Blog Archives: Travel by Rail

Eastern Scotland by train: Dundee – architecture and art

Miscellaneous, Travel by Rail

A couple of weeks ago as the south baked under an unprecedented September heatwave, we had fortuitously booked a rail trip to eastern Scotland where although still lovely and sunny, the temperatures were much more amenable.

This is the first of four blogs covering those six days. Dundee for the first two nights proved to be very exciting and full of interest, and now for me a real challenger to Glasgow as my favourite Scottish city. In no small part that is down to the best-located Premier Inn we have ever been to, overlooking the ever changing beauty of the Firth of Tay, the road and rail bridges spanning the water east and west respectively.

A couple of hundred metres along the waterfront is its cultural heart, the magnificent new V&A design museum, the thing that drew us to Dundee in the first place.

A shapeshifter of a building, close up it seems to be a heavily stratified sea cliff…

… while walking into and under it has all the echoing moistness of a remote sea cave, with ever-changing reflectascapes in its rockpools:

From further away, it transforms into a cruise liner echoing Dundee’s past as a major trading port.

And then from another angle, it is nothing less than an snapping leviathan from the deep – yes, the city has a whaling past too.

A delight to be alongside, at any time of night or day:

Inside the museum there’s some photogenic building design features and interesting artwork and exhibits:

Alongside the V&A is berthed the RRS Discovery, Scott’s vessel for his first Antarctic expedition, with visitor centre:

And the Slessor Gardens, full of sculpture, art… and yes plants too, including fences cleverly reflecting the organised chaos of a reedbed!

 

Then we came to the Tay Road Bridge, a low-rise affair, but providing remarkable disappearing vistas through its underbelly…

And finally on the waterfront (for now – there are plans for an Eden Project there in the gasworks of the old East Dock), the transformed docks surrounded by historic (and modern) buildings. The dock has its historic vessels too, the HMS Unicorn and a lightship rusting into oblivion in a very fetching manner.

Away from the water, the jute-milling past of the city is now firmly in the past:  the many jute mills have mostly been demolished or repurposed as flats. But one remains to keep the memory alive, the Verdant Works museum. Described to us by a friend as ‘the best museum ever’, the other reason for us visiting Dundee, and we found it hard to disagree with that assessment.

 

Other cityscapes included the two hills rising out of it, numerous chimneys, churches, art and other buildings, many in a pleasing warm local red sandstone that didn’t match our southerners’ preconception of a dour Scots town (helped by the sunshine and blue skies!).

Our final main location was of course the Botanic Garden. More about the plants and other wildlife there in the next blog, but it also features interesting art and sculpture, along with views across the firth.

It probably says something about our age, but a highlight of our walk home from the Botanic Garden around Balgay Hill  was what we both agreed was the most comfortable park seat ever. Well done to the City Council!

More than enough to keep us fully entertained for a couple of days, it is a city to which I suspect we will return.

 

Heading Westwards Part 2: … and the power showers of South Wales

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail

Leaving Bath for the last half of our three-day train trip, it was under the Severn, out of the sun and into the rain of the Vale of Glamorgan.

Llantwit Major, close to the south coast, has a beach with cliffs, a view over the Bristol Channel to Exmoor, and is a place where the vegetation is sculpted by salt-laden sea-spray:

This close to the warmth of the sea, pushed inland by incessant south-westerlies, the landscape also features a suite of plants we are less used to seeing in winter-chilled and droughted Essex, at least in such bounty. Chusan Palms are scattered around, including in the churchyard,  while every stone wall is festooned with Ivy-leaved Toadflax:

In field corners and gardens, Monbretia is naturalized in golden swathes …

and the hedgerows are largely of Fuchsia, now in full bloom.

Notwithstanding the Fuchsia originate from South America, they seem to be much used by local bees, including Common Carders, Honeybees and Buff-tailed Bumbles. In abundance – between the showers every bush was a-buzzing:

St Illtyd’s church is a fascinating place. Looking every bit a ‘standard’ parish church, it is the site of one of the earliest seats of Christian learning in the country, and its internal features reflect that, with remarkable mediaeval wall paintings:

But most impressive of all are the Celtic stones, covered in symbols and inscriptions that hark back to a pagan past. Corralled together inside the restored chapel they are to my mind a little out of context – cut off from the spirits of the outdoors, from which they derive their symbolic power …

… but at least they are protected from the elements, which showed their force as we sheltered inside!

