Photographic postcript to Treloan Lane

I’ve written several pieces now about Treloan lane. Unfortunately, due to an ongoing problem with WordPress I haven’t been able to format them and add photos in the normal way. However I’ve been playing with some possible workarounds using a combination of Google Docs on my laptop and the Jetpack phone app and there’s enough to offer more photos in my pieces until I resolve things with WordPress and get some new login credentials. 

So below are a few photos spread out over around one and a half miles which encapsulate the lovely variation in habitat as you walk the length; between tarmac lane; metalled private road through the estate; a wide patch of trees edged with some beautiful Jack and Jill style drystone walls; a length of open  pasture; another length of muddy path with fifteen foot high hedges and wide verges merging with what must be an ancient sunken track with the polished bedrock showing through in places. At the end a left turn takes you through another footpath to the sea.

It’s a lovely place for a slow stroll. Keeping your eyes open – not so much for the rarities, but for the locals which are so well adapted to the microclimate the path offers – so much so that you can see the transition from inland to cliff edge in the plants themselves. If you walk east along the coastal path at the bottom you can pass through three at least NVC landscape classifications in a mile. Many plants are generalists, they’ll put down roots wherever they find themselves; but others are much more fussy. Then there are plants that cope with being trodden by hikers, plants that live in walls, plants that can withstand drought; plants that have been here since the ice age and others that came in by car tyre; naturalised strays from gardens and others clinging on to the edges of arable fields now drenched with chemicals. The closer you look and the slower you go, the more you see. The longer you just stand still; watch and listen the more birds you’ll hear and see; the more butterflies will flit past. What’s so special for me about Treloan Lane is the sheer variety of habitats plus the fact that we’ve been walking up and down it for maybe 25 years in all seasons and a double plus for the fact that it’s blissfully quiet. There are lanes like it on Mendip and others in various parts of Wales – marvellous oases in which to do some immersive learning. Anyway, here are some photos we took last week; mostly not of plants but of habitats.