Castor Hanglands

Hanna spots a flycatcher. 

The area to the west of Peterborough, just south of Stamford, has become a second home to us. For a start, it's not flat like the Fens and for a second, it's full of narrow winding lanes and stone villages.

Going there you take a shift backwards in time, away from the planned, grid-lined and tamed 19th century arable landscape, back to the more rambling mixed farming scene that existed from the medieval era up until the Enclosures Acts. The enclosures happened here too, but you can see the old landscape beneath the fences and there are corners where you can still find echoes of semi-wilderness. Just look for the clues, such as roads that aren't straight, scattered hamlets, untidy corners and even ancient woods.

Just a few miles away from Hills and Holes (see previous posts) beyond Upton, there is a large National Nature Reserve called Castor Hanglands. I've heard about it quite frequently, but never felt the need to go there. It's not a very well known site and I have yet to meet anyone who has been there, and I've been asking.

Hanna and I went there last Saturday, which was the nicest day we have had for weeks, yet we met almost no-one there in over three hours. We saw beautiful flowers, listened to nightingales and strolled around aimlessly. It was pure bliss.

The reserve occupies a shallow, wooded valley and holds an amazing diversity of habitats ranging from open pasture and grassy glades through dense scrub to ancient woodland, all managed by controlled grazing. Its a purely Mediaeval landscape, a lot like the New Forest. It also reminded me of woods on the edge of Salisbury Plain, mainly because of the mix of limestone and neutral soils found there, producing a range of flower communities.

In one woodland section the ground was a carpet of bluebells and wood anemones, while in the adjacent copse the dominant flower was yellow archangel. The glades were full of cowslips and I'm sure there will be orchids soon.

As well as the nightingales, we saw yellowhammers, nesting kites and a solitary spotted flycatcher; the only one I have seen this year. Could this be the place to look for woodcocks at dusk?