And Nature is never too far away. The stonework at the restored end of the building features an ammonite fossil …

… and the churchyard itself is far from being an over-tidied, pesticide-poisoned waste, the fate of all too many even in these relatively ecologically enlightened times.

It may have been only a short break, but we covered a lot of ground at leisure, and were able to immerse ourselves in landscapes and weather we are most unused to at home!

Heading Westwards Part 1: relaxing in a hot Bath…

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail

Three hours on a train brought us to a very hot and sunny Bath for a full day of exploration, after years since either of us had been there. And the first impression, particularly in the sun, set against blue skies, was a city defined by, almost hewn out of, its local geology: the beautiful honey-coloured oolitic limestone.

All the classic elements of architecture share the limestone in a remarkable, World Heritage display of geoconcordance, from the Abbey…

 

… to the Roman Baths (notwithstanding the considerable inducements not to sit on the stone shelves!) …

… to the Circus, with its wonderful quincunx of massive Plane trees (sadly under threat, we later learned) …

…and the Royal Arcade …

.. as well as less renowned vistas throughout the city.

So many ‘cliffs’, it is not surprising that there were Peregrines around, along with numerous Herring And Lesser Black-backed Gulls: Bath was renowned as one of the first locations where the inland, urban breeding habit of these ‘seagulls’ was recorded.

Given its location in a loop of the River Avon, bridges and riverscapes are another major feature:

Along the riverbank there was welcome dappled shade from many Tulip-trees, while several of the Sycamores where showing a remarkable infestation of Horse-chestnut Scale-insects: …

… and riverside flowers included Himalayan Balsam and Shaggy-soldier (both attracting insects) with another rapidly spreading non-native, Water Bent-grass.

Tumbling down from a higher level in a series of vertiginous locks, we walked along the Kennet & Avon Canal to Widcombe …

 

… one lock gate in particular being a lovely vertical garden, nicely complementing the village telephone boxes.

Last but not least the Botanic Gardens. Always a delight to visit such places, as much for the insects and other wildlife as for the plants themselves:

… including a single Globe Artichoke attracting the attention of a carder-bee, a Honeybee and a leafcutter-bee, all delving deeply and being liberally coated with pollen.

But then we were off, further west, into Wales…

Late Summer at Landguard Point

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail, WildEssex

It was a perfect summer day for a short foot-ferry trip from Harwich to Landguard Point…

The Harbour was millpond-still, overseen by huge blue skies and dramatic cloudscapes:

Waves lapped gently on the shingly shores as the port activities clanked softly in the background…

Out on the Common, most  flowering was over, apart from Sea Mayweed and Sticky Groundsel now at their peak …

…  with Rest-harrow erupting from the Rabbit-grazed turf and Yellow Horned-poppies still sending out blooms that flutter in the slightest breeze.

Otherwise it was the fading delights of a floral summer:

Duke-of-Argyll’s Tea-plant, as so often simultaneously flowering and fruiting, its goji berries having survived the depredations of superfood hunters and birds alike:

Some magnificent Robin’s Pincushions, galls caused by tiny wasps, adorned the Dog-roses, while several much larger Sand Wasps were provisioning their nests in the shingle:

A couple of mating Common Blues posed well, although the star insects – Dune Villa fly and Jersey Tiger moth –  were simply too fast in the mounting heat, and evaded the camera.

All this and more, including on the Essex side of the Haven, the mean streets of Harwich, nowadays lined with Shaggy Soldiers, a street-plant that wasn’t there a decade or so ago when we lived in the area…

… and the  biodiverse, bounteous, blooming beauty of brownfields: a magic multicultural mix of species from all over the world, today thronged in Small White butterflies!

