Getting Bogged Down in Bogs!

I was telling my good friend, Alan Winlow, about the bogs we saw on our recent visit to Moss Peteral farm. Describing the feeling of mystery, and other-worldliness it provoked in me, I was enthusiastically recalling the thrill of threading down metre long poles, to find the bog there was about 5000 years old! 'Come with me, to Caudhole Moss' Alan replied. I will show you a local bog which is older, and which needs help, urgently'.

We arranged to meet in Lordenshaw Car Park and began to walk along the St Oswald Way, which took us back in time to about 5000 BCE.

The onset of peat deposition at Caudhole Moss is thought to have begun about 7000 years ago.

Let us remember, that following the ice age, as the land warmed, and the ice melted, a warmer and drier climate became the norm. During the 'Boreal' period - which began about 7,500 BCE, birch, Scots pine, hazel, elm (especially wych elm), oak and alder trees spread across the country.

Near Simonside, “The Caudhole Moss pollen diagram records mixed deciduous woodland dating from about 5800 BC... Stumps and cones of Scots pine have been recovered from the lower levels of Caudhole sequence, and have been dated to about 5000 BC” Paul Frodsham, In the Valley of the Sacred Mountain.

As we trudged through the thick heather, we were thinking about how different the Rothbury Estate would have looked and felt in these times. There would probably have been large mammals such as wild boar, mountain hare, badger, roe and red deer, beaver and fox.

As we carefully made our way across a broken wooden bridge, I was very aware of an eery kind of beauty, the tranquil refrain of the peaty water in the Grain Sike, and, high above, the call of a bird (I do not know what kind). Apart from the odd bleat of a sheep, and screech of a grouse, it was silent.

Alan pointed out where we were making for. We began our walk along the burn. It was very alarming to see the shocking amount of erosion because of the Grain Sike running though this ancient bog, dragging the peat with it. In fact, where the stream runs, there is very little bog, we can see the bedrock clearly exposed.

Look at this Sitka Spruce, self-seeded. It is about 15-20 years old.

We know that in its natural state a bog is about 97% water. Bogs help with the prevention of flooding. However, in decades gone by, it was thought to be beneficial for grouse shooting, forestry and farming, to drain bogs. Our wonderful Caudhole Moss was drained, forcing water into the burn, and the result has increased the terrible erosion which needs to be put right.

The pretty stream meanders through, and has eaten away the peat on both sides, but particularly the south side, where 7000 years' worth of peat is continually crumbling into the stream. There has been an attempt to block the drains, but water continually pours over the top of this structure.

The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust explain the importance of peat bogs.

Threats to peat bogs

Unfortunately, our peat bogs bear the scars of centuries of misuse. These valuable wetlands have been drained, burnt, built on, farmed and dug up for fuel and garden compost. And as they're lost, so is the carbon that's held in their peaty soils.

94% of Britain's raised bog and 99% of Ireland's has been lost over the last 100 years due to peat cutting, drainage and afforestation. And 44% of Scotland's internationally important blanket peat bog was lost to afforestation and drainage from the 1940s to 1980s.

Source: WWT

I hope that something more can be done to help stop this erosion. Alan, who knows a great deal about nature, and about engineering, explains that it might be possible to fix this problem. Eventually, if the water is prevented from gushing through this section, the bog will hopefully repair itself?

Beautiful lichens on the bog.

Since writing this blog, I am delighted to tell you that the very knowledgeable conservationist, and all round hero, Andrew Miller has been in touch and kindly given me some valuable information about this, and other bogs.

Andrew was one of the founders of the Border Mires Partnership, along with one or two colleagues from the National Park, Forestry Commission and Wildlife Trust. He explains:

"Together we pioneered the techniques for restoring raised and blanket bogs that are now used throughout the UK and beyond. The tens of thousands of dams we installed across dozens of raised bogs in and around Kielder Forest have transformed once damaged habitat into recovering bog.

In 1993 as part of a transformational project to protect the archaeology, biodiversity and landscape of Lordenshaws Farm, I wrote a Conservation Management Plan for the area, including Caudhole Moss.

In preparing this plan I carried out a comprehensive survey of the mire, which at that time had 170 suckler cows wintering on it.*

I carried out a peat depth survey of the whole of the bog. Since then I have helped oversee several tranches of practical conservation work, costing tens of thousands of pounds and including mechanical reversal of the drainage, and the installation of thousands of dams on Caudhole, which has significantly reduced the amount of erosion. We have also removed thousands of self seeded sitka spruce".

*In the book, The Valley of the Sacred Mountain, there is a section about the work Paul Frodsham and Andrew Miller did in discovering the age of the peat. Andrew had found a perfectly preserved pine cone. They commissioned carbon dating, and found that the pine cone was about 7000 years old!

Andrew's knowledge, wisdom, and skill in this, and many other areas of nature, is immense. I am very grateful to him for adding to my knowledge on bogs and mires!