Everything But What I wanted

Summer is moving on apace and as I don’t want to waste a single sunny day when it crops up, I grabbed my camera and binoculars and cycled up the River Lee after the first good forecast this week. The idea was to go dragonfly spotting, something I’ve been aching to give a whole day to, but the day itself had other plans for me.

I had a particular spot in mind, Gunpowder Park, near Waltham Abbey. I’d been there many years ago and had a vague memory of myriads of dancing insects, so having for once a specific destination in mind I set off at a brisk pace.

The towpath was deserted, surprisingly so for such a lovely day. I usually cycle the towpath slowly, mindful of pedestrians and dogs, but on this occasion there was not another soul to be seen, and I sped along. Due to my haste I will have missed a lot – I know it – just from the tantalising things that I only glimpsed like the plums glossy and ripe and good spilled across the gravel as windfall, the skulking herons, the bright flash of wildflowers. The horse meadow with it’s bright garlanded hedgerow coaxed me to pull up and drink in it’s beauty, the scent of buddlea and wild sweet peas heady and intoxicating.

Usually I’d stop alongside those pylons to search for Little Owls (at one point I was seeing so many and so regularly there that I just called them “pylon birds”) but this time I was on a mission, and thinking that I could easily stop there on the way home I hurried by. A bank of honeysuckle flowers tempted me to pause, but I was uncharacteristically hasty in getting back in the saddle.

Ever feel like you’ve jinxed yourself?  All those things I told myself I’d stop and look at properly on the way back never did get looked at after all, which proves to me that being in a hurry to get anywhere is just a great big waste of NOW.  Hurrying discourages curiosity, blinkers us to the unexpected.  And on I sped, intoxicated with the swift breeze and the scrunch of gravel under my tyres. The towpath finally emerged from beneath the roaring M25, ducked under one more road and rolled out into parkland. Was this Gunpowder Park? I wasn’t sure, and a quick rummage in my saddlebag confirmed that I’d forgotten to bring a map. No problem! It would surely be signposted and besides, I could always ask for directions.

I got off the bike and strolled slowly along the riverbank in hope of spotting a dragonfly or two, but the wind was strong and I could not find the sheltered places where the dragons and damsels would be patrolling. Still, the river was beautiful, a slow, sinuous dancing river, and the weeds under the water swayed slowly like mermaids tresses. So many wildflowers I did not recognise! I got down on my belly to take pictures, to the mild alarm of strolling families who couldn’t see anything special about the clump of weeds I was prostrated by.  I’m truly glad I spent a bit of slow time here, because when I got up and got back on my bike in search of Gunpowder Park and dragonflies, I realised something wasn’t quite right. Oh no – no WAY. I had a puncture. Normally this would not be an issue but I think you can guess what else I’d forgotten. That’s right -  I’d set out to cycle miles out of London over relatively rough ground and not even brought a pump with me. And as I’d forgotten my map, I had no idea where the nearest train station was. Where was everybody? Now that I needed to ask directions the park seemed suddenly deserted. In search of directions or even a sign I followed the nearest road and stumbled upon a very unfriendly looking gated community on the edge of town; big ugly houses with big ugly cars parked in all the drives, completely sterile and unhelpfully deserted. But here I found a genuine and lovely surprise.

A flowering ornamental shrub was by some magic growing wild at the side of the path, and on it’s flowers danced an astonishing number of Painted Lady butterflies. The nectar laden flower heads tossed in the strong breeze and the insects clung to the blossoms determinedly, everything moving back and forth as if being pulled by a tide. Bees hummed industriously between the butterflies – everything was so intensely involving that the mystery of how I was ever going to get home seemed very far away.

I know most people in the UK have been seeing these lovely butterflies in great numbers since their mass migration here earlier this spring, but I’ve been singularly unlucky and seen hardly any. To find dozens of them all in one place was plenty consolation for the lack of dragonflies and the long, hot, unpleasant slog home.

No such thing as waste ground

I went out to get photos of small tortoiseshell butterflies that I’ve been seeing about the place since the weather changed to summer. But today it was windy; no butterfly would sit for me, not even the normally obliging brown sort you see hanging around in long grass. Personally I was glad of the breeze, and I don’t need much excuse to go to Walthomstow and Hackney marshes.

