Abbey Meadows

Abbey Meadows

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Up the Wanny






















A dawn walk through the Borough woods to see some of the damage the recent floods have done. The force and weight of the flood water has taken out huge trees from the riverbank and deposited thousands of tons of stone and gravel creating islands and large shingle beds. I have posted a few pics from this morning. The Wansbeck looks tame and innocent today but almost a month ago it is hard to believe just how high the water level became. The debris on the trees on one of the pics was about twelve feet above my head. There are numerous 'beaches' along the river and one stretch which used to be deep and slow moving is now running fast and shallow with tons of gravel to step across. This will be great for anglers and I wonder if Common sandpipers will drop by next spring
Around the meadows the last couple of days I have seen several Blackcaps and 180 Pink footed geese flying south. Plenty of fungi about . The above pics are Parasol mushroom (Macrolepiota procera) and Slender parasol (Macrolepiota mastoidea) near Cottingwood.

4 comments:

Stewart said...

Hello Nigel

Andy was telling me that the weir has washed away along there. That will have a massive effect on the wildlfe etc...I might call by one day to check it out.

Nice fungi there...

abbey meadows said...

I've taken some more pictures at the weir this morning. I'll post them later as I have to go to work. The river upstream of the weir is now fast flowing and the tonnage of gravel means you can walk where the river once flowed wide at the weir.

Ipin said...

I'll have to have a look along one lunchtime, sounds impressive. I used to eat parasol shrooms from the grass outside the council offices at the kylins....There were loads on the dunes at Goswick again this year, quite odd seeing them there!

abbey meadows said...

Thanks ipin. The first Parasols I ever saw were in the dunes at Druridge way back in the seventies(I'm a bit of a dinosaur you know) but I haven't seen them there recently.