Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.....

Spring flowers and plants appear daily. I can't keep track. Here are some sticky green cleavers or goosegrass near the farm at the footpath down from Mickley to Totley. We used to stick them on each other's backs as kids.

Violets in banks - at the top of White Lane and along Fanshawegate Lane. Hedge garlic, young nettles are everywhere and bright wood sorrell - along Brindwoodgate near Great Brind Wood beyond Cartledge - make some "food for free". The bluebells are out - but not quite at their best yet. Bugle near the Scout Hut. Lots of Dog Mercury for weeks and weeks now. The cow parsley (we used to call it kek in rural Oxfordshire) will soon be frothing up along the lanes. Stitchwort (or Poor Man's Buttons) in Ladies Spring Wood above Dore and Totley Station and the railway line.

Following the holloway

Near Rowan Tree Dell - note old fallen post in water

I have mentioned the old holloway (ancient trade route) before - the one that ran from Dore down through Totley and the Cordwell Valley to the Roman Road of Rumbling Street (so called because carts rumbled along it).

Christine and I recently took a pair of secateurs and explored the part no longer used between White Lane and Rowan Tree Dell and across to where it joins Totley Hall Lane (see photo above). Most of it still exists though sometimes still as roads, sometimes as paths. Old Hay Lane in Dore was part of it as was Totley Hall Lane. Many people will remember the deep sides of Totley Hall Lane towards the fields before the new estate of houses was built near the Hall. By a detective process and close observation over the months, I worked out that it then went along the bottom end of the recreation ground next to these houses and through the gardens of Rowan Tree Dell, then down to ford the Totley Brook and across a field to join up with the part that is still a footpath veering off White Lane up to Woodthorpe Hall. It then went along Fanshawegate Lane, up the deep magical east side of Holmesfield Park Wood (known as Hob Lane - perhaps due to a few hobgoblins"), then either along Grimsell Lane to Millthorpe (just off Horsleygate Lane)and down another section - I think called Pingle Lane - to Rumbling Street. And perhaps even beyond to Oxton Rakes - although I haven't explored that part yet. Here are some photos following it on my flickr site.


Hob Lane in the snow

David Hey gave a marvellous old fashioned talk on packhorse routes to Totley History Group last week. His book about these is a must if you want to find out about them.

Greening up

Trees everywhere are putting on their new Spring gauzy garb. Here's one of my favourite trees on Shep's Bank below Woodthorpe Hall:



And the same tree a few weeks ago:



And in February's snows:

Derbyshire squeezers

I've been trying to pull together a little collection of photographs of local Derbyshire squeezer stiles - even if they are now in Yorkshire! See the set so far on my Flickr site.

Brian Edwards has a little article about them in this month's Totley Independent. He says that in some places they are known as "Fat Man's Agony."

There are some gates too. Here's a lovely old metal kissing gate at Woodthorpe.

Wood anemones

These pink wood anemones delighted me this week. Here is John Clare, the peasant poet (1793 - 1864):

Sonnet: Wood Anemone

The wood anemone through dead oak leaves
And in the thickest woods now blooms anew,
And where the green briar and the bramble weaves
Thick clumps o'green, anemones thicker grew,
And weeping flowers in thousands pearled in dew
People the woods and brakes, hid hollows there,
White,yellow and purple-hued the wide wood through.
What pretty drooping weeping flowers they are:
The clipt-frilled leaves, the slender stalk they bear
On which the drooping flower hangs weeping dew,
How beautiful through April time and May
The woods look, filled with wild anemone;
And every little spinney now looks gay
With flowers mid brushwood and the huge oak tree.

Spring has sprung....

Blackthorn blossom everywhere. Here it is at my favourite entrance into Gillfield Wood. It always seems a bit magical here.



Spring has properly arrived at Fanshawegate. Their garden open days are lovely - one at the end of the month I think.





Violets on the lane...



Lots of bird activity - a pair of nuthatches on a chimney pot on Aldam Road, goldfinches and greenfinches at Fanshawegate, sounds of goldcrests at Woodthorpe.

New kids on the block

An overdue update of Spring arrivals but as Maisie the dog has been away for a week, I haven't been out and about much .....

Another photograph of the wood anenomes (anenome nemorosa) which drift over Gillfield Woods - blooming for a few weeks now. They only fully open in the sun and take advantage time-wise of the light before the leaves are on the trees.



Out of the woods and across the fields to Totley Hall Lane, I spotted some blue wood anenomes - possibly a garden escape now naturalised? Anyone know?



In the fields of Totley hall farm I also heard the kew-wick of a kestrel and spotted it in a tree...



Chris the expert bird spotter say there are little owls. Both he and another neighbour have also seen a buzzard. Need to get out and check for warblers. Even swallows....

Down near the Shepley Spitfire on White Lane I looked for signs of the Lords and Ladies (many ruder names but we always knew it as Cuckoo Pint - to rhyme with mint - possibly being a word like pistle - you can guess what that is). Here they are - more photos to come, hopefully, of its ruder manifestations as the seasons progress.



