Moor Burns. (Very) Early Flowers. Winter RSR Run
Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 11th January 2026
Morning. News of wealthy landowners sending smoke into Sheffield this week, to produce an unnatural burned landscape to feed their shooting targets. We also have a warning from 37 types of flowering plant in the city centre, and a visit to a clattering winter wonderland.
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Smoking Guns
On a sunny day in early January, before the snow covered the moors, David Anderson watched some of his neighbours set Bradfield Moors on fire.
“We were out on a walk, enjoying the view and saw three or four people, probably gamekeepers, setting the moor alight,” he says. “They’d let it burn for 15-20 minutes, put it out, then move onto another patch. It was absolutely appalling: destroying wildlife and damaging air quality. It’s antisocial behaviour, I think. I went into Bradfield, and you could smell the acrid burning.”
Earlier, David had seen a tractor apparently cutting heather nearby. Why burn the moors, with all the damage it causes, he says. Why not just cut it back by machine?
Grouse moor owners like to encourage young heather shoots on their land to maximise the number of young grouse to be shot later in the year. (Burning or cutting older heather encourages new shoots to grow, which grouse prefer to eat).
Moorland campaigner Bob Berzins reckons there has been less burning on local grouse moors since the events of two years ago, when burning on the Moscar Estate sent clouds of smoke and particulates into Sheffield.
Bob tells me he thinks this stretch of Bradfield Moors is owned by the Fitzwilliam Wentworth Estate. “I have measured around there and there are places where peat depth is more than 30cm,” he says, adding that burning on Bradfield Moors often affects Bradfield village just a mile away.
As covered last year, new government legislation prevents burning on peat deeper than 30cm, so you’d have to measure the individual burns to see if the law has been broken.
South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard and leader of Sheffield Council Tom Hunt have both spoken out against grouse moor burning that affects the city. On learning about this recent burn, Tom Hunt got back to us saying:
“The council has consistently spoken out about the harmful impacts of moorland burning. The evidence is clear - controlled burning alters vegetation, reduces peatland’s ability to hold water and regenerate, and contributes to carbon emissions, flooding, and biodiversity loss.”
He stressed the council doesn’t allow burning on its own land, and added that the council welcomed the Government’s extension of the ban on burning vegetation on England’s deep peat. “This is a significant step forward, which we called for. This change will help protect more of Sheffield’s moorlands and is a positive step for air quality, biodiversity, and climate resilience. We continue to call for stronger enforcement and transparency around burning practices.”
There were calls in 2023 to use legislation under a 35 year old act designed to prevent danger from nuisance burning in Sheffield, but Bob Berzins says this is likely to be costly and unworkable.
In many cases, lawyers from wealthy landowners can wield management plans that theoretically show how landowners are permitted to carry out shallow burning, he says, and if they take reasonable care to follow their plan, any prosecution is likely to fail. And even if a prosecution is successful, the fine is negligible, says Bob.
The owners of Midhope Moor were fined £2,645 for illegal burns on a hillside with deep peat above Stocksbridge, for example, with the prosecutor adding that the land agents made an application to legally burn areas of vegetation so they were clearly aware that they needed a license to carry out the burns. “When the licence was refused, they simply went ahead and did it anyway.”
“It’s often one law for them, one law for the rest of us,” says Bob, who was himself threatened with prosecution from a moorland owner for simply trying to measure peat depth on their (access) land.
Bob says he’d like the South Yorkshire Combined Authority to show how the shallow peat of South Yorkshire not covered by the new legislation could be managed in their forthcoming Nature Recovery Strategy.
At present he says there’s no official procedure for ensuring peat less than 30cm deep can be preserved for flood mitigation, biodiversity and carbon capture: a healthy moor should be storing carbon into the future, not losing it through burning, he says.
Natural England and the South Yorkshire Combined Authority have been contacted about last week’s burns, and I’m told are both investigating. Meanwhile, if you see a burn yourself Bob suggests reporting it to Natural England at enquiries@naturalengland.org.uk who he hopes will investigate its legality.
“I was on another walk a few years ago and found the moors on fire, drifting over our path,” says David Anderson. “It was horrible, smothering smoke, so we had to turn back and find another way. The people doing this don’t seem to care less. I used to work in the steel industry, and if we were polluting like that, the Environment Agency would be down on us like a ton of bricks.”
We’ll keep you posted as we hear back on this from the various authorities, so please subscribe so you’ll be the first to know.
Tiny Horses
“A herd of tiny horses dancing on bubble wrap” was one description of the sound made by hundreds of spiked up runners clattering up and down the wintry hills of south east Sheffield, in yesterday’s Winter Round Sheffield Run.
Organisers had stressed the advantage of slip on metal spikes for confident running (or walking) in snow, ice and slush, and maybe we could all take heed, given the level of injuries in the recent cold snap.
The run team were relieved the snow was more moderate than last January, when the Winter RSR had to be cancelled after an impassable snowfall the night before.
This year nearly 2,000 people took part, including Jessica Ennis-Hill, with first places Mark Prince (Hillsborough & Rivelin) and Claire Biercamp (Sheff Triathlon) hurtling round the chilly 14 mile course in a barely credible 1.13.36 and 1.26.08 respectively.
