The old and the new

Last week was a bit of a mix of visiting new places and revisiting old haunts.

I managed a quick walk after work along part of the Clarendon Way at the Winchester end - the views are spectacular, even with a storm front coming in. Much of the land is in Environmental Stewardship, with wildflowers, birds and insects abounding.

We then headed off to Langford Lakes Nature Reserve - this is owned by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, and is a small group of flooded gravel pits, now home to a variety of interesting birdlife, insects and plants. I had my best view of a kingfisher - normally I'm too busy walking and talking to notice, and they're usually a blue blur! This one perched obligingly in front of the hide before flitting off along the lake margin. It's a great place for this protected and declining species to live - they need banks to burrow in for their nests, and a good abundance of small fish. Often, our banksides are modified so they don't have access. We also saw tufted duck, gadwall, the obligatory cormorants, swans and mallards, and great crested grebe. It's a work in progress too - they took on some more land in 2011, and they're attempting to return it to its former glory of a flooded watermeadow, grazed with cattle. A very interesting corner of Wiltshire (just off the A36 heading out of Salisbury) and we didn't encounter anyone at all on our walk!

Finally, last weekend we had a good long walk in the South Downs National Park. We started at Beacon Hill NNR - owned and managed by Natural England, it's an area of steep chalk grassland, scrub and ancient woodland, great for butterflies and wildflowers. Our route skirted the reserve, before heading out along the South Downs Way down into the Meon valley, before crossing the old dismantled railway line and heading towards Old Winchester Hill NNR. We then headed north along the Monarch's Way, stopping for refreshment at the pub in Warnford - the perfect spot, as their beer garden has the Meon flowing along one side. This is one of our very rare chalk streams, but notable in that it isn't legally protected as it's a much shorter river and doesn't have some of the species found on the Test and Itchen. It's therefore often not in a great way - over abstracted, receiving agricultural runoff and modified in parts. However, recently, as part of a partnership project with the South Downs National Park Authority, water voles were reintroduced to the river after years of absence. Fingers crossed this marks a new beginning for this beautiful little river.