September at Old Moor
Long ago, when T. Rex were top of the charts and we only had a choice of three television channels, there was a coal mine called Manvers Colliery on the outskirts of Rotherham. It's not there now, of course, but where the land collapsed, undermined by the workings below, lots of lakes were formed and the site is now the Old Moor RSPB Nature Reserve. And it's a good place to visit on an afternoon when summer has begun to migrate South and the leaves and fruits are looking all autumnal.
We didn't see much in the way of unusual birds. There was a kingfisher on a post and it was almost visible with decent binoculars, and we had a good view of some rude cormorants who insisted on sitting with their backs to us, but in compensation the berries, leaves and remaining flowers looked brilliant. There is a field of sunflowers which I can never remember seeing there before. I only hope that the pictures below do them justice.
The photo of the interesting moth is the odd one out. That one was taken in our garden before we set off.
This is ringing bells. Our mutual friend CS first mentioned it to me shortly after I moved to Sheffield in 2012. He spoke, as he often does, in a fashion that suggested I would have automatically heard of Old Moor even though (a) I'd lived in Somerset and Devon since the 1980s and (b) had not shown any particular interest in the activities of the RSPB. But I did visit a year or two afterwards. I'm sure I took the bus out from Barnsley passing places such as Cortonwood. It was always an education linking together the names of the old pits, the communities in which they had existed and where they were on a map. I had an awareness of the history; I wonder what I'd deduce if I was a thirty-year-old visitor from afar with knowledge of what they now call the "backstory". The dog track at Kinsley was an unexpected discovery; then there's the marvellous fenced cricket ground you can see from the train passing through Goldthorpe.
ReplyDeleteAh, I meant "no knowledge of the backstory". You don't get a second chance with this I fear.
ReplyDeleteYou would certainly have passed via Corton Wood, William. There's a new retail park there now. There are so many cars turning off the main road to go to the shops you'd think there was a mass picket on......
Delete