In the Footsteps of John Clare

The accursed showers continued yesterday, but undaunted off I went to meet Rosa at Helpston in the land of John Clare... Whilst many of the landscapes he knew and loved have been destroyed or horribly compromised by development and intensive farming, remnants do survive and there's certainly enough to get a feel for what the great man cherished and wrote about. First stop was Barnack Hills & Holes, mentioned by him and somewhere I've been wanting to see for a long time. The quarrying was largely finished here by the early 16th century, with much of the stone carted off to build cathedrals. Now it's a national nature reserve, mainly on account of its plant and butterfly interest, and bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Grime's Graves. Main target here were pasque flowers, of which we found perhaps half a dozen, albeit rather tiny and very scattered compared to, say, those at Devil's Dyke at Newmarket... Exquisite and exciting, nonetheless, and sparkling like little amethysts on the grassy slopes. Lots of cowslips too, mostly also rather stunted and modest - doubtless thanks to the soil conditions. Birds included willow warblers, blackcaps and a smart red kite wheeling over the nearby village. A great place, but slightly marred by the large amounts of dog poo everywhere - Natural England, please do something about this. Dog bins and a few signs would be a start!

From Barnack we went to Royce Wood, just on the edge of Helpston. In JC's day this was a place of grand old oaks, which were outrageously felled in the 1960s. Some of the stumps can still be seen. Today it's regenerating secondary woodland, including some good limes and a lot of hazel - might be good for nightingales in a few years (they used to be found here, apparently). For the time being there's much beauty going on with the woodland flora, great displays of bluebells and wood anemones, plus celandines and violets just about hanging on still - late for the end of April. And some very nice early purple orchids, also yellow archangel.

Final stop was Bainton Heath, a post-industrial site that is now one of the best regional localities for nightingales with lots of good scrub and adjacent gravel pits (they seem to enjoy the proximity of water). Weather conditions did not look good, however - 7.30pm and raining, with wind as well. Never good for the  fair-weather friends from the South... But amazingly, they put on a fantastic show - first one, then a second, a third... In total we probably heard six or seven individual birds, including four simultaneously, just as the wind dropped. Quadrophonic!  Certainly one of my best-ever nightingale moments, very special indeed.