A couple of days in Cambridge…

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail

A couple of lovely sunny days in Cambridge last week, Eleanor’s first holiday with Granny and Papa, proved a real success all round. Centrepiece of the first day was the Botanic Garden: well known to us, but seen now with new eyes – flowers from all round the world, complete with a kids’ passport-stamping discovery trail …

Given the time of year, fruits were also a feature, along with foliage sprinkled with mercurial stardust and brought to life with welcome sunlight:

Insects were everywhere of course, from leaf-cutter bees to Cinnamon Bugs, butterflies to dragonflies, the Ruddy Darter being one of Eleanor’s photographic efforts!

One poor Southern Hawker was giving especially good views, but only because it had been captured and beheaded by a Moorhen. It was then presented to a well-grown chick, which proceeded to turn up its bill at the offering!

Finally on the insects, we were saddened to see the killing fields of Thalia dealbata unleashed. A previous blog Murder at the Garden Pond: Thalia dealbata – the (not very) beautiful assassin | Chris Gibson Wildlife has catalogued the unsavoury habits of this plant, and we hope that contact with Garden managers will result in the removal of the pollinator-killing flower-spikes, as we now do at Beth Chatto’s Garden.

The following day, the Museum of Zoology kept us out of the fierce sun, and occupied for a good couple of hours. A REAL museum, with lots of fascinating actual specimens, an absence of buttons and lights, but child-friendly display cases, the right height to get eye-to-eye with specimens of every kind.

And that apart from some bits of intentional and unintentional street art was it…

… except for the delight of the funfair for our little treasure!

 

 

 

Wandering around the Wirral with a camera

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail

We have just returned from a lovely three day train trip to and around the Wirral, a place previously unknown to us. Despite the often wet weather (this is a far cry from semi-arid Essex!), we had a wonderful time, especially our night at The Ship, Parkgate…

Parkgate

Nestled on the shores of the Dee Estuary, overlooking extensive salt marshes to the distant Welsh hills and the wind farms of Liverpool Bay, The Ship proved an ideal location, with good food and drink, and an excellent sun-deck for those few precious moments when the sun emerged!

The black-and-white colour theme of the village in places contrasted beautifully with the native red sandstone walls:

Although the tide remained stubbornly distant, there were flock of Black-tailed Godwits and Redshanks, together with a few Greenshanks and Common Sandpipers, and a couple of Spoonbills, all to the rattling and reeling of singing Sedge and Grasshopper Warblers.

Wirral Country Park

Just north of Parkgate we explored part of the linear Wirral Country Park, a former railway line, which produced a number of botanical and entomological treasures.

Ness Botanic Gardens

Sadly, our afternoon at Ness was pretty much wall-to-wall drizzle (or heavier), and therefore the experience can best be described as ‘atmospheric’!

Of course the plants were interesting…

… together with a range of insects, including the Alder Leaf Beetle, a new colonist of the country after its 20th century extinction.

New Brighton

An evening stroll along New Brighton promenade was a complete seaside experience…

… complete with views to the windfarms. across to the iconic Liverpool waterfront, and deep in the heat haze to the north, Antony Gormley’s humanoid beach sculptures ‘Another Place‘ at Crosby.

Port Sunlight

And finally to the main reason for our visit to the area, the delights of Port Sunlight. Blue-skies and sun, culture, architecture and art…

… and of course in the copious green spaces and gardens, wildlife …

— including a surprising record (for us) of the Tulip-tree Aphid, seemingly another very recent colonist of our shores, being devoured by  Harlequin Ladybirds. Always something exciting to find!

#WildEssexWalks – Wrabness and Stour Wood

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail, WildEssex

A pleasant afternoon in July saw a group from WildEssex enjoy a round walk for a couple of hours, from and back to Wrabness railway station.  En route we took in that most whacky of buildings, Grayson Perry’s ‘A House For Essex’, East Grove Wood with its unrivalled position on the banks of the River Stour, arable fields with impressive wildflower margins, and Stour Wood reserve itself, an ancient woodland planted predominately with Sweet Chestnut trees, which were in full flower and filling the air with their mushroomy fragrance.

There was plenty of insect life to be spotted – a stunning Yellow-and-Black Beetle stole the show, together with Hogweed Bonking Beetles, and everyone’s favourite, the Cinnabar caterpillar (also in that pleasing colourway yellow-and-black).

