High Elms Walk

Stragglers in the Conservation Field.  Monday 1 August 2011.

On Monday the Friends of BEECHE and Friends of Jubilee Country Park joined for a walk around the High Elms estate and part if the immediate neighbourhood.

This was a gentle ramble, with occasional stops for some historical information. Of course, some of the group were more interested in the natural history, with which High Elms is very well supplied.

This first photo shows two people with a tendency to stop and examine everything more closely. (One of them left the group later and headed off towards another excellent meadow.) The Conservation Field is beautiful, and well worth taking some time to traverse. At this season it is full of the light blue flowers of Field Scabious, loved by butterflies, day-flying moths and smartly striped hoverflies.

Gravestone of Levi Boswell, the Gypsy Chief.
Monday 1 August 2011.

Though actually, we started off by walking up to Farnborough, through its graveyard where the second photo shows the grave of one Levi Boswell, Chief Gypsy, and his wife and a son. There is quite a lot about him on line; sometimes as King of the Gypsies. Then, back down the hill, through the Conservation Field, across to Cuckoo Wood, through Orchid Bank and back to the car park.

One of us was learning butterflies, with the object of taking part in the regular butterfly transects in Jubilee Country Park, and luckily for her we saw quite a few to learn on; Speckled Woods, Meadow Browns, Gatekeepers, Large Whites, a Common Blue and a Holly Blue, a Brimstone, a Red Admiral, and a Fritillary that we think was a Dark Green. The Fritillaries are not at all easy to tell apart.

And I was back later on for a bat walk, where an interested group saw a great show of Pipistrelles and Serotines. No photos of the bats, though!