Quantock Easter 1 of 3 : These Boots Aren't Made For Walking

Over the weekend, three contrasting walks were taken by myself and Mrs Wessex-Reiver. The first of these, which I'll write up as a Trichotomous Saga, began on Easter Saturday before dawn.....

An insipid light irradiated the curtains from outside, curtains still closed tight against the now rapidly receding nightfall. I lay in bed identifying the birdsong, blackbird, robin, dunnock and jackdaw dominated, some herring gull way off. All the while I struggled to rouse myself for a planned early start, though to be honest by the time we were on the M5 the sun was well over the horizon and its solar light dazzling the now awake landscape. 

All my life if I plan an earlier than normal morning start I can never sleep properly the night before. Easter Saturday was such a day where after waking at 2am, I lay in the darkness until just after six, before a mad scramble out of the door before 8am. There was a long walk ahead of us, I needed breakfast. After 20 minutes on the road I swung the car beside a Greggs on an industrial estate in Bridgwater, leaving minutes later bearing one bacon butty (three slices and tomato sauce), a large sausage roll and a hot chocolate for my companion for the day, Mrs Wessex Reiver. A bargain indeed at £3.80. Fifteen minutes later I switched off the engine at Holford Green Car Park to begin our walk after that very welcome breakfast, a breakfast accompanied by the harsh loud caws of the rooks in the rookery above our heads. I like it here. I'll take the sausage roll with me for my elevenses.

Spring is really gathering pace in Somerset as field and dale turns green by the hour, yet here at Holford nestling in the Quantock Hills winter still had a firm grip on the landscape. The lack of leaves in April is an illusion of course. The territorial  birdsong as we began our walk was phenomenal, song thrush, green woodpecker, robin, dunnock, great, blue and long tailed tit, blackbird and above most of this and ostensibly everywhere, nuthatch. We come here a lot.

Holford is a small village off the A39 that has so much to offer the walker and naturalist. The poets Wordsworth and Coleridge knew this landscape intimately as Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived for nearly a year at Alfroxton House less than a mile away.  The duo would ramble over this landscape at all hours of the day and night, composing poetry, conversing with each other though above all integrating themselves in and as part of nature.  I'm currently reading a fascinating 2020 biography; Radical Wordsworth by Jonathan Bate, to better understand the man and how this west Somerset landscape inspired his writing. As a prodigious walker, Wordsworth in his lifetime is estimated to have travelled 175,000 miles on foot. We'll not do quite that distance today, just five miles, though a walk of lovely contrasts.

We began at the lower end of Hodder's Combe where the deep valley sides cut by the stream over millennia  hold extensive areas of sessile oak. At this low elevation the birdsong is very much of a woodland mix. In a few weeks time the summer migrants will add to the native chorus, willow warbler, wood warbler, cuckoo, spotted flycatcher or if we're lucky a rare native here, a lesser spotted woodpecker. My favourite of these woods is the the pied flycatcher which I've seen and recorded its call here a number of times. Today though it was the the chiff - chaff call of the onomatopoetic chiffchaff adding a little finesse to our steady climb up the combe.

We'd been travelling for about fifteen minutes when Mrs W-R, pointed to a space ahead of her and called out yellow wagtail - initially it was by the side of the stream, before flying up into the tree. Honestly it is in that tree above, as you can see from this terrible photograph below, I only had my mobile. Oh well we saw it, just the one bird in fabulous condition and I would not be surprised if this bird had literally just arrived in the last 24 hours as it wasn't fidgety as wagtails usually are, and sat obligingly on the branch for a considerable time preening. I've seen them here most years, with a handful taking up territories in the fields along the streamside by the ford we now crossed. [ed. probably grey wagtail in this shot - thanks Stewart]

We climbed higher. Subtly the tree cover begins to open out. The valley widens and sunlight floods the ground. Once this was an industrial area with tanneries and weaving mills utilising the bark and water from the stream. At the time of Wordsworth this was a busy semi-rural-industrial landscape full of activity. Today the air is clear and lichen covers virtually every tree trunk

Occasionally one can see a relic of the past in a tree, such as this 'wire cut' which denotes a long lost fence the oak tree will have grown into and around producing this tell tale growth.. 

We'd been walking about forty five minutes now and the heat was beginning to build bringing out the first butterflies. I've not seen many butterflies this season, yet today we saw a number of peacock and speckled wood in the higher parts of the woodland here. Up on the ridge it is possibly too windy for them but down here is a microclimate they seem to enjoy, evident as I watched a pair of speckled wood twist and turn like a vortex on the wing.

