Rob Duffy: Notes from the Drought

  • Post category:Nature Notes

Little did anyone expect, on May 2nd, that with the mid afternoon temperature at a bracing 12 degrees  and a healthy dollop of some 7.5 mms of rain, we would be soon regarding the latter with some nostalgia and the former as an uncomfortable memory 

Temperatures rose steeply that week up to the torrid Bank Holiday week end, only to plunge down again, to once again rise to the low 20’s by the 19th and here they remained by and large till the end of the month. A trip to Bodnant Gardens, with the Friends of Calderstones Park, on the 25th, witnessed 7mm of rain( fortunately towards the end of the visit), and a couple of days later we heard thunder: The air was coming from a southerly direction.

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Rob Duffy: Sidewalk Botanist Goes Brookside: A short excursion down Court Hey Brook

Court Hey Brook is some 680 metres long within its Park and is crossed by two footbridges, one in the “middle” and the other at the southern end. It was never a boundary within the Victorian estate which ran uphill to the present Rimmer Avenue and it barely appears on any maps. It is hard to believe that its hydrology was significantly altered about a decade ago (United Utilities); designed to protect the east bank’s back gardens from being undercut by waters that have subsequently failed, the remnant sandbanks seem now arcane relics.

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Continue ReadingRob Duffy: Sidewalk Botanist Goes Brookside: A short excursion down Court Hey Brook

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