Photos from walk on Thursday Aug 10th from Letcombe Regis to Devils Punch Bowl

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A beautiful day, with big wide views from the Ridgeway. So a few landscape photos today.

 

We started with the permissive path up to Segsbury Camp..

 

At the top of the climb

 

At Segsbury Camp the flowers were nearly over. Here, taken 10 days ago, the thistles are still blue

 

And on the Ridgeway enough thistle down to stuff a pillow

 

The view from lunch

 

Crowhole Bottom (maybe)

 

Near the end, looking accross to Holborn Hill over the vast fields of blackened bean plants. I think they are field beans which blacken naturally when ripe, but I’m not convinced that they haven’t been sprayed to kill off the rest of the plant. They will either be harvested or ploughed back into the soil as a source of nitrogen.

 

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The flower at the start was not an orchid, but Prunella vulgaris, the common self-heal, heal-all, woundwort, heart-of-the-earth, carpenter’s herb, brownwort or blue curls

 

And nearby was Campanula glomerata, known as clustered bellflower or Dane’s blood,

 

Tachinid Flies. Eriothrix rufomaculata on common ragwort at the top of the hill

And this tiny bug (2-3mm) sat on my knee at lunch time. Probably Muirodelphax aubei. Family: Delphacidae. [find out more]
 

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I have to talk about the route, mainly as a note for any future walk. We crossed open access land. Here are the formal words from Oxford County Council. Note the caveat about paths being changed in 2016.

 

Here’s our actual route. Looks like we did find the blue permissive paths.

 

The map on the “preacher’s board” in Letcombe Bassett still shows the pre-2016 paths. Ignore them. But do note that at lunch time we were looking down on Lady Freek’s Bottom

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