A Couple of Days out into Cumbria

Having been by train down the Cumbrian Coast, we decided to take advantage of some fine weather to visit some of the places we had seen from the train.
We headed towards Workington where we had seen coast views from the train and a couple of  nature reserves seen on maps.
We couldn't find the entrances to the reserves so stopped off at Harrington Harbour for lunch before going back to explore some of the headlands we could see.

We decided to then explore some of the old industrial areas with a walk along the shoreline.

Returning to the car, we found Soldier Beetles on many of the grassland flowers. A few bees, butterflies and moths were seen flying around in the sunshine.

Heading to the wind turbines, the Six Spot Burnett moths were in even greater abundance and we even found some evidence of recent emergence.

Next day the weather stayed fine and so we headed to Bo'ness on Solway Reserve where we often get good sightings of butterflies. It was good to see a group of schoolchildren enjoying a guided cycle ride along the quiet Solway roads (but they all have the Yellow Jersey !!)

The reserve itself was a little bit overgrown with fewer chances of seeing the wildlife and there certainly seemed to be fewer butterflies around. However, we were treated to glimpses of Meadow Browns, Ringlets, Damselflies, Dragonflies and a few Six Spot Burnett moths.

 

 Our motto is: You never know what you might see !!

Polmaddy

A couple of years ago, we found Polmaddy by chance. We were looking for somewhere to picnic and saw the sign to the viewpoint. On that last visit we found Bilberry bushes absolutely straining under the weight of fruit. So we thought we would take advantage of a sunny day to see if the Bilberries were ready for picking yet this year.

Sadly there were hardly any !! Last time must have been a freak year !!

So we put on our boots and headed off over the bridge and along the trail to the ruins of the ancient village.

As we crossed the narrow bridge we thought we might even find some more Bilberries.

Downstream

Upstream

Across the bridge we found a sheltered spot where the strong winds were not getting through and found that quite a few butterflies were enjoying the shelter too!!
The path was only just visible and at each step we were disturbing moths, hoverflies, bees, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers and even lizards. Many of these were camera shy and didn't cooperate by sitting still.

Moving into the remains of buildings we found some rather wet patches and needed to back track or take slight diversions around the walls.

The 1853 OS map shows the village as a ruin and at one time it had consisted of a few basic houses, byres, corn-mills and an inn(!). It is thought that the basic nature of the farming here had been affected by the Enclosure Act of 1801.

On one of the boggy  patches of ground we came across a group of  orchids that had no chance of avoiding the cameras.

On the return journey, some of the wildlife was more cooperative.

Star find - Northern Brown Argus

We didn't harvest any Bilberries but we did capture a few different insects on camera.