Heroic volunteers in many layers of clothing staffed the checkpoints: standing on cardboard helps, said one, stamping his feet. Another was an ecologist who’d found a sunny spot of urban scrub to watch wildlife. “Goldfinch, Blue Tit, Magpie, Grey Squirrel, Wood Pigeon, Robin,” she reported.
After running the traditional summer RSR for several seasons, Doug from organisers Kandoo Events told me he envisaged snow when he decided to plan a Winter RSR too. “I’m hoping it will be a really hard core event. A bit more brutal.”
This year, the levels of snow and slush were about right for the hard core runners. “We had snow and blue skies and the opportunity to run a Sheffield winter wonderland,” Doug said. “Stage 3 down the Limb Valley was close to being a perfect stage today.”
Not everyone had taken footwear advice: some chose to descend slippier patches on their rears, and there was at least one query about whether it would be ok to run the event in Crocs.
But as an overconfident tiny horse clatterer, with hat, gloves and bag full of emergency kit, I found it pays to respect those with alternative gear.
“How are you finding it without spikes?” I asked a younger runner heading up the snowy Porter Valley, assuming they’d be struggling on the 20k of the RSR with just shorts, trail shoes and a tiny backpack.
“It’s ok, I’ve got my spikes in my bag. I forgot them last week when I was on some icy fells in the Lake District, so I made sure I packed them today. I’m not doing the Round Sheffield, I’m on my long run, 40K over the tops,” she said, and headed off, surefooted into the distance, to the sound of deflating bubblewrap.
Blooming Cold
I’m looking for unexpected inner city flowers with Bill’s Mother’s botanist Gerry Firkins. “Common Chickweed,” he says, pointing out a small plant behind a drainpipe.
I look carefully, and the tiny flower is there, along with an amazing spiral of hairs along the stem you’d never usually notice. What’s that for? Gerry shrugs. It might help it drain rainwater?
Gerry is showing me some of the finds he made with a dozen colleagues from Sorby Natural History Society on the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland’s New Year Plant Hunt on New Year’s Day.
The survey’s aim is to try and record how the nation’s plantlife is responding to our changing climate. In the 1970s or 80s, says Gerry, you might have found five or so species in flower on New Year’s Day. But this year’s Sheffield survey counted 37 species of flowering plants, in a small patch of the city centre.
We wander along the River Sheaf trail from Granville Road roundabout. “We saw some Brambles in flower on New Year’s Day, near a heating duct,” he says. “But they’ve gone over now.” We find a Hazel in flower, with catkins glowing against the sky. Both are unusual, Gerry says.
“For a plant, being in flower is an expensive business,” he explains. A lot of work and energy goes into it, so you’d expect flowers to appear when they’re likely to succeed in producing more young plants. In some cases flowering at the wrong time, for example when there are no pollinating bees about, means the plant could lose its chance to reproduce for the year.
We find flowering Hairy Bittercress, Wood Avens, Shepherd’s Purse, a tiny but luminous Field Speedwell and an overlooked patch of Annual Meadow Grass.
“That grows in an eight week cycle,” Gerry says. Not so unusual to encounter flowering Annual Meadow Grass in January, then.
Plants flower when they get certain cues, he explains, like day length or temperature. Sometimes they might just need one of those cues to begin the costly process of developing a delicate flower head.
Many seen on the survey are plants that usually finish flowering for the year in late autumn, but this year have carried on up to the cold weather of the last week.
“The cold guillotine hadn't come down to stop the flowering,” says Gerry.
We find a Narrow-leaved Ragwort, a new invasive plant that seems to be flourishing. And bursting out of the pavement by a parked car is a sprig of Guernsey Fleabane, another invader, originally from South America. Round the corner on Charlotte Road the fleabane is flowering out of the cracks in a front yard, to striking effect.
Wind pollinated flowers, like Annual Meadow Grass, can survive and thrive without pollinating insects around, but for others, flowering at the wrong time can be a big problem. Seeing so many plants around the country flowering in January suggests climate change is galloping on faster than he feared, Gerry says.
It’s not just a warning sign for us humans, he adds. “It’s a Stop sign.”
More What’s On Out There (from Sunday 11th January)
A tiny selection from our new (and regularly updated) What’s On Out There news and listings post for early January. (Full post for full members, preview for all).
Sun 11th - CTC Cycle Ride - Edale
Mon 12th - Whirlow Brook Park volunteer morning
Tues 13th - SRWT Volunteering - Carbrook Ravine + Monster Clean Up
Tues 13th - Friends of Ecclesall Woods volunteer & footpath repair session
Weds 14th - RSPB Sheffield bird walk - Clumber Park
Thurs 15th - Green City Action Grimesthorpe community allotment
Fri 16th - SRWT Winter Wellbeing day - Shirecliffe Community Centre
Sat 17th - CycleBoost cycle confidence & Learn to Ride cycle training at Greenhill
Sat 17th - SRWT Volunteering - Hedge Laying at Shire Brook
Sat 17th - Whirlow Brook Park volunteer morning
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I enjoyed the read.
BUT:
Where's a visit to a clattering winter wonderland?