Moor House - Upper Teesdale
Upper Teesdale is part of the Moor House - Upper Teesdale National Nature Reserve and Special Area of Conservation; some 38000 hectares of moorland, grassland, bogs, rocks, and much more. Because it is high up in the Pennines, it has a flora that has alpine and arctic elements to it; and the wide range of geological features has created a rich diversity of habitats and vegetation types all within a relatively small area.
Low Force to High Force — the Tees
The Pennine Way follows the river Tees along part of its length, so Teesdale is well known to walkers. Along the river Tees, there a couple of spectactular waterfalls, including High Force and Low Force, that always attract tourists. If you are walking along the Tees at the beginning of June, you will see lots of spectacular-looking plants like Globeflower and Bird's-eye Primrose, and a week or two later, there will be Common Rock-rose, Alpine Bistort, and much more.
Shrubby Cinquefoil (pictured above right) will be familiar to gardeners, but it is also a native in the British Isles, albeit very much restricted to a handful of sites in Teesdale, the Lake District, and the Burren in the West of Ireland. Because the Tees exposes much of the underlying carboniferous limestone, you also get the usual lime-loving plants like Glaucous Sedge, Salad Burnet, and so on; and, of course, a couple of orchids.
Just past the bridge at Holwick Head, there are lots of Mountain Pansies. As its Latin name, Viola lutea implies, it should have yellow flowers, but most of the individuals here have mixtures of yellow, purple, violet and white besides the occasional pure yellow. A perennial, it often grows in clonal patches: so you will find some purple ones here, yellow ones over there, and so on. The large flowers are unmistakeable, and seem to just hover over the grass.
 |
| Viola lutea Mountain Pansy, showing colour variation |
Juniper woodland
Further on towards High Force, the soil becomes quite acidic, which shows itself in the disappearance of the lime-loving flowers from downstream, to be replaced by species like Heather, Bilberry and Tormentil. Here, the Pennine Way passes through part of the largest area of juniper woodland south of Scotland. The juniper grows in a variety of shapes and sizes, from the familiar tall columnar ones to low-growing umbrella-shaped forms. From the width of the trunks you should be able to guess that most of them are of a considerable age, but if you look around, you will notice that young plants are few and far between; which is why they are being planted as part of a long-term species-recovery programme. The term 'juniper woodland' may sound strange at first, but when you are in it, it really is quite spectacular (and it even has a fern-rich ground flora, and classic woodland species like Wood-sorrel and Moschatel in places). For more on this fascinating type of woodland, see W19 in Rodwell (1991a).
On a bank holiday weekend, High Force will be crawling with tourists, which means this part of the Pennine Way will be quite busy most of the time. As as soon as you pass the waterfall, though, things very quickly quieten down, and the only people you will occasionally see are walkers doing the Pennine Way. The vegetation is fairly plain along this stretch, but some of the little streams and boggy bits can be quite interesting, with bog carnivores Round-leaved Sundew and Butterwort, and the miniature iris-leaved Bog Asphodel.
Fauna
Teesdale is not only important to geologists and botanists, but also for its breeding birds: lapwings sweeping noisily overhead, bubbling curlews, red grouse yacking in the heather, and lots of others if you know them. Also in the heather, you might come across the rare emperor moth if you are lucky, or the more common oak eggar, which somehow manages to bumble over the heather without getting blown away by the wind.
Cronkley Fell — sugar limestone
Finding the sugar limestone is not at all difficult, because the outcrops are along the path, and are fenced off to keep sheep and rabbits out. The sugar limestone was formed about 295 million years ago when the Whin Sill dolerite, then an oozing mass of molten rock, came into contact with the carboniferous limestone, which was then metamorphosed into a kind of marble by the intense heat. What is peculiar about this marble in particular, is that it crystallised into large granules, about 1-2mm in diameter, which makes it look almost exactly like the lumps that you would find in a mouldy bag of sugar. The rock, being very crumbly, breaks up easily under the influence of rainfall, frost heave, wind abrasion, rabbits burrowing, sheep rubbing, human trampling, and many other factors; which is why it is fenced off — erosion is making this formation disappear.The sugar limestone granules form a rough sand-like calcareous soil that is extremely free-draining and dry (and apparently somewhat rich in lead), creating the unusual environment in which a range of rare species have found their niche. Sugar limestone grassland is characterised by Blue Moor-grass (Sesleria albicans) and Limestone Bedstraw (Galium sterneri), both of which it has in common with most other limestone grassland in the north of England, but with the addition of two rare Cyperaceae: Hair Sedge (Carex capillaris) and False Sedge (Kobresia simpliciuscula) — see CG9d in Rodwell (1992). More obviously, this type of vegetation also hosts some of the classic Teesdale rarities, including Early Gentian and Teesdale Violet. These northern and montane species, together with the unusual geological and climatic conditions, have made what is known as the Teesdale Assemblage. The best examples of sugar limestone grassland were destroyed when Cow Green was flooded in 1971, so Cronkley Fell and neighbouring Widdybank Fell are now the only bits that are left.
Don't forget that the sugar limestone and its associated vegetation are rather fragile, so it is best to stay outside the fence. The first enclosure has a fantastic patch of Bird's-eye Primrose right up against the wire, and Hoary Rock-rose well within sight (the endemic ssp. levigatum, which only occurs on Cronkley Fell, and nowhere else in the world); the large enclosure near the summit has Early Gentian within spitting distance, and Hoary Rock-rose less than a metre away; and some of the best Spring Sandwort plants are actually just outside the fence, growing between the chicken-wire where the rabbits can't dig around.
You might notice that while the Bird's-eye Primroses at Low Force were tall and lanky, the ones up here, and on Widdybank Fell, are a more normal 'petite' version. You'll also find daisies that are less than half a centimetre in diameter: miniaturisation is a fairly common thing at higher altitude,
While on Cronkley Fell, you are also very likely to hear that other famous bird that uses Upper Teesdale as a nesting site: the golden plover. Seeing it is a bit harder, because it likes to keep its distance, and it is very well camouflaged with its mottled brown-and-grey back and sides, and only a black breast with lighter edges to make it stand out a little. Just try and figure out which direction it is whistling from (listen for a single high-pitched whistle or squeek, quite loud).
 |
| Golden plover (detail) |
Widdybank Fell — sugar limestone and calcareous springs
Sugar limestone
Blanket bogs
Montane heaths
References
Joint Nature Conservation Committee (2005). Moor House - Upper Teesdale - Special Area of Conservation - SAC. See http://www.jncc.gov.uk/
Rodwell J.S. (ed.) et al. (1991a). British Plant Communities. Volume 1 - Woodlands and scrub. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Rodwell J.S. (ed.) et al. (1991b). British Plant Communities. Volume 2 - Mires and heaths. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Rodwell J.S. (ed.) et al. (1992). British Plant Communities. Volume 3 - Graslands and montane communities. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Rodwell J.S. (ed.) et al. (2000). British Plant Communities. Volume 5 - Maritime communities and vegetation of open habitats. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Home Botany