Out In The Mizzle

A nice [well, sort of] frontish thing coming in with low cloud and mist overnight, eh? Worth a shot, right?

Not so much. A couple of Blackcaps and a few Chiffs at the Nose, with not so much as one Wheatear.

Looking up was a bit better, with a nice cloud of ~120 hirundines [about 90/30 HM/Swallow] mooching about in the lee of the land just west of the North Side. With the wind in the south [or so] the South Side was - as is so often the case - a bit blown out.

I went on and decided to go for a wander up on't Moor. It was lovely and murky, with low cloud and waxing and waning mizzle. I got to Bennett's Cross to find the car park empty! On a weekend! This is truly shocking. Anyway, I wandered about Vitifer before giving Sousson's a thorough going-over. I was looking for cones and by extension Crossbills. Bugger all of either. Another bad year for them, it seems... :( After a stakeout lunch which saw me seeing nothing fly past, I decided to get some proper exercise and bounced up Birch Tor, looping along the ridge. Which was nice until the mizzle turned into rain. As it was nigh on 20°, I was in a shirt and didn't feel like digging my waterproofs out and sweltering, so I cowered behind an outcrop while the ponies sniggered at me..

I did find more Chiffs than you'd expect for Moorland, and shedloads of Mipits; with one huge flock of 162 - yes 162! - which flew over me in a stream on the ridge north of Birch Tor [heading...west! Shock.] I also saw a few butterflies - whites, a Small Tort and a Peacock - and a Black Darter; out despite the overcast.

Shelter on the hillside overlooking Vitifer. 

It's a lovely spot, except for the minor detail of facing into the prevailing wind..

And on a less pleasant note, not far from there..

On the left, the Two Moors Way - pretty much as it has been for years. 

On the right, an 8-10" wide groove, cut down to the soil, running roughly parallel*.

Now, this is on a bridleway, so cycling is allowed, but what gets me is the way that channel [which is what it is] has been cut by riders who don't feel like weaving around rocks but want to whizz downhill as fast as they can. Never mind the fact that next year they'll have to make a new track a bit further over after the soil's washed away over the winter. Never mind that the whole point of off-road cycling is the challenge of rocks and things, right? Never mind that if you want to go really fast, there's a road** running down the same hillside a few seconds' ride further over which is even smoother and won't erode away when you wear the vegetation off!



When I wasn't open-mouthed at the thoughtlessness of fellow Moor-users, it was a nice wander, if not spectacular. Notable for how quiet it was. Well, until a horde of schoolkids wandered by... but you can't have everything.



[[*The photo doesn't do it justice; from a distance it looked like someone had taken a giant marker pen to the hillside. At one point it cuts through a low bank so deeply I wondered if a spade had been taken to it.. There are sadly a lot more tyre tracks cut into bits of the Moor that aren't bridleways - ie. where cycling is illegal - but they're nowhere near as photogenic as this.]]
[[*Straight, wide, soft verges, 40 limit, and livestock to make sure the drivers are paying attention!]]