Bog Myrtle & Peat

Six months after the huge burn we had down on land overlooking the Solway, I returned today for a wander around with the dog. 1,200 acres of heather went up over the course of 24 hours at the end of March, and the experience was one of the most hair-raising, exhausting and fascinating things I’ve ever been involved in.

On an overcast day at the beginning of October, the hill looked like a different place altogether when compared to my last view of it from the window of a SeaKing helicopter. On the low ground, some of the fire worked through fallen bracken, which, being dormant at the time, has gone about its business over the summer and covered every square foot of blackness left by the flames. If you didn’t know that there had been a big fire, it would actually be quite difficult to tell until you get up to a certain height and the steep sides of the hill level out into a massive plain of open moorland. Up there, you can really see what good the fire did.

The huge, unbroken spread that we were left with after the fire got out of control was not actually so complete as I had imagined. There are islands of undamaged heather all over the place, and the grasses and sedges have grown back so quickly that the damage actually looks quite small. On the patches where the heather was burnt down to the stumps, a huge wealth of new plant life has raced up to fill the gap. There are carpets of blaeberry (now turning brown and purple before losing its leaves altogether) and some impressive little heather plants. The largest of these are almost three inches tall, which is extremely encouraging. Some patches of longer heather weren’t very well burnt and the flames left alot of debris down at ground level. It was interesting to see some new shoots coming out from the bases of these longer stalks, and it won’t be long before they green up as well.

The big fire was an accident and it wasn’t ideal from anyone’s perspective, but although at the time it seemed a total disaster from my perspective, there are already great signs of recovery and improvement. Scoop found a couple of grouse and flushed them with great gusto. One of them rose cackling into the wind, with the whole Solway underneath him, before swinging away downhill and vanishing behind a boulder that is about the same size as my house. In a few years time, his offspring will really be reaping the benefits of our accidental burn, and while it felt like all was lost in March, there’s now everything to play for.