Holy Island Meeting July 15th & 16th 2006
Phegopteris connectilis (Beech Fern)
WFS Party moving towards The Bizzle (Bizzle Crags are top centre-middle)
Rosa sp (Rose in full flower high on Bizzle Crags)
Cheviots morning July 16th : Ascent to the Bizzle
By this time we had already lost a couple of members who had decided to leave early and another couple, looking at the likely terrain, had also decided that sun bathing was preferable to a hot sweaty climb.
There was no path to the Bizzle crags and this made the walking through knee high heather quite tricky. It isn’t that you tire any more than climbing any other hill but you can’t actually see where you are putting your feet so a slow ascent is inevitable.
First though, at the stream itself, the flora had begun to change and more interesting plants were on show. Myosotis laxa (Tufted Forget-me-not) and Myosotis stolonifera (Pale Forget-me-not) were found along with several clumps of Epilobium brunnescens (New Zealand Willow-herb) in full flower.
Our first genuine alpine in the form of Saxifraga stellaris (Starry Saxifrage) was identified from the basal rosette of leaves and the yellow dots at the base of the petals. Shortly after that some of the group from the deep south of England, where a tall compost heap is often classed as a hill, saw their first clumps of Cryptogramma crispa (Parsley Fern) – common as muck to us northern hill billies.
We climbed almost to the The Bizzle crags by which time we were minus another member of the party for whom the climb in the hot sun was proving too much.
Here we had lunch, drank water, applied sun cream and put off making the last part of the ascent for as long as possible. Sun cream is necessary for humans in the Cheviots on approximately 2 days in every 365 and this was one of them.
The rest of the time only wallies in woollies and wellies venture in these parts.