North Western Lake District

[Trev Sawyer]

Any recommendations for interesting sites which might be worth a flying visit during a short break in the North Western Lake District ie east of Bassenthwaite Lake?


Trev

[cjs]

Hi Trev, There is a farm on the west side of Bassenthwaite Lake where Butterfly Conservation have an interest. There is Marsh Fritillary there plus others as well as good numbers of day flying moth's including The Forester. The owner Paul Barnes is a friendly person and often seems quite happy for people to walk along the paths through his farm. Ospreys nested on his land a couple of years ago and otter has been seen regularly though not by me.
Charlie

[Trev Sawyer]

Thanks Charlie,
We read a little about the Marsh Frits near Bassenthwaite, but there would not probably have been much to see of them last week(?). For the first part of our Lakeland break, we saw precious few butterflies of any kind, but things changed and the commoner butterflies appeared out of nowhere later in the week. It was actually pretty hot and most days were cloudless so we got to see the true colours of the fells and lakes. Our only real butterfly trip as such was on a short trip to the South Solway Mosses near Carlisle where we managed to have a brief gallop around the boardwalk of Glasson Moss. It was quite windy and not easy to photograph the few Large Heaths we saw, but this dark specimen was probably the freshest-looking of those we saw.

NB: We had to abandon our first parking spot due to a "overabundance" (for want of a better word) of horseflies which descended on me before I'd even got the camera out of the boot. I prevented the rest of the family from acting as unwilling blood donors and after slamming the tailgate down (trapping half a dozen arthropod phlebotomists inside), we made a sharp exit along the track to a quieter spot. A few days later, I saw the biggest horsefly I've ever seen acting as a jockey on the back of a cow. It must have been all of 2-inches long and when it took off it made a sound reminiscent of a Chinook twin-bladed helicopter!

Trev