And a lovely and very friendly young beastie has joined the sheep below St George's Farm.

Oaking around

The "ley" in the name Totley, denotes a place of cleared woodland. Two days ago I spent the morning photographing the ancient oaks in the fields around Totley Hall Farm. According to countryside and woodland history expert Oliver Rackham, oaks are no longer able to seed themselves easily in woodland as the American fungus dieases all oaks are now prey to seems to affect their ability to regenerate in woods, but does not affect them in the open. So I suppose this means the English oaks in woods will die out at some point. But what about these trees in field boundaries, presumably the remnants or assarts of the ancient cleared woodland? Should we be collecting their acorns and sowing them, protecting them from grazing by sheep? Should we be talking to the Woodland Trust (some of whose small planted trees were taken down for the new bus terminus at the end of Gillfield Wood)?

These oaks are old, venerable, each very much an individual. I feel rather humbled in their presence.



Of course, much of Gillfield Wood, an ancient wood, was chopped down in the 1950's and replanted with commercial American oak. So these field boundary oaks are the legacy of the older wood. Luckily the replanting hasn't seemed to affect the wonderful woodland plants too much - looking forward to the bluebells and right now the wood anenomes are delicately delightful.

Birds eye primrose?

Found on my walk this morning. I thought these only grew on limestone in the Dales? Could this be a garden escapee?



And while on the subject of flowers - these marsh marigolds sun their own special spot every year next to a boggy stile between Gillfield Woods and Storth Farm.

Spring Equinox

Stonewalling at Woodthorpe on 21st - and marvellous it is too. They are also going to replace the mock Gothic gate that hung here. You can see another at the back. I think they were made by a previous Shepley sometime early in the twentieth century but I can't remember where I read this. I hope they are as lovely.

Chiffchaffs are heralding the Spring.

Back again...

Sorry to have neglected the journal - have been in Amsterdam to see my son (see my Flickr pictures) and in Lincolnshire to look after my Mum.

However - the big news is that I have won quite a major poetry competition - one of 4 winners in the Poetry Business pamphlet competition judged by Michael Longley. So I will get a pamphlet of poems published. I am over the moon....

Here, together with a photo from yesterday's walk, is a poem which will be in the pamphlet:


The holloway

Duck, and you’re fed inside
this oak-soaked dark -
a gullet carved from wildwood where
a pheasant’s broken clockwork startles.

You’re breathed in.
Only rattled blackbirds breach
the arched green hush
where banks are mossed.
Soft earth, hard stone,
leaf-litter, flesh the floor,
and still you are flowed, a boat,
runnelled and cundy borne,
away from heat that frets
in a future - not of your choosing,
yet somehow of your making.

Paving on old tracks

Remains of old path stones, Gillfield Wood, originally uploaded by goldsally.

Old paving, White Lane, Totley, originally uploaded by goldsally.

From Yorkshire into Derbyshire and back....

Most days, on our "default" walk, we walk out of Yorkshire into Derbyshire and back again. This, on the White Lane, is the culvert (which collapsed last year) for a little stream which runs into the Totley Brook. This side is Derbyshire, the other side, with Maisie the dog, is Yorkshire. However, until 1935, Totley was in Derbyshire. Then the stream would have marked the boundary between Totley and Bradway. Quite why the boundary followed this little stream as far as here, rather than the Totley Brook, is unknowable, although Brian Edwards, the real expert on Totley history, thinks it may have arisen from an exchange of land in 1280.....


Here, outside the flats on Greenoak Road, is the first daffodil I have spotted this year. Its a lovely little border here, kept pretty by one of the residents.

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.....

Diggers...

In Gillfield Woods, signs of bluebells to come.......

......and, near the end of the wood, a small digger.

Then a large one........

This is the new bus terminus under construction, next to the terrible lights....

This is at the end of the footpath through the wood - described by Cllr Peter Price in his wonderful 45 mile round Sheffield walk "The Sheffield Way" as "a very pleasant footpath through an extremely attractive peaceful wood." Cllr Peter Price voted for these lights.

Gobbledegook

Today we see this gobbledegook at the entrance to the recreation ground near Totley Hall. Who put it there? Who is it aimed at? What does it mean? Hallam gave it as "planning gain" land when they built houses on the brown field site of the old Poly buildings. Last year they wanted to get it out from green belt protection. Residents are worried.....

Yesterday more gobbledeegook at the planning board meeting I went to on behalf of SPACE. We were all very tired after waiting 4 hours to speak. Councillors did not interrogate officers - and effectively gave their approval to the ugly lights. Although Cllr Hesketh (the Chair) seems to be on our side and is not letting it rest - so some hope yet. The same day the diggers moved in at the end of Gillfield Wood to construct the new turning circle.

I spent most of today at the computer emailing and asking questions.

Goodbye snow

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.