We were delighted to see how many butterflies there were (after a very slow start to the season): Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers galore, together with Ringlets, Red Admirals, Peacocks, Whites and a couple of Holly Blues, and not forgetting a 6-spot Burnet moth. In the woodland itself a few Silver-washed Fritillaries and White Admirals soared overhead, but none stayed for a photo opportunity.

The very familiar 7-spot Ladybirds were putting on a very good show – both decorative and aphid-munchers par excellence – what’s not to like??

For the botanists amongst us, there were also lots of plants to note – my favourite White Bryony along hedgerows, Enchanter’s Nightshade in deep shade, Rosebay Willowherb, Wood Sage and Honeysuckle in the coppice clearings, and Bugloss around the sandy field edges.

And of course there was the interface between botany and other disciplines, in the form of galls and mildews…all of nature is fascinating!

As always we would like to extend our thanks to our group of nature-lovers for sharing these experiences with us 😊. And we look forward to our next meeting.

Over the sea to … Landguard Point!

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail, WildEssex

By way of an exploration for a possible #WildEssex trip next summer, we headed over the mouth of Harwich Harbour on the regular foot-ferry to Felixstowe.

Arriving near Landguard Fort, it was a short walk out onto the Point and Common, the southernmost section of the Suffolk shingle coastline, on the receiving end of gravel eroded from cliffs and offshore Ice Age deposits right up into north-east Norfolk.

While, after a month-long  period without rain, much of the Common was brown and droughted, grazed right down by Rabbits, the true shingle flora like Sea Kale and Yellow Horned-poppy so well adapted to the environmental stresses of drought, sun, wind and ground instability, remains green and is coming into flower.

As always, different plants in different places: where the shingle is more sandy, this is picked out by Marram and Sea Spurge being the dominant species.

Moving landwards, the vegetation diversifies, with annuals such as Scarlet Pimpernel, Slender Thistle and Common Stork’s-bill (both pink and white forms) …

… and grassland perennials such Rest-harrow, Bird’s-foot Trefoil, Wild Clary and White Stonecrop – while none of these is obligately coastal, the whole community is indicative of proximity to the sea.

And then there are the plants that are more familiar to us perhaps as being characteristic of sandy agricultural field margins: Bugloss, Viper’s-bugloss and Weld.

In a few patches scrub has grown up, mainly of Wild Privet, Elder and Tamarisk, festooned in White Bryony (both male and female), which provides shelter for breeding Linnets and the few invertebrates we saw on our breezy day, including Endothenia gentianeana.

So close to the docks, there are many opportunities for interesting plants not native in Britain to arrive and get a foothold. The  Rough Dog’s-tail grass is one obvious example, a plant I have seen in this country only a handful of times, mostly down by the Thames Estuary.

The port also of course provides ample opportunities to watch the world come and go. The infrastructure is impressive in its own right, even given the fact that much of that which is imported is unnecessary plastic tat from the Far East. A cathedral to commerce, as impressive in its way as a religious cathedral can be to a non-believer…

Crossing the harbour on the ferry simply adds to the opportunity, to watch the ever-changing seascapes, shipping and wildlife (here a Harbour Seal), and to see familiar landmarks from a different perspective.

And both starting and finishing from Harwich Rail Station, time to explore the historic architecture, the gardens exploding with Giant Viper’s-bugloss and the railway sidings ablaze with Red Valerian and Oxeye Daisy.

A good day out (with an all-day breakfast in the View Point Cafe and  fine pint in The Alma) – we are very likely to be back!

 

 

Bavaria by train: the way home – Frankfurt & Brussels

Overseas Tours - other, Travel by Rail

There are a few calling points on the ICE trains between Regensburg and Brussels, but we thought for our first trip of this type we would stop over in the largest city, Frankfurt, for a couple of nights. Having travelled down the Rhine then up the Main on the way out, we had already had a snapshot of the riverine views, and once there, the pleasant river walks between lines of hydra-like Plane pollards and cotton-drifting Black Poplars casting some welcome shade gave good views of the economic powerhouse that is the city…

… an urban jungle with canyons of glass and steel which harboured (as expected) Peregrines, along with city-centre-dwelling Buzzards, and surprising densities of House Sparrows, along with hordes of screaming Swifts.

