St.John's Chapel, Weardale

It was only a little over a fortnight since we'd taken our regular circular walk around St.John's Chapel in Weardale but, when we visited again on Saturday, the intervening period of almost dawn-to-dusk sunshine had transformed the landscape. All the early summer flowers, like the wood cranesbill, had run to seed and perfect haymaking weather meant that all the meadows had been mown. 

Even though this was only July, it seemed as though the summer is slipping by and it felt, as they say around here, 'proper back-endish'.

Harebells and crested dog's tail grass beside Harthope burn

Marsh woundwort in flower beside a ditch at the bottom of Chapel Fell

The frothy blossom of meadowsweet, once used for flavouring mead (the name has nothing to do with meadows, it refers to mead).

Monkey flower Mimulus guttatus in the gravel beside the river Wear. Thirty years ago, when I first saw it on this spot, this alien plant from the western United States was much commoner along the river than it is now - it seems to have gone into decline.

Rushes flowering on the slopes of Chapel Fell. For much of the year these are dull plants but for a brief period, when they flower, they look very attractive in the sunlight (double-click for a clearer image)

Timothy Grass Phleum pratense, flowering in corners of meadows that the mower missed. Very similar to meadow foxtail Alopecurus pratensis, but that flowers in spring and this flowers in mid-summer.

A most heartening sight - one of twelve freshly emerged small tortoiseshells on creeping thistles, on the flanks of Chapel Fell. These butterflies seem to be doing very well around here this year - we had seven at once on the Inula flowers in our front garden this weekend.

Spot the fish: a trout, keeping station in the sunlit river below a waterfall, catching whatever the river delivers and only given away by its shadow - the fish's back is a very close match for the colour of the underlying rock.

Up on Chapel Fell the lapwings have finished nesting and are now forming flocks with their juveniles.

The Worst Weed in the World?

Various publications have described this grass - common couch, Elymus repens - as 'the worst perennial weed in the world'. There are plenty more contenders for this dubious distinction but there's no doubt that couch has an incredible ability to infest cultivated land very quickly, thanks to underground creeping rhizomes. One plant can produce five metres of rhizome in a season and if this is broken up every small segment can produce a new plant, so cultivation makes the weed problem worse unless every piece of rhizome is removed. 

Couch grass rhizomes have sharp, hard-tipped points and on several occasions I've dug up other plants whose roots have been speared through by couch rhizomes. It even penetrated the butyl liner of our garden pond. 

Timothy grass Phleum pratense, which produces these lovely cylindrical flower spikes in late July and August, is very similar to meadow foxtail Alopecurus pratensis, but that flowers much earlier, in May. Timothy is a very variable grass - some strains produce a lot of leaf and are long-lived, while others have a tendency to flower quicky and die - but it is an excellent grass for nutritious hay production. It owes its common name to Timothy Hansen, a farmer who popularised the plant as a source of fodder, but before that another American farmer, John Herd, had also recognised its value for cattle and horse grazing and it was also known as Herd's grass. Before Hansen's day it was known in Britain as meadow cat's tail.

Making hay while the sun shines – but not just yet.

The Weardale Way runs through a series of lovely hay meadows between St. John’s Chapel and Cowshill, with excellent pubs at both ends of the walk. The yellow rattle seed pods are beginning to ripen and it will soon be time for the hay harvest, but for the moment the long grass and tall buttercups offer the perfect opportunity to relive one of the great pleasures of childhood – laying down in the long grass (in this photograph mostly bents Agrostis species) and watching the clouds drift by. Do this for long enough and you’ll find it hard to be sure whether it's the clouds moving above you or Earth moving underneath you - although, of course, it’s both. A giddy, elemental pleasure. While we were staring at the swaying grass heads we noticed these caterpillars feeding in Timothy grass Phleum pratense - anyone know what they are?