Old Apple

Tuesday, 1st February 2005
Wild West Yorkshire nature diary

Shatton, Hope Valley, Derbyshire

This old, half rotten tree provides the corner point for a fence by Shatton Lane. From its branches I guess that it's an apple.

Bright green moss grows as a thin shaggy carpet on the lower boughs. There are a few patches of greyish lichen above, splodges of pale green below.

A robin sings from thorns across the lane.

Once again I've commuted to the Peak District for a day's drawing. This is my main drawing of the day but I also draw an outcrop of shale (I'm always aware of the ground beneath my feet) and a quick sketch of a stile and a footpath sign.

I see the booklet that I'm intending to publish as a celebration of the more intimate details of the Peak District; not the big moorland panoramas, not the picture postcard perfection of the star-attraction villages. Posts, tree trunks, stones, walls, streams, lichens, crows and cattle; the smaller details, the ones you might overlook if you were compiling a tourist brochure but which make a day here such a pleasure.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk