Читать книгу Walking in the Yorkshire Dales: South and West. Wharfedale, Littondale, Malhamdale, Dentdale and Ribblesdale онлайн

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Counting sheep at Lee Gate Farm (Walk 21)

Managing the meadows in this way allowed them to develop a rich herbage of spring and summer flowers, which in turn encouraged a diversity of both insects and birds. In some areas they remain a delight to behold, but such practices do not sit well alongside pressures to improve productivity. Reseeding and the use of fertilisers and herbicides might double the yield of grass, but the wild flowers that once grew there all but disappear within a season. Many farmers are trying to redress the balance between efficiency and environmental conservation, but the overriding concern must still be the need to earn an income.

PLANTS AND WILDLIFE

Despite the human influences, the environment of the Dales supports a great diversity of habitats whose individual characteristics are broadly governed by altitude and the underlying geology.

Much of the upland is underlain by grits and other impervious rocks and covered by wet blanket bog, where cottongrass, sphagnum and purple moor grass pervade, with heather, bilberry and heath rush dominating where the ground is drier. Many of the better-drained upland heaths are actively managed as grouse moors, where the old growth of heather is periodically burnt off to encourage young shoots. The moors are perhaps at their most attractive during late summer when the heather blazes in a rich swathe of purple. The limestone grasslands on the other hand are best in spring, when an amazing variety of small flowers such as buttercup, vetch, rock rose, cranesbill and campion speckle colour across the landscape. The small patches of woodland too are also most appealing in the springtime, when bluebells, ramson and wood anemones abound.