An evening in the ‘old’ city was eye-opening for the attention to detail that has evidently been given to its restoration after the area was flattened during WW2.

And even the cathedral, the red stone and its crisp edges and straight lines the product of its 1950s reconstruction.  Almost a pastiche we thought at first, until we realised this in fact the third church on the site during its venerable 1500 year-old history: nothing stands still, not even buildings.

Then there is the organ, an object of pure architectural beauty, which one imagines will produce sounds to match…

Our day to the north of the city centre in and around the Palmengarten was a hot one! So much so that we were rather pleased one of our intended destinations, the Botanic Garden, was closed (another time maybe…).

Not dissimilar to Kew Gardens, this has  extensive greenhouses coving a whole range of biomes, and a tropical butterfly house.

The outdoor gardens are many and varied, and full of interest to the botanist, even though the labelling  is rather patchy and, sadly, all too often wrong.

One pleasing feature though is the extensive area of long grass, well signposted as being for wildlife (butterflies especially) alongside showier, less naturalistic, but still valuable prairie-style swards.

Around the lakes there were Terrapins, both the native European Pond and North American Red-eared species, while the smaller ornamental pools were full of Edible Frogs, their loud quacking choruses audible from a long range.

What seemed to be lacking, sadly, was insects  not (presumably) as a result of pesticide use, more the weather. But as it warmed up, next door in the Gruneburg Park we found plenty.

Of particular interest were a ladybird Oenopia conglobata , which we have never seen before but is considered as a possible future colonist of the UK, and families of Fieldfares hopping around, something we see only in winter…

… and as seemingly everywhere in both Belgium and Germany, large tracts of recreational grass turned over to nature. What’s more, signposted accordingly!

And so it was back into Brussels, with a clear hour to get in a last Belgian beer in our favourite bar before the Eurostar home!

Bavaria by train: Regensburg and area

Overseas Tours - other, Travel by Rail

The filling in our sandwich holiday was spent in and around Regensburg, a small city we have always loved, sitting at the northernmost reach of the Danube, here some 100m wide, its reinforced banks covered in Rue-leaved Saxifrage.

A World Heritage Site by virtue of its historic buildings, not reconstructed as it was little-bombed during the war, the architecture is very attractive: wherever you are, there are the distinctive open-lattice twin steeples of the cathedral.

Regensburg is also home to one of the very best botanic gardens I have ever seen. In its 4.5 hectares it has taxonomic beds, habitat beds, geographic beds, themed beds and greenhouses, so many interesting plants that it draws me back time and again. It is also impeccably labelled – nowhere else have I failed to find an error!

… and, as Spring turns into Summer, it is a super place to see a range of insects and other invertebrates, apart from butterflies, in common with the UK thus far this year.

 

Two particular insects stood out for us: first, the chafer Valgus hemipterus, which is a southern European species, but one which seems to be on the brink of colonising London, and second, the New Forest Shield-bug, a rarity in the UK restricted to that area and the Isle of Wight. Perhaps it is no coincidence that near to the latter we also found a basking Sand Lizard, a species whose UK heartland is also the New Forest and surrounding heaths.

Away from the historic centre of the city, new developments seem to have been well provided with, or integrated into, nature, with hedges of Fly Honeysuckle and hay meadows with Greater Yellow-rattle, among many other interesting species.

‘No Mow May’, as in Belgium, seems to be taking off as an idea (whether for the ecology or for saving money really isn’t important) but in the small village in which we stayed, there seems to be a clear majority in favour of ‘(over)tidy’. Fortunately my sister is not one of those, and her garden was simply teeming with wildlife.

The Drumming Spider (trying hard to beat a rhythm on a chair) and Rose Chafers were two of the highlights, photos of the latter being a near-casualty when it plunged into the pond, until rescued by Jude. They show two poses, and how the colour can change markedly with the angle of the light.

The pond is an absolute centrepiece to this garden, with all manner of life living in, on and around it, including both Smooth and Alpine Newts which didn’t want to be photographed.

Walking around the village was a sheer delight, especially when the weather eventually warmed up …

… while the surrounding Beech woods were home to Black Woodpeckers, Bird’s-nest Orchids and Hepatica…

… with clearings home to Burning Bush, Bastard Balm and Columbine,  plus Orange Tips and a whole load of other insects.

