Why Mud's Good
It's winter: time to embrace the bogs of the Outdoor City
From December 2022:
It’s getting muddy again. With the desert-dry moorlands of the summer long forgotten, outdoor folk are brushing off their best leather boots and fell shoes, slipping on their waterproof socks and setting out into the winter.
But before you head into the icy rainstorms, say the Outdoor City’s land managers, ecologists and conservationists, take off your gloves, sit down, and have a cup of tea and a think for a minute. Here’s why.
“Last summer, we were able to walk anywhere and everywhere in flip flops, which was great,” says Sheffield Council ranger Matt Coster. “Now we see people putting on their posh socks and expensive Mudclaw trainers, and then running round the puddles to avoid the mud. It does make me smile a bit.”
Our mud, and especially our boggy wetland moors, are very very important for all sorts of reasons. Sheffield may claim to be the greenest city in Europe, or have the most trees per person in the UK, but our other claim to fame is that Sheffield can be proud of being the boggiest city in the country.
“If this city is trying to fight the climate emergency, the bog is one of the key things it has to do just that,” says Matt Coster.
The Peak District’s peat and moorland bogs already store around 20 million tonnes of CO2, approximately ten years worth of emissions from the city of Sheffield, according to the council’s climate emergency report.
In good condition, the wetlands on our western border will continue to capture carbon for years to come, as well as provide food and homes for birds, insects and lots of other wildlife. Bees, mountain hares and curlews love our bogs and moors.
But the carbon in peat and soil is fragile: exposed mud and peat will dry out in hot summers and the CO2 will erode into the air. And in wet winters, exposed peat and mud can become a stream into nearby rivers, lakes and reservoirs, taking CO2 out of the ground and into our waterways.
The huge public exodus from lockdown into moorland and woodland exploration over Covid (and then again in the heat of the summer) has widened existing paths, and some say the dry summer in particular has eroded what used to be unmarked moorland ‘trods’ used only by hardened hill walkers and gritty fell runners, until they became crumbly dual carriageways.
These paths are still wide and eroded, but now they’re wet too, so people returning to the wonderful dry moorland path they knew in July will find a morass, and a choice. Do I plough on, or divert into the slightly drier heather and moor grass?
And here’s the point: that choice is important. Diverting leads others to follow, and to erode the mud and peat and heather even more. So the soil (and carbon) on that small patch of ground gets out into the air or water, and there’s also an effect on wildlife.
Conservationists talk about ‘flushing’ distances (or more careful scientists, ‘flight initiation distances’). This means, how far away do you have to be from a bird or animal before you disturb it, potentially making it flee from its nest and children? For a curlew in breeding season the answer is about 57 metres on average, or for an owl it might be 5 metres.
Widened paths bring you closer to those birds and animals, but also lead to new paths being created, reducing the space for wildlife to nest, breed and feed without disturbance. And paths made in one season lead to paths being used in other seasons, like springtime when the curlews return to breed. In woodland especially, the path edges may be hiding orchids or other wild flowers ready for next spring.
Access land - like much of the Dark Peak - means you can walk or run where you like, of course. But the granting of that access was based on the idea of very few people being at any one place in wild countryside at any one time, which is unlikely to disturb wildlife for very long.
A newly created wide pathway is a different matter. If we all keep widening moorland pathways, at some point, land managers may have to decide whether it’s a better nature emergency plan if they look at some kind of access restriction.
And remember, says Matt Coster, the vast majority of the Dark Peak is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, so we should consider that when we head out there. Maybe remember the '30 x 30' global plan too, which aims to preserve 30% of the world’s land and oceans so nature can thrive there by 2030. We can do that locally, says Matt, by doing all we can to conserve our moors, woods and countryside.
Mountain bikers have been addressing these issues for some time, with advice from organisations like Ride Sheffield and Keeper of the Peak to consider where you go before you even get out there, and maybe avoid boggy paths and stick to the rocks on wet winter days. Many walkers and runners are starting to do the same, says Matt.
“The best advice is to think about it before you head out,” he says. “If it’s been really wet, is it best to go to Houndkirk rather than the bogs of Burbage? And if you’re training for a muddy fell race, maybe save the course for race day and train somewhere else?”
Paths and trails with a rocky or firm base should be the aim after heavy rain: Froggatt and the other edges, Wharncliffe, the rocky byways and bridleways of Grenoside, Ecclesall Woods or Shire Brook, for example.
If you are on a path that turns muddy, Matt Coster says we should trust our outdoor gear built for the task, rather than try and avoid the puddles by stomping down the heather or bilberry, or hibernating wild flowers.
“These bogs and wetlands are really important, and we need to keep them, and create more of them really,” he says. “Now it’s winter, we should embrace our mud.”