Back To Old Haunts

The forecast for today wasn't brilliant, 'a dull grey morning and a wet afternoon'. So we picked out a fairly low level walk in the Rusland Valley where we lived very happily for nine years. It is a beautiful valley that does not change, barely touched by tourism at all, just a small farming community. Probably it's biggest claim to fame is that Arthur Ransome is buried at Rusland church. The grey overcast conditions were not good for landscape photography so I will get them out of the way first....

We parked at the village hall in Oxen Park and took the lane up towards Abbot Park Farm, looking back we could see the small village of Oxen Park with it's houses huddled tightly together.

As the lane gained height we could see back over Morecambe Bay out to Heysham power station.

Just before reaching Abbot Park he view out over the Rusland valley opens out to the distant mountains of the Troutbeck area.'Park' is quite a common name for a farm in the Furness Fells, they are thought to have been farms, or parks, areas of land that were leased out by Furness Abbey. Others in this area include Oxen Park and Lawson Park. From Abbot Park our route took us across the fells and past an area shown on the OS map as Three Foot Oak, I would love to know the origins of that name. Then on to High Ickenthwaite spotting a green woodpecker along the way, which was too elusive to photograph

Stonecrop, growing on the rocks near High Ickenthwaite.

Horses grazing at High Ickenthwaite. From here we headed down the lane, through the woods, to Whitestock, on to Hulleter and Longmire, before returning to Oxen Park just as the rain started. The blackberries are starting to ripen along the hedgerows. It looks like being a bumper crop this year..... providing we get the sunshine to ripen them.

This one from Whitestock meadow, tasted rather nice! The lanes are full of many different wildflowers at the moment, many of them are extremely small and their beauty can be appreciated by photographing them close up. Here are a few that we saw today, mostly just a few milimeters across.

This tiny little Speedwell lives in the stream near the roadside. It's name is Veronica Beccabunga, common name Brooklime.

This Speedwell was growing in the grass verge near to Hulliter Farm.

And across the road from the Speedwell was this little gem of a geranium.

Along the lane between Longmire and Oxen Park we found Wood Sage.