Set against an uncompromising semi-industrial backdrop, the marshes are about as wild as any place in London. What many people might dismiss as “waste ground” is home to countless small wonders if you take the time to look, and has some fine blackberry picking if nothing else at all takes your fancy.

The first thing you notice on a blazing summer day like this one is the alien mechanical whirring of grasshoppers. The sound reaches out, as far as you can tell, to infinity and yet you will be lucky if you can spot even one. In spring the marshes are a bewildering cacophony of birdsong, but by the end of July all the birds are silenced by exhaustion and the end of the breeding season and the usual urban soundtrack of sirens, trains rattling across the many bridges, kids joyriding on scooters and low flying aircraft take over.

Cycling along the River Lea towpath, a huge sky rolls out before you – a rare and exhilarating treat in such a built up city. The marshes are filled with flowering reeds and among them, particularly at the edge of drainage ditches, Purple Loostrife wave their sumptuously coloured flower spikes.

Startlingly acid yellow ragwort flame up and jostle against wild carrot and vetch, and on a day like today it’s all moving, swaying, the reeds sussurating in every breeze. The ground is dead flat, and heat bounces up from the towpath as the grasshoppers sing their hot summer day song, but it’s near water too, so the heat is just this side of bearable. Ponds and ditches have shrunk to scummy nothingness but the calming green of the reeds show that there is plenty of water in the ground yet.

The flowers of late summer are at their finest, and the appetising tang of wild horseradish is in the air.

You think you’ve got the measure of the place when you ride into a sudden, intense aroma of honey as if you have ridden into a brick wall. The buddlea, or “butterfly bush” has you in its sensual embrace, with its nodding purple blooms, clouds of butterflies dancing attendance and that sensational perfume. These non-native shrubs have taken to our waste grounds like a rat to a drainpipe – and to remind me that I was indeed in the city, as I took this picture a large rat came scuttling out of the undergrowth. I was so startled I didn’t get its photo, but I think the buddlea is probably more attractive anyway.

Some would call the pylons ugly; I think that in this particular, utilitarian landscape they come into their own. As huge sculptural presences they give scale to the land and a welcome perch to daytime hunting little owls. We are too far away to see the owl on this particular pylon, but trust me – there is one there! I have never been close to a pylon on the marshes without seeing its resident little owl.

Trains clatter across the two bridges over the marsh with great regularity. A friend of mine once went skinny dipping in the nearby reservoirs and gave astonished commuters on the way to office jobs on the square mile a cheery wave, completely naked, as their train sped by. You never know what you might see, flora, fauna, human or otherwise on an afternoon visit. I leave you with a typical Walthomstow Marsh panorama – the marsh its self, a passing train, and in the distance a fire which had broken out on a nearby industrial estate. It may be a wild refuge in the city, but city it undoubtedly is.

Bird on a wire

The last week of April saw weather that was stormy and unpredictable – every day seemed to bring thunderstorms, and hailstones battered the ground only to vanish in moments, turned to steam by sudden, ferocious sunshine. Huge and bizarre cloud formations towered over this sodden, miserable city, their crennelations putting to shame anything the most ambitious and insensitive city of London architect could ever dream up. One of the best places to watch these monstrous skies has to be Walthomstow marshes, an expanse of marshy grasslands, drainage ditches and reedbeds which is flanked by the river Lee navigation on one side and residential and industrial estates on the other. It ensures a vast unbroken view of roiling skies that is difficult to obtain in most parts of London and is thronged with wildlife, so it’s a favorite haunt of mine. Cycling along the Lee’s towpath you can see the weather coming from miles away and it isn’t unusual to spot gray herons, who nest in large numbers both in Bow and Edmonton. The fascinating thing about urban herons is their fearlessness – they are so unconcerned by human proximity that you can approach one thinking that it is a garden ornament, only for it to suddenly unfold itself like a shabby umbrella and leap into the air with a harsh kronk of protest.

I saw this heron when cycling from Victoria Park to Tottenham along the towpath, on a day that had turned from perfect early summer sunshine to violent thunderstorms within ten minutes of setting off. The ride was beautiful, the restless sky throwing shadow patterns on the reed beds and cowslips nodding cheerfully along the verge, the scent of heavy rain and things growing would make anybody feel alive. My camera didn’t often see the light of day-too wet! But at least I caught this heron and the aftermath in the sky.