While the Lepidoptera may be few, everywhere there is the sound of water from miniature waterfalls and cascades. At this point we were nearly through the trees and about to climb up onto the open ridge via a path through an area known as Lady's Edge.

One of the many natural aspects these woods are famous for are the polypodium ferns which grow here on the trunks of the sessile oak. While not unusual to do this, these ferns tend to exhibit this epiphytic behaviour in western woods where there is a constant and high level of humidity.  Looking around today I noticed a lot of these ferns have vanished leaving just a hair like wiry stalk sticking out of the moss. Last year was a severe drought season, we're still technically in drought after all these wet winter months. I'm assuming then despite being a fern that can tolerate a modicum of dry weather, the many months of dry weather last year hasn't been beneficial. Anecdotally there is less fern cover on trees here than when I first visited twenty odd years ago, which is worrying. Climate change is playing funny games in ways we'd not expect.  

This woodland is also managed to leave standing dead timber unfelled, allowing the passing observer sights like these turkey tail polypores [Trametes versicolor] to enrich a walk.

By now we were up onto the open moorland and scrub, where the birdsong changed. A few robin and wren remained vocal but with the silencing of the woodland species the predominant bird now was the stonechat. I counted around six pairs along this path - males resplendent in their black and red-sand plumage with a vicars dog collar, the mottled grey-brown females always close by. I do like stonechats, they just add vibrancy to a landscape, and are easy to see too.

As were the lambs and ewes. We'd almost made it to the top, and a wooden marker known as Bicknoller Post. It was absolutely stunning up here, the sun was now strong and the heat was building in the earth beneath our feet. Time for a well earned rest and to take in the view.

From this point and those nearby we can see all the way to Exmoor, with Minehead in the middle ground, then around to Wales and the North Somerset coast where Brean Down thrusts itself reptile like into the Bristol Channel. No wonder then Coleridge rehearsed and wrote his famous poem the Rime of the Ancient Mariner while walking this landscape. It is a landscape of contrasts that energises the soul. It did for us, for after a ten minute break we pushed on along one of the tracks. Just because it was there.

It was on this track, high up and importantly dry that I spied this pill millipede [Glomeris marginata]. Such a stunning arthropod though somewhat out of place on this high plateau, and in daylight. The track was being used by many cyclists and horse riders, so doing something I rarely do I intervened and placed it in a cooling bilberry thicket. Of course as I picked this little fellow up it instantly rolled itself into a beautiful ball, its colouring making it like a marble or jewel in my hand. 

We'd been on the go now for around two hours. I had hoped we may have seen a ring ouzel up here, they are reasonably common on migration, but not today, and so despite a wonderful skylark singing over our heads it was time to retrace our steps. 

We stopped at this point below to allow two cyclists to push their bikes up through the mud. I'm not against cyclists in the hills, and we had a nice chat to them about the red deer they'd just seen, but there is an ecological footprint that worries me - especially in a delicate landscape like this which is under increasing pressure to provide physical and mental solace to a growing population. I can't complain at all, after all we were two walkers ourselves adding to the disturbance and the erosion. I do wonder though sometimes what these places would be like if we excluded humans altogether - how quickly would nature take over? How much would return? There is a lot of research taking place into this as the world had a golden opportunity to re-set nature during the lockdown periods of the Covid-19 pandemic. I know personally of areas where pre Covid-19 there were just muddy paths, but a year later these paths had vegetated and become lush grass and often with abundant flowers. In just twelve short months.

We returned to the car just short of three hours walking - not fast, we only covered 5 miles but it was half uphill and half down, we'd had our exercise and near to the car I saw the first bee-fly of the season. A fitting end and a good workout at least. 

But why the title 'These Boots Aren't Made For Walking'? Well, in the rush to leave the house I couldn't find my normal hiking boots, instead I wore my lightweight summer boots which Mrs Wessex-Reiver bought for me last year. Sadly there's something not quite right about these boots - for me. Walking on the flat they're like wearing slippers. Walk uphill they are like wearing comfy shoes. Walk downhill though they pinch and buckle so much that by the time I got to the car I could hardly walk. I can't put my finger on what's wrong but it feels like the support needed to propel a late middle aged Wessex Reiver downhill is just not there. Note to self then, I must remember to take my proper hiking boots with me next time.... which actually turned out to be Easter Monday when we returned once again to Holford....