The whole region has limestone underfoot, and even in the village bounds there are fragments of species-rich limestone grassland, with a huge diversity of plants and invertebrates alike:

But away from the settlements the limestone grassland is even more extensive, and richer, with Swallowtails and Common Blues, Yellowhammers and Skylarks, Burnt and Green-winged Orchids, Spring Gentians and Pasqueflowers, Juniper scrub,  many other plants and insects ….

… and the undoubted natural highlight of our entire trip, a male Ladybird Spider, an almost-heart stopping sighting, in what is one of very few few localities in the whole of the country. Indeed, just as in Britain, this is a Red Data species in Germany, and although we didn’t know it at the time, we stumbled upon it in its main remaining locality. And on our wedding anniversary too!

 

 

Bavaria by train: the way there – Brussels & Cologne

Overseas Tours - other, Travel by Rail

Just before the pandemic, we had our first long-distance overseas train holiday of more than a couple of days, to Switzerland. The success of that, together with the delight of clear blue, unsullied skies during Covid, made us resolve to continue with the 6% club as our preferred mode of travel, and so for our return to Europe, we spent 10 days visiting family in Bavaria travelling by train.

The great thing about train travel, apart for the lower emissions, is that you can see the landscape slipping by and change as you get further from home, and that you can extend your holiday by exploring intermediate destinations. For us, heading out, that involved Brussels. Just a couple of hours out of St Pancras we were living the life, eating moules frites and drinking Belgian beers under blue skies (which sadly largely disappeared for the next few days behind the grey cloud we have become used to at home this Spring).

Over the next couple of days we got to know the city well: the architecture, from the extravagances of the Baroque to the naturalistic curves of Art Nouveau to the edges and reflections of modern times…

… the monumental art …

…. to the street art, of all kinds.

And of course, even on the mean street of Brussels there was wildlife, from the mini-forests of moss sporophytes atop the walls, to the Black Redstarts in crackling song from many a rooftop, and the (unsprayed!) planting pockets for boulevard trees extensively colonised by Little Robin (rare in the UK) and other delightful pavement plants.

There was also more formal greenspace and there the noisy battalions of Monk Parakeets, seemingly more keen on feeding on the ground than the Rose-ringed Parakeets we are more familiar with in London and elsewhere, together with (wherever there were Lime trees) the ubiquitous Firebugs.

Next day we explored further, taking the Metro out to the Atomium, the wonderful Modernist structure built as the centrepiece of the 1958 Expo (and actually designed to be standing for only six months!). It still feels futuristic now, so its impact 65 years ago is unimaginable… Wherever you have a view of the skyline, throughout the city, the Atomium is there.

It is sited on the edge of a vast royal park, much of which has open access, around the lakes, grasslands and through the extensive Beech woods, where the flowers were pretty much as in British equivalents, with the addition of Yellow Strawberry.

Statues, monuments and a magnificent avenue of Copper Beeches that casted an almost autumnal light were all indiciations of past and present human use, but the pair of Goshawks displaying high overhead clearly don’t mind!

As with the flowers, invertebrates were mainly those we might expect to see in a London park (including a range of ladybirds and Beech Woolly Aphid), with the exception of the huge Roman Snail.

An excellent couple of days, in a city we would like to see more of, in a country we would love to eat more of the food of and drink more of the beer of! From a nature perspective, it was good to see the apparent steps towards sustainability, from the spray-free street tree planting pockets, to the swathes of longer grass in the greenspaces with wildlife-friendly native and non-native plants allowed to flower, and the mini-wildlife sites in the heart of the city proudly labelled as parts of the Nature Network. On top of that, while we were there it was Eurovision, and in a commercial break on Belgian TV, a prime-time ad for their equivalent of No Mow May!

 

And so, after a fun-filled couple of days, and with rain in the forecast and the cold north-easterlies re-establishing, it was back on the train and heading to Bavaria, with just a couple of hours in Cologne to stretch the legs and have breakfast, and wonder anew (see here for our last trip there) at the vast, scary monster, the apogee of gothickry, that is Cologne Cathedral…