stories here and in other local media over recent years have contributed to that change in attitude).
Your Sunday out there notpaper also has a few news updates, and a follow up to last week’s Small Park Big Run at Meersbrook, where I met Nick Booker, who’d run 93 miles around Meersbrook Park over 24 hours, and a family from Gaza who told me how much the support from the people of Sheffield meant to them.
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E-Bike Loans Are Back
The CycleBoost scheme is open again for e-bike leasing. Operated by A Different Gear, the new scheme offers an e-bike try out, accessories, full servicing and support for £75 a month. The old free schemes of the past were never sustainable, I’m told, and the new paid-for scheme means the public can make use of the existing local Raleigh Motus bike fleet to try out e-biking for little cost before buying. Apply here.
Toad Covid at Redmires
Chytrid disease has arrived at Redmires, I hear. The terrible fungal infection afflicting amphibians around the world, Chytridiomycosis, has been found in the dams hosting the city’s largest breeding site for the Common Toad.
The disease, which ecologist Angus Hunter described as “Covid for frogs, but more lethal” in our post earlier this year, can wipe out whole populations of amphibians, transmitting through their skins, and notices will be going up at Redmires soon warning of transmission risks to amphibians in other parts of the city.
I understand best advice at present is to never move animals, plants or water from one location to another, and especially Redmires now. There’s also risk of spread from footwear, so washing wellies or shoes that have been in Redmires water before using them elsewhere is a good idea. Might be worth keeping our dogs out of the water too.
24 Hours on The Hill
A kilometre circuit anywhere else doesn’t sound that challenging, really. But in Meersbrook Park, there’s The Hill. Nick Booker ran up The Hill 150 times last weekend. Here it is, courtesy of Strava.
Why? I asked him. “Why? It’s a challenge, innit?” Nick chuckled. “An ultra doesn’t really start until you feel bad.”
The 24 hour Small Park, Big Run has brought runners, music, food and support for Palestine into Meersbrook Park since 2017, and last weekend’s was the biggest event ever, with over 550 registrants for the circuit round the park raising around £17,000 for Palestinian women’s education and children’s play and cultural facilities.
The increased support was due to the “genocide happening in Palestine,” said Jonathan Feldman from the organising team, who added that nevertheless, he felt a “real mix of joy and optimism” after the event.
Many new people attended this year, he said. I met Enas and Rami, a doctor and engineer originally from Gaza, now working in the UK and visiting friends in Sheffield, who said they felt ‘survivors guilt’ in the sun of the park, as their own daughter could enjoy the fun and food while other children back in Gaza were dying.
“But it’s amazing,” said Rami. “So many people here from Sheffield supporting the event.”
Jonathan Feldman told me how he hoped the nature of the endurance run, where runners circled the park and its terrible hill, again and again, might make some link with the endurance and repetitive lives of people trapped in places like the Tulkarm refugee camp which is home to 23,000 Palestinians in an area the same size (42 acres) as Meersbrook Park.
Adults and children ran in Palestine last weekend in solidarity with the Small Park Big Run event, said Jonathan, who added that there’s not enough space available to Palestinians for the official Palestine Marathon, so runners do two loops of a 21km circuit. At Meersbrook at least three runners kept going for 24 hours, he added.
Jonathan said that many Jews like himself in Sheffield want to speak out against the war taking place in Gaza, and said: “We’re absolutely united in our belief that Israel cannot and does not speak for all Jewish people.”
The run will take place again next year on the 21st and 22nd June, when Jonathan hopes the bombing and shooting will be over, and the fundraising at Meersbrook can go towards rebuilding homes, schools and communities in and around Gaza.
Nick Booker, and fellow runner Steve Blake (who ran 90 or so laps of the park during the 24 hours, but took a few hours off every now and then) looked remarkably unharmed by their ordeal. Nick said the worst moments of ultra runs are usually the night time, but he enjoyed the lanterns in the woods in the quiet circuits before dawn.
He started feeling bad at around 70 miles, he said. “But it’s good to come out of your comfort zone. It’s very satisfying.”
The Small Park Big Run is partly to help people reflect on restrictions and freedom of movement, said Jonathan, especially for children, who in Sheffield could enjoy the open spaces of the park, and maybe celebrate the travails of their parents and grandparents over a few circuits, or 24 hours. And then cheerfully go home again.
Fundraising for education and children’s charities in Palestine is continuing after the event. See: https://spbr.org.uk/index.php/raising-money-from-your-run/
When To Mow A Meadow
We’re standing by a green desert (a.k.a. a cricket pitch) in Graves Park, as a member of the council’s parks team mows up and down ready for the weekend’s matches, and Professor Ian Rotherham is telling us how mowing is actually crucial for biodiverse flower meadows.
For a thousand years or more, farmers worked a system where grasses and wild flowers were allowed to grow over the summer, and then cut in late summer or early autumn and taken away as winter food for animals.
