July 12th 2025 This is the highest pass in the Pyrenees at 2,115m and the one revered by cyclists both for its challenging ascent as well as its consistent inclusion in the Tour de France. The wonderful sculpture at the summit is the Giant of Tourmalet (Le Géant du Tourmalet), or simply Octave in memory of Octave…
Tag: Orchids
June butterflies and orchids
A hot and dry June brings out the bee, fragrant and pyramidal orchids here on the North Downs; it seems a good year for them all even though the ground is parched. There are also droves of meadow browns, marbled whites and skippers. The dark green fritillaries are on the greater knapweed Centaurea scabiosa in…
Nebrodi National Park
Parco Naturale dei Nebrodi is a great forest of oak and beech that rides a long ridge of rolling hills inland from the north coast of Sicily. We reach it on the tiny back road from San Marco d’Alunzio, missing Frazzano and running past the Monastero San Filippo Fragalá that is occasionally open to visitors….
On the edge of Nebrodi National Park
The Nebrodi National Park is at its heart a huge and little modified beech and oak forest that rolls over a long ridge of high hills; it sits only a few miles behind San Marco d’Alunzio. A track from the town winds its way towards the Park boundary and we walk up it through scrubby…
Denge Woods: The Warren
The Warren is cleared of scrub with a handful of retained trees, and encompassed by ancient beech, oak and sweet chestnut woodland. There is a diverse carpet of primrose, vetches, trefoils, salad burnet, speedwells and orchids, adorned with day-flying moths and butterflies; duke of burgundy fritillaries, dingy skippers, green hairstreaks, brimstones, red admirals and burnet…
Adders on the meadow
There are just a handful of traditional lowland hay meadows left in Southern England. On a land use map of Kent, Marden Meadow looks like a short line of postage stamps stuck on a large, white envelope; a remnant from a time when the only implements to work the land were scythes, carts and barrows…
Agios Dimitrios to Trachila
Trachila is a small fishing village, virtually empty in March at the end of the road from Agios Dimitrios. The narrow road runs under great cliffs and past olive groves and coastal scrub and was only recently constructed so access was previously only by boat. It is a place of wide views across the sea…
Le Pech Bely in late May
The land is dry, the barley fields are high and field margins and fallows full of colourful plants. The vines are putting on their light green leaf. A distant woodlark sings its fluting song in the cloudless dawn, later joined by a weeping tree pipit, wheezing black redstart and the dull rattle of a cirl…
Downland Impressions
The long view of the downs is sharp greens and cobalt blues. Cold details are picked out by the evening sun across the sloping panorama. The short view is warm, out of focus and welcoming. The orchids, buttercups and trefoils beneath a shower of quaking grass create an impressionist watercolour. The downs are an art gallery…
Shoreham on the Verge
The A225 sweeps the edge of the downs above the Darenth, passing Lullingstone’s long history; the railway runs the same route, switching sides on Victorian brick bridges. On a sunshine-filled evening, a little after the first Wednesday in June, riders in black leather lean low into the curves and cars run for home in long lines. The riches of the roadside…
Denge and Eggringe Wood
May 28th. Denge and Eggringe Wood is part of the great East Kent forests, much of it ancient with oak Quercus robur and sweet chestnut Castanea sativa. It contains two small open patches of scrub and chalk grassland, each renowned for supporting a colony of Duke of Burgundy fritillaries Hamearis lumina. The woods are dry in the open valleys and damp in…