Running in the Mud

Without there being any super heavy rain, the persistent mizzle has gotten the ground very heavy, and I've been running about on it, in the dark, like any not very sane man would do in his middle 40s.

The urban farm along Clay Lane is a real squelch of a place, but then highland calves are getting stuck into their feed having been moved across the lane, and the horses are happily stuck into their bales of hay.

On other farms, the beet is in and the ground seems to be being reseeded with bright orange seeds that look rather like lentils. Either beet seeds do indeed look like lentils, or the farmer in Hawton is trying a radically new cash crop, as well as planting his agricutural vehicles smack across the path and forcing me to go ankle deep in the heavy Nottinghamshire soil.

Lovely! But I'm used to it.

I hope you have all found a way of keeping active in this misty, wet time. Last night the Geminid meteors were clouded out, tonight the moon shines bright through the window. Venus is becoming more and more dominant low in the west in the early morning. The robins have started to sing at night.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 14.12.16

The Clay Lane Tunnel

Yesterday was a very late afternoon run to hunt for butterflies and try and take pictures of them using cunning manual settings.

Even before I set out, I was doubtful as to how this would work; I managed to set the ISO to 800, but in manual mode you don't seem to be able to use the zoom, and the camera kept asking to set the aperture and I wasn't able to figure out how.

I was just going to leave it at the default of F6.5 so heaven only knows how that would have worked out. A bit dark at 800 ISO?

I never got a chance to find out, as the buddleias in the butterfly park at Beacon Hill Reserve where totally devoid of butterflies. I'd left it too late, and as they afternoon had turned chilly, the flutterers must have turned for home.

It had already been a slightly trying afternoon; in order to run along Clay Lane, I'd suddenly had to run the gauntlet of thistles and nettles 3/4 of the way along in my running shorts, leaving my legs looking like salami. The escape routes off the lane had been blocked with piles of manure, as if a farmer was setting traps for unwary runners.

No doubt, if I'd trod in the wrong places I'd have fallen into a pit of spikes or found myself suspended by my ankle.

The lane looked very mysterious as it was, rendered tunnel like in places by overgrowing vegetation, sunlight dappling through. The urban farm - apparently populated by rescue animals - now seems to have gotten hold of some young highland bulls, it's all getting rather busy down there.

Apart from butterflies. None of those.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.08.16