I posted about a misty walk up onto the South Downs from Ditchling. A walk from 2024, which seems to be the year I am creatively re-living two years later.
On Fungi Friday I’ve posted a host of blogs about mushrooms seen but not heard on Dartmoor in autumn 2025. You can view all five of them via this link.
What I’m recording
I posted a summer fungi walk podcast which you can hear above, as well as via the usual podcast providers.
What I’m reading
Below is a selection of what I’ve managed to read cover to cover in recent months. Having visited Ireland again in late summer, I whipped through several of Irish novels. I am only just realising how these novels are all about the lives of children!
Paddy Clarke HA HA HA by Roddy Doyle is a Booker Prize winning novel about a child’s life in Dublin. I did really enjoy the free-flowing style, which has no doubt massively influenced the next book I read (below). It reminded me of my childhood summers in the suburbs of Dublin, though I didn’t set anyone’s face on fire. Perhaps us millennials were the last British and Irish generation to have that freedom to climb walls and go where we wanted.
Where are the Kings? by Donal Ryan is the story of a teenage boy’s life after the passing of his mother and the breakdown of his father’s health. It’s a lovely book, with the usual cutting moments softened by the energy and humanity of his characters. It’s also a study of mental illness and the way grief absolutely screws you up. I love Donal Ryan’s novels.
Foster by Claire Keegan is a short, light novel that reminds me of some of the great American short story writers where no word is wasted. It’s a beautiful book. My mum re-read it after she finished it during our holiday. A little girl moves to live with a rural foster family for a short time. Highly recommended.
The Time of the Childby Niall Williams is a more circumspect novel about a child that is dropped into the lives of a father and daughter, with a very different style to the previous authors. I debated with my mum (hiya) whether it was really worth reading or not, but I needed a bit of time off from the Ryan and Doyle to allow for the slower pace, and longer-form prose of the book. I did enjoy it actually.
What I’m hearing
Is there a new The War on Drugs album coming? It’s been five years since the last one, and the new song sounds really promising.
What I’m watching
Steve Rosenberg is a brilliant BBC journalist who’s based in Moscow(!). This interview with Dmitry Muratov is worth watching. Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine is not one that Putin can win, but the megalomaniac doesn’t care about the astonishing cost to either his own citizens, or the Ukrainian civilians he is bombing in their sleep. The same can be said of Israel’s government.
On a greener, lighter note this BBC Archive video about an Irish folklore collector is a nice watch.
This post describes a very foggy walk from the village of Ditchling in East Sussex, up onto Ditchling Beacon and the South Downs Way, and then back down to Ditchling via Westmeston.
Thanks to my walking amigo Jonathan who navigated the mist, stiles and flooded valley paths with aplomb.
I passed through the Ditchling stretch of the South Downs Way again in July 2026 during the summer of many heatwaves. The blog post to come on that will show an extremely different landscape to the one seen here. I’ll link to it here when it’s ready.
Ditchling’s settlement dates from Anglo-Saxon times (AD400-1066) and the name itself is Saxon, the name likely relating to ‘dykening’ which signifies an enclosed area of land. In the 11th Century Ditchling was known as ‘Diccelingum’.
There’s a Roman road running just north of the village. Henry Cheal describes the place in his History of Ditchling as a Roman stronghold, and that the earthworks on Ditchling Beacon are ‘distinctly Roman in character’. It was so misty up there on this walk that no earthworks could be seen.
More recently (lol), in Anglo-Saxon times Ditchling belonged to King Alfred the Great (871–899). His father Ethelbert was buried at nearby Steyning. Alfred likely resided at Ditchling after defeating the Viking hordes.
Right, off we go.
This walk began at St. Margaret’s church. The church here is largely Norman in structure (1066-) and is noted in the Domesday Book (1086) but some of the foundations are believed to be Saxon and linked to Alfred. We didn’t go into the church so it’s just external photos here.
From the church’s hillock you can see the South Downs beyond and the timber-framed building of Anne of Cleves House. This photo was taken at the end of the walk. At the start it was so misty you couldn’t actually see the Downs.
The house as seen from across the road. There is a myth that Alfred lived here or built it. Jamie Theakston did, though.
The jetty-style windows indicate that this is a Tudor building (or older in this case).
A window that perhaps was once a doorway, judging by the steps.
In the village centre there are more timber-framed buildings to appreciate. 7 and 9 High Street dates to the 1500s.
I know the bin and bollard ruin it, but that’s modern life, folks. It probably would have been human waste and animal dung in centuries past.
Leaving the village there’s a charming old bit of signposting to THE DOWNS.
We followed the wonderful sign and headed south into very wet fields.
Said wet fields.
Oak trees were dotted among the hedgerows, as across much of the Low Weald. In the distance, the Downs were not visible.
The mist caught in the escarpment woodlands. We soon turned off the lane and headed up onto Burnhouse Bostall, the name of the trackway that takes you up onto the Downs. These are very old paths, with ‘bostall/bostal’ being a Saxon word. It’s considered a Sussex version of ‘borstal’. A borstal is also a name for a juvenile detention centre, apparently.
