August 17th, 2009
We’re in Wyoming this last week for our son’s wedding in Jackson Hole. It’s given us a chance to check out lakeland holiday accommodation US style in the Teton National Park and compare it with Cumbria’s Lake District. Of course The Larches is hard to beat, but our pine built cabin here with decking and a hot tub gives it a close run! At an altitude of 6000 feet and surrounded by aspen trees, we look out across the 8 mile wide Jackson Hole valley.
There are similarities with the Lake District National Park, though here it’s on a grander scale. Grand Teton rises steeply to 12,700 feet just 10 miles to our north and I set off a herd of elk on my run one morning. Yesterday we found the bison. The two parks were founded in their present forms in the years 1950-51 and are roughly the same size. Both focus on conservation and are hugely popular, but the real difference comes with the maps!
Where the Cumbrian fells have often old Viking names, the US maps are littered with a modern vocabulary like Surprise, Solitude and Amphitheatre Lakes, Disappointment Peak, Battleship Mountain, Death and Paintbrush Canyons, Symmetry Spire; or have names of settlers, soldiers or surveyors – Mt Owen and Bradley Lake.
The French trappers scored some hits too with the Gros Ventre (stomach) plain, Rendezvous Mountain [see photo above] and Teton (breast) the tallest peaks in the Park. Teewinot Mountain and Lake Taminah are just two of a few native American names which have survived the settlers’ onslaught!
Tags: Lake District cottage
Posted in Environment, Wildlife | 1 Comment »
June 28th, 2009
Had two squirrel sightings last week, but the long grass on the back bank had limited our viewing til cut. Would be good to get more photos of the squirrels, but it’s tricky – you have to have the camera ready all the time! The one here was taken last year with a telescopic lens.
Two tips if you want to see the squirrels – make sure there are hazel nuts in the feeding box and get up early in the morning. The kitchen’s a good look-out point. Photos from some earlier sightings are in the Wildlife section
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June 23rd, 2009
I was out on the marshes late last night - Midsummer’s Day + 1, so there’s plenty of light ….. Down past Thornthwaite Church and over the A66 and you’ve a new world to yourself.
I’m heading through the birdsong for Bog House. A pheasant clatters up squawking, where six months ago a deer had leaped from the snow as I passed. There’s a rainbow over Keswick and the river’s full after rain, but it’s the sun that has the best hand this evening, moving round the Derwent Valley amphitheatre to spotlight one by one the big names.
Clough Head is first – a brilliant yellow with a rare quasi-lenticular cloud show above, then it’s Barrow’s turn, the dark green profile of its ridge sharp against the evening sky. Next Catbells – it’s an unusual shape when seen here from the north. The clouds slowly shift while I thread my way through a birch thicket. As I climb the river bank, to NNE below a clouded Skiddaw, Dodd and its woods are slowly turning a golden green and brown. The top is shorn of trees, but the lower sections retain a thick canopy.
This is osprey terrain now and I can see the position of the nest. The parent birds aren’t flying, but a blackbird sings her heart out to me for a full four minutes from the top of a field post. Only as I get back to The Larches at 9.45 does the sun’s spotlight on Dodd click off. What an evening of son et lumière it’s been. Who needs a home entertainment system, when the best show’s outside?
POSTSCRIPT: For a map and description of a longer variant of this circular walk and more photos see Walk No 2 of the Walking and transport section of the site.
Tags: "Derwent marshes", "Lake District walks", Bassenthwaite, Lake District cottage, Thornthwaite
Posted in Walking, Wildlife | No Comments »
June 18th, 2009
We’re lucky here to be the only place in England to have ospreys successfully breeding – and diving for their fish in Bassenthwaite just up the road from the cottage. This ‘good news’ environment story – made possible by the efforts of the Forestry Commission and others since 2001 – is joined this week by another. The belle of the southern grasslands, the large blue butterfly has returned we hear to its old haunts. [Photo © Karen Nichols]
Extinct in the UK since 1979, the large blue has now been brought back to six new sites in Devon thanks to the meticulous research of Jeremy Thomas and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in uncovering its secret life cycle. Read more about this fascinating story of the ant, the caterpillar and strange happenings in the south in this week’s Guardian (16th June).
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