Fanshawegate fields

Despite the snow, flappy rooks inspect their nests just outside Greenoak Park. Up on the White Lane, two great tits are flirting. Do they know it's a new year?

From Fanshawegate Lane there's the kew-kew of a kestrel. It sails over to settle in the very top of an oak - lacy brown back, dark band on tail.

Tiny sledgers crump-crump up Sheps Hill.

Hi ho for Spring....

We never tire of our default walk - up through Gillfield Woods, across the Totley Brook and up Shep's Hill to Woodthorpe, then back along the White Lane. Or in reverse of course. It's always different, always new things to discover. And grand views to fields near Fanshawegate and across to moorland on Totley Moss.

Yesterday morning's sun lifted my heart.

And a note to myself that over the past few days, at dusk, there are lots of thrushes up on the Bradway bridlepath enjoying the sound of their own voices. Scolding blackbirds too. Robins singing much more assertively now. The rooks' nests by the council flats growing. The residents don't seem to mind their noisy neighbours - lots of bread being thrown out for them this morning. And they definitely know Barbara who feeds them regularly.....

A Greenoak Valentine

A present this morning by the flats on Greenoak Road - the first crocuses emerge from under the melting. The rooks are starting to mend their nests.

We climb up to Holmesfield and along to the field above Hob Lane.

Hob Lane is part of the ancient track running from Dore (Hillfoot), to Totley Lane, Woodthorpe, Holmesfield, Millthorpe, and south to Rumbling Street (a reputedly Roman Road so named from the ancient carts that used to rumble along it).

Holly and earthy oak leaves line it.

We slither back via Fanshawegate into Gillfield Wood. Only the odd jackdaw chips at the silence.

Snow covers Greenoak...

Silence under snow and houses disappear.

Hedges are ghosted up to Fanshawegate.

New Year, new blog

A frosty start to my New Year's resolution to keep track of my patch. Up the White Lane with Maisie to Woodthorpe where snags of sheep fleece on the fences are laced with rime. The snapping cold sits sharp in my chest. Whitened pines at the top are like the ornaments on Christmas cakes. Everything has become faery and the air is so still, almost palpable. Bass hum of the traffic on Baslow Road, distant cronk of ravens.

Then along Fanshawegate Lane to the Hall where I hoped to meet the owners to ask about its history, but no such luck. I recently discovered that George Adams, the socialist sandalmaker and erstwhile friend of Edward Carpenter was living here in 1901 and drew it for the republished journal of Lady Anne Fanshawe. Lady Anne was the stimulus for the recent Channel 4 drama about the Civil War - The Devil's Whore.

On Boxing Day, I found another of the houses Adams lived in with his wife Lucy after he fell out with Carpenter - Adamfield on Fox Lane. I'm rapidly becoming an expert (bore?) on the obscurer reaches of North Derbyshire socialist history....