But the Peak District lost 97% of its old meadows between the 1940s and 1980s, Ian says, mainly due to agricultural intensification. In the 80s and 90s, ecologists began to realise what we were missing: insects, biodiversity and beauty. And it’s taken since then for the message to finally arrive in the Outdoor City’s green spaces.
We head out over the close mown cricket pitch and soon find ourselves in real grassland, two feet or more high, with wild flowers and buttercups and clover.
The old farming method was sustainable for generations: farmers would usually mow in early spring to clear the land, then the grasses and wildflowers would grow for four or five months, the fields were mown again in late August or September, the grass and wildflowers were carted off so the cattle were fed, the insects would thrive to keep everything else going, and poets would write about the joys of summer meadows.
We head deeper into the bristling new savannah in Graves Park, and encounter half a dozen or more types of grass, along with Ribwort Plantain, Meadow Buttercups, Eyebright, Common Mouse Ear, Hogweed, Meadow Cranesbill and the ‘eco architect’ plant (as Ian calls it) Yellow Rattle, which suppresses the more vigorous grasses so all the above wildflowers and more can get established.
Carting off the grass in autumn has a similar effect to the Yellow Rattle: wildflowers tend to prefer poorer soil, and if the grass is left, it feeds the soil so tougher grasses overwhelm delicate wildflowers when spring comes round again.
The problem, says Ian, is that our green spaces are often short mown, or abandoned, and neither creates a biodiverse and beautiful meadow. Imagine a football field kind of park on one hand, or a verge overrun with dock and nettles on the other.
So how did meadows exist before people came to mow them, I ask as we tramp through the sward. Well, back then we had herds of large grazing animals, Ian says.
I look round and picture aurochs and antelope grazing Graves Parks so the forerunners of today’s Meadow Buttercups and Lesser Stitchworts can get going.
Then we cross a strip of close mown grass as wide as a road, and Ian’s colleague, Christine Handley tells me how insensitive mowing like this can stop small animals like voles from spreading, as the open area provides no protection from predators. Far better to provide a path through the long grass that’s just a couple of yards wide, so visiting people and small mammals can all enjoy the land, she says. What’s the point of mowing a motorway through the buzzing grass?
Ian and Christine explain they’re not advocating long grass and meadows everywhere, we still want sports and picnic fields in the city, and close mowing paths, the edges of meadows, or some other areas, shows that the space is still being looked after.
But slowly and quietly, we’re getting many of our meadows back. The Digging Deeper for All and Adapting to Climate Change projects in Graves Park have identified seven or eight different types of meadow habitat in the park, and around the city, we’re seeing meadow-like verges here and there, and areas of long grass and wildflowers in lesser used park land. Curbing the summer mowing, and taking away the mown grass in autumn, allows wildflowers hidden for years to bloom again.
Returning meadows to places where not so long ago there was just a whole summer of close mown grass for no apparent reason is a big step forward, says Ian, but it seems there’s still work to do among some pro-mow landscape staff and managers. Close mowing all large areas throughout the spring and summer is expensive and unnecessary, he says. And the autumn mown grass could be sold as hay to help fund the mowing, he adds.
Someone says they saw a Kestrel here earlier, and among the new meadow we find bees and butterflies and strange wildlife, including the dandelion-like Jack Go To Bed At Noon or Goat's Beard which closes its flowers temporarily in the midday sun, and has seeds heads with speckles of gold. Landowners need a certain amount of resolve to achieve something like this, says Ian. He calls it ‘renaturing.’
Forty years ago, says Ian, esteemed local naturalist Dr Oliver Gilbert went on record to say Sheffield had the finest urban meadows in Western Europe within the council estate of the Gleadless Valley, just a mile from the 2024 meadows in Graves Park. Maybe our universal green desert regimes are finally being kicked into the long grass.
Selected What’s On Out There (from Sun 30th 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 things to get up to. If you appreciate all this, please subscribe!
Sun 30th - Trust 10 Trails - Guided Run from Edale station
Sun 30th - Sheffield Conservation Volunteers at Broomhill Library
Mon 1st - SRWT Volunteering - Crabtree Pond
Tues 2nd - Graves Park Digging Deeper For All - Putting the People of the Past into the Park walk (please book)
Weds 3rd - Social Walk from Longshaw (5m)
Thurs 4th - Green City Action Grimesthorpe community allotment volunteer days
Thurs 4th - Wild Night In with Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust - 30 by 30 Strategy
Sat 6th - Ranger Led Conservation Morning, Wardsend Cemetery
Sat 6th - Graves Park - Digging Deeper for All exhibition & celebration day at Mount View Methodist Chapel, Derbyshire Lane
Sun 7th - Plants Tour of Sheffield General Cemetery with Gerry Firkins (£5)
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I' ll never look at grasses the same way again. Big thanks to Ian for making it so interesting and David for a great piece. Big surprise this morning: A rare plant in my tiny patch of meadow - a Goat's beard! I really can't believe my luck!