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" Loweswater and Holme Wood with Mary "

Date & start time: Wednesday 25th November 2015.

Location of Start : Maggie's Bridge car park, Loweswater , Cumbria, Uk ( NY 135 210 )

Places visited : High Nook Farm, High Nook Tarn and back through Holme Woods.

Walk details :   2.5 mls,  375 feet of ascent, 2 hours.

Highest point : High Nook Tarn 715 ft - 220m.

Walked with : Mary, Ann and our dogs, Harry and Dylan.

Weather : Overcast and dry. Cloud on the tops.

A few photos from a second walk nine days later

includes Holme Wood and the Bothy from Maggie's Bridge.

© Crown copyright. All rights reserved. Licence number PU 100034184.

 

A long-time website and OFC friend Mary is in the Lakes this weekend

and travelled over to Loweswater to see us and to enjoy a local walk.

Now the bracken has died back we could easily extend a High Nook walk

to include the track to the tarn and back down through the woods.

As well as walking, Mary gets great enjoyment out of identifying wildlife and flowers she sees along the way.

She is currently getting into the detail of mosses and liverworts which are amongst the pioneer plants that first colonise new environments.

They are a great indicator, like lichens, about the state of the air quality and the health of a region.

We soon stopped to check out the detail of the mosses on the walls of High Nook Farm's lower pastures.

Walking up through the farm we were able to see the recent damage to the barn caused by the collapse of the end wall.

The strong winds of a recent storm collapsed the gable end but the builders are already there and making the property safe.

There's a lot of clearing and rebuilding to do before the barn is usable again.

Last one through the gate . . . has to stop for a portrait !

High above the farm, but strangely not connected to the valley stream, is High Nook Tarn.

It nestles under Black Crag while the two streams that drain Gavel and Blake join together and leave the valley on the opposite side.

The bracken die-back allows us to reach the path that skirts the lower side of Holme Wood

This gave us great views down onto Loweswater where the three valleys meet.

Loweswater to the left, Buttermere to the right behind Mellbreak, and the Lorton Valley heading away beyond Whiteside and Grasmoor.

Plenty of scope to investigate
the mosses and fungi on the trees
as we make our way down through the woods.

Mary collected a few specimens, checked out through her magnifying glass, before being taken home in a little brown envelope for further identification.

When studying vegetation at this level there's an awful lot to learn !

- - - o o o - - -

A few days later I repeated the lower part of the walk, albeit in poorer weather

and with just my phone camera (hence the change of quality of image).

There are deer in John's garden . . . but they won't be eating any of his hedges.

If the craftsmen made so many that it became repetitive . . . would he be getting into a rut ?

After the recent rains the lake level is up, but it has been higher by the look of the tide-line.

Round at the bothy . . . the waves have washed some of the launching pad gravel away from beneath the swing.

A quiet time for this basic 'camping barn' accommodation.  It has been used as a forester's hut and fisherman's hut over the years.

John (of the reindeer garden) gave the local 'Farmer's Discussion Group' a talk on the woods and their history recently.

It included the battles of the commoners to retain the right to collect timber, the re-planting of the wood in the shape of a pheasant

after the wartime clearance and a fine photo presentation on recent logging of selected trees by the National Trust foresters.

In this inclement weather the outlook is cold and damp.

Even Dylan seems to be running around with less purpose.

[ Note the boat has been beached by the high water which has now receded slightly.  It is normally moored the other way round.]

Harry plods his way back to the car across the pipe bridge at Maggie's Bridge.

His enthusiasm seems to be tempered by the weather too !

- - - o o o - - -

 

Technical note: Pictures taken with either Ann's Canon Sureshot SX220, or my Samsung mobile phone.

Resized in Photoshop, and built up on a Dreamweaver web builder.

This site best viewed with . . . a very good little magnifying glass.

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Previous walk - 21st November 2015 - Low Fell and the First Snow

A previous time up here - 10th July 2012 Holme Force with Kathy Nunez and Mike

Next walk - 5th December 2015 - Storm Desmond hits Cumbria