Burrator
25/07/2010 23:59
We take a different path through the wood and find a clearing among the trees that’s out of the wind. Perfect for filming and sound recording: the breeze from the north west is picking up and puffs of light cloud start blow across. We film a 360 panorama in a bramble patch in the evening sunshine. Up here the bushes are still flowering. Honeybees and at least 10 different varieties of bumble bee feeding on the nectar, and more butterflies than I’ve seen in one location this year: a peacock, a small white and several gatekeepers.
South West Lakes Trust which manages/owns the area around the reservoir has put up signs in the last few days to warn that Phytophthora ramorum aka sudden oak death has been found in Burrator Woods in the Japanese larch grown as a cash crop: it was found to have jumped from Rhodedendron, its main host, in autumn 2009. Lots of trees will be felled soon and will be destroyed by burning or deep burial.
For now, it’s quiet except for the thud of ponies coming down off the side of Sheepstor to feed on the lush grass and drink from the streams. I sit on the ground and draw. A whirling blue-green dragonfly, sage-orange rowan berries, black slugs sliding over the sandy grass as the air prickles with moisture, bird’s foot trefoil, small crickets; blackhead great tits with white cheeks climbing in and out of the fir tree nearby; further off, magpies and crows; and mallards hidden deeper in Narrator plantation to the west. We film time-lapse sequences as the clouds thicken and race overhead, and the light turns off and on; and record our sense of the place. There’s a particular quality to sound here, a combination of the tor rising steeply above the density of trees, and the lake: once the village of Burrator, the valley was dammed and flooded to provide water for Plymouth.
Three ponies, two pregnant mares with heavy swinging bellies, one dark brown and one mid-brown, and a sandy brown foal with rough, shaggy baby hair, about three and a half feet tall. They’re followed by a small sleek-coated black horse with a white bottom, also pregnant, that came right up and snuffled my arm.
The full moon just before midnight: dazzling white disk with mottled clouds passing quickly from the north west. A bright orange red halo.
South West Lakes Trust which manages/owns the area around the reservoir has put up signs in the last few days to warn that Phytophthora ramorum aka sudden oak death has been found in Burrator Woods in the Japanese larch grown as a cash crop: it was found to have jumped from Rhodedendron, its main host, in autumn 2009. Lots of trees will be felled soon and will be destroyed by burning or deep burial.
For now, it’s quiet except for the thud of ponies coming down off the side of Sheepstor to feed on the lush grass and drink from the streams. I sit on the ground and draw. A whirling blue-green dragonfly, sage-orange rowan berries, black slugs sliding over the sandy grass as the air prickles with moisture, bird’s foot trefoil, small crickets; blackhead great tits with white cheeks climbing in and out of the fir tree nearby; further off, magpies and crows; and mallards hidden deeper in Narrator plantation to the west. We film time-lapse sequences as the clouds thicken and race overhead, and the light turns off and on; and record our sense of the place. There’s a particular quality to sound here, a combination of the tor rising steeply above the density of trees, and the lake: once the village of Burrator, the valley was dammed and flooded to provide water for Plymouth.
Three ponies, two pregnant mares with heavy swinging bellies, one dark brown and one mid-brown, and a sandy brown foal with rough, shaggy baby hair, about three and a half feet tall. They’re followed by a small sleek-coated black horse with a white bottom, also pregnant, that came right up and snuffled my arm.
The full moon just before midnight: dazzling white disk with mottled clouds passing quickly from the north west. A bright orange red halo.