We ascended on the bostall into the clouds. The clay was replaced with that treacherous slick of sloppy chalk.
The scenery was eerie, with visibility limited to perhaps 20m ahead.
Lone trees made excellent subjects in misty isolation.
Ditchling dewpond: this is an iconic landmark along the South Downs Way and was my first time visiting. We had passed through a gate off the bostall and turned east on the circular route.
A hawthorn at the pond’s edge.
We carried on into even more thick mist – when does it become fog? – passing the trig point, which isn’t pictured here.
Ash dieback was working its way through the escarpment woods, though it’s not easy to tell dead winter trees from living at a distance.
Ditchling Beacon car park. We passed a group of London or Brighton walkers (always more colourfully dressed) and the bizarre sight of an ice cream van waiting for custom in the car park. According to the Ditchling historian Henry Cheal, there was a signalling station up here before electricity arrived. Further back, fires would have been burned to warn of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Not that it would have been much good on a day like this!
It was soon time to return down to Ditchling. We took this stile off the South Downs Way. Shame about the litter.
The path was very steep here, almost like a track in the Lake or Peak districts. This was Westmeston Bostall, running the edge of the lip of the site of an old chalk quarry.
Walking around the churchyard was a bit tricky as the path was made up of very slippery bricks. The church dates from the early 12th Century. It was locked so we couldn’t go in and explore, unfortunately.
The bell turret dates from the 14th Century but was ‘reshingled’ in 2003.
The western doorway. I would bet the stone frame is significantly old.
The north wall of the church, much of which dates from the 12th Century.
The timbers in the porch are as old as they look, with the gnarliest ones apparently dating to the 14th Century! That means the trees the wood was cut from could have been growing in pre-1066 Saxon England!
Looking west towards the church.
Heading north back towards Ditchling through Westmeston Place. We encountered more wet fields with yet more oaks standing in hedgerows.
Finding our way through groves of diseased ash woodland, we experienced the wettest, sloshiest conditions of the walk. The woodland floor was flooded, with mini boardwalks in place to save us from a swim.
The fallen ash wood contained communities of lichens. There’s at least four species I can spot here, with dotted ribbon lichen the most prominent. Ash is a very friendly home for lichens, another reason why its decline is so worrying. But it is showing some resolve (read my post about ash trees here).
This is oakmoss, a common lichen in Sussex.
It being November, there were a few shroomies to see in the woodland. These look like bonnets.
The final image before returning to Ditchling and completing the walk. The mist has lifted and finally the top of the Downs has come into view.
A selection of images from the shores of Lough Cullin and the Ox Mountains in Mayo. Lough Cullin is the smaller sibling of the vast Lough Conn in north Mayo in the west of Ireland. This post begins on the shore of Lough Cullin, moving later to show some of the things I found in the Ox Mountains.
Lough Cullin
Sneezewort is not a plant I encounter too often and it has lovely texture to it so it’s nice to photograph.
Sneezewort gets its name from the Latin, which indicates that the plant makes you sneeze. Apparently it can be eaten and causes a numbing sensation in the mouth (I don’t advise trying it).
Against the white of the lough. It’s an Achillea, so related to yarrow, a much more common plant from what I see year on year.
Slightly more exposed to bring out the white of the flowers against a blended background. As this was September the petals were already dropping off.
The seed heads of meadowsweet are these little long-fingered fists, or cartoon hair blowing in the wind.
More interesting than ornate, this was a type of gall growing on the meadowsweet leaves. iNaturalist suggests it’s the gall of Dasineura ulmaria, a type of fly.
Grass of Parnassus, a magnificent flower (not a grass). Mount Parnassus is a Greek mountain, where the plant may also be found?
I reduced the highlights in this edit to bring out some of the interesting indentations in the petals. It does look rather sci-fi.
The nectar is supposed to be honey-scented, attracting insects.
This muscid fly was very happy with their lunch. You can see the fly is drinking from the stamens which are so ornate in the way the flower extends them from the ovary in the centre.
I like the brightness of this image and how the fly balances the lightness of the flower.
The Ox Mountains (Slieve Gamph)
Moving towards Sligo and the Ox Mountains. It’s not a warm place and often rains in summer, so when the sun shines the invertebrates burst into life. I had a look to see what was in the meadow during one of those sunbursts.
I really like this buttercup photo. It has lovely colour and background blur, and the detail is good.
This is a common hogweed seed. I can’t stop looking at it. Those stripes are reminiscent of something but I can’t place it. That red bloke from Star Wars the Phantom Menace?
The seed heads of grasses were being used by spiders at the most spidery time of year.
The closest I can get to identifying this species is that it’s an orb-weaver. I like the light on their legs and the translucence of their bodies.
This is a Metellina spider, sitting in a web between grasses.
Another view of the spider waiting in its web.
There was a battle for prominence here between these two very small flies. iNaturalist is suggesting these are in the genus Bicellaria, a group of dance flies.
There’s a degree of cunning on show here. They remind me of Mr. Burns.
Now then, I was very pleased to find a solitary wasp on a red-trimmed bