I stop at Burdale, park on the dry grass with stable to my left, the remains of an old railway bridge to my right leading to Burdale House Farm. I am looking across the road, to a huge pond teaming with aquatic plants, it is fed by springs, ponds are scarce here, the chalk valleys are known as dry valleys, leading to an initiative for creating small ponds thus benefiting nature generally. I see an old friend, she is still beautifully elegant, the epitome of grace, attractively slim, with large, dark brown eyes with matching eyelashes, long legged, dark chestnut and still ...a little skittish. Mallard on the pond are vocal and as a curlew hauntingly calls, I have my egg sandwich, sharing it with a grateful George. A woman walks past, then hesitates, unbolts a five bar iron gate and wanders down to the pond margins, where she peers into the water. On returning, she looks quizzical. She wanders along the road, passing me to the stable block and, using a hose pipe, fills a huge water bucket, Nettie looks on, then decides to have a drink from it and has his head stroked. The woman returns, as she passes, we chat, at a safe distance. She is mystified at the lack of frogspawn in the pond. I venture the comment, "newts" making her eye me suspiciously, before I explain that they are voracious consumers of tadpoles. But, she points out, that a short way away, in Fairy Dale, another pond is full of frogspawn. I hesitate to say "well there you are then, can't be any newts". Of course, we don't know, perhaps an answer will be suggested by others. We talk of the tunnel in Fairy Dale and how it is now blocked up. She remembers how cold and wet it was when her children would visit it, only to abandon it quickly to get warmed up. She was surprised that bats were introduced, thinking it unsuitable for them. I start to think George needs another walk and take him down Fairy Dale. I carry my binoculars as I suspect peregrines may be in the old quarry. I did not see any but can happily confirm that the pond is full of tadpoles. She tells me of a male fox she helped raise and how seeing it in the distance, her dog would run up to it and play, yet it remained wary of humans. A brief sad point I noticed was the felling of several ancient ash trees which fringed the road over at Thixon Dale, more victims of ash die back I would think. So sad to see their huge trunks, perhaps three feet diameter lying on the ground having being cut up.
Leaving Burdale heading towards Wharram Le Street, I drive up the steep road climbing three hundred feet, passing the horse shoe quarry on my right and I spot this view. The sky is empty, after a sun drenched day I can see changes from pale blue to the pink fringed colouring of dusk. The brightly lit ground below inky black trees on the horizon looks intreaging, a moment in time, so as time was running out as I decide to paint.
I block in the main colours, as two cyclists, having climbed the hill, stop and chat. I was surprised to hear they were from York and, as the day was turning to dusk, thought they should be getting back. Then a berthuan dream shadow flitters, turns and disappears, a sign, to pack up perhaps. I find myself wondering if it is one that S helped raise, from the barn owl nest box, that Robert Fuller, the superlative artist and conservationist had placed in her stable ( please visit him here).
A pond,
Empty of frogspawn,
Makes Sylvia fret though
Nettie cares not.
A hidden curlew calls,
Making me a child again and I smile,
While in these ancient hills, as
Bethuan's ghosting shadow stalks,
Fairies watch
Dusk fall on the
Fairy Dale tadpoles.
Those of you interested in the history may know of the lost village of Wharram Percy, but perhaps not of the field work done near the farm, Burdale House Farm, which records Anglo-Saxon finds, the report here makes an interesting diversion, ( especially when the images are clicked ).
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