On Saturday October 12th, 32 members set off from Manchester Old Road to visit Loggerheads Country Park in the Clwydian Hills of North Wales. With a reasonable weather forecast after a wet week in Rochdale, we were feeling very optimistic that we would have a good day. We were not disappointed.
The majority of us left the coach at the small village of Cilcain for a 4 mile walk through the lanes and woods to Loggerheads. A few stayed on the coach and then spent the day in the Country Park.
Shortly after leaving Cilcain, we enjoyed good sightings of 8 buzzards and a sparrowhawk
hunting above the rolling countryside and fieldfare and mistle thrush searching for grubs in the fields. As we went through the lanes and the woodland we spotted tits, goldfinch, blackbirds, bullfinch, nuthatch, jay, pied and grey wagtails amongst others.
We had lunch with good views towards the Dee estuary and Chester.
Although the flowering season is mostly over, we saw small numbers of foxgloves, honeysuckle, herb robert, meadow cranesbill, fumatory, and meadow cranesbill. On the top of the limestone cliffs we also saw devil’s bit scabious. The woods were full of Hart’s tongue fern as well as male, lady and hard fern, polypody, and maiden hair spleenwort.
At this time of year, there was a lot of fungi including collared earth star, shaggy inkcap, parrot waxcap, common puffball, trooping funnel, yellow club, white saddle, honey fungus and many more.
After tea and cake at the Visitors’ centre the trip back on the coach was livened up by a joint effort to try to complete a large crossword before reaching Rochdale. We got most of it!
Many thanks to Pat and Maggie for organising a great and interesting day out.
Sheila Simpson 13-10-19