John Clare Walks

As part of the John Clare Festival the Langdyke Countryside Trust organised two walks on the evening of Friday 10 July, the first around our new reserve at Etton-Maxey Pits and later, as dusk fell, a walk around Barnack Hills and Holes looking for glow-worms.

We were delighted that over 60 people joined us for the walk around the pits and the weather was perfect for an early evening walk - clear blue skies, with skylarks singing away all around. We were lucky enough to get great views of a barn owl flying over the grass banks along the Etton Road and of a couple of brown hares chasing around in the planted areas.

On the pits were several green sandpiper, ringed plover, redshank and lapwing as well as a beautiful summer plumage black tailed godwit. A brood of seven young shelduck was on the water too. Common terns and sand martins flew overhead, adding their voice to the evening scene. We also found several Pyramidal Orchids and large numbers of Viper's Bugloss.

The glow-worm walk attracted 23 visitors. As we wandered around Hills and Holes in the twilight we took the opportunity to search for and find Frog Orchid - quite odd to be looking for orchids by torch-light and we also found a couple of marbled white butterflies, resting for the night on knapweed.

As it got darker and darker we eventually started to see the eerie, pin-point light of the glow-worm, finding about a dozen in all. For many of our visitors this was there first sight of this wonderful beetle, so quite a special moment.