Eaton Hall 29 July 2013

Eaton Hall between Wrexham and Chester is the home of the Duke of Westminster, and its gardens are open for charity fundraising a few times a year. The are well worth the visit especially as the Duke has had his own private narrow gauge railway built through the parkland recreating some of the Eaton Hall Light Railway from before WWII. I digress: a stroll away from the formal gardens on the far side of the lake revealed several Broad Leaved Helleborines in full flower. A nice chance surprise finding.

Two of the Broad Leaved Helleborines

North Lancashire first week of July 2012

A short break based in Lancashire provides the opportunity for a couple of excursions. Top of the list is Gait Barrow. What a weird place! Following the paths you glimpse through the trees and see the white flat limestone pavements and it looks like it has been snowing there. We knew about the Lady Slippers Orchids there, but did not expect signs up saying This Way to the LSOs every 100 yards. Even so, the last couple of signs were missing from their posts and we carry on on our walk looking every which way, returning and taking another path and doing a full circle before we spotted them just where after where the signs had disappeared. Surprisingly we only met one other couple to talk to and they were unaware of the LSOs on the site. The orchids were well past their flowering period as expected (though I was hoping there may been just one late flower) but it did not look like seed had set. The plants were found in a fully open position about 20 foot off the main path, which explains why we missed them - TWICE. But the three clumps had been planted in lines, and had small rocks laid out around them making it look unnaturally like a flower bed. Still great work from those preserving this rare plant.
A hunt for Dark Red Helleborines there proves fruitless. Still a return some time in the future perhaps, or on a date suitable for the LSOs, or with more information about the DRHs may be possible. The only other orchids spotted are of course Common Spotteds, down in a meadow below the limestone.

A trek though woods another day led to Haweswater where, on the flat damp rushy area by the water`s edge we found a few Heath Fragrant Orchids - well I think that is what they were but I am a bit unfamiliar with the differences between the three species. This photo certainly shows a 3-lobed labellum that is wider than long, which suggest the Marsh species.

We tried to cram quite a bit of diverse activity into the few days we were up north. One was a visit to Carnforth Station which now re-creates the setting for the film Brief Encounter. But we had been here way back in 1982 when the engine depot had been a steam engine museum; Steamtown. Then there was a miniature railway ride alongside the standard gauge tracks and during a ride on that I had seen clumps of Common Spotteds. Though you cannot get to where this used to be, there were some of these visible still growing in the ballast beyond platform 4 at the edge of the depot.

A bit to the north of Carnforth are some old limestone quarries; huge amounts have been removed leaving high and wide cliff faces. There were some bird watchers near the car park watching the peregrines there, but our eyes were caught by the Bee Orchids, perhaps 30, growing on an artificial bank. Each one had a marker next to it, and it certainly appeared that they were deliberate plantings. The markers could have been placed once growth had started, but the distribution just seemed too even to be natural. A fine display though, but nothing else was found at the site. We had a chat with a  chap on a motorcycle who told us his dad had been one of the quarrymen there and he had come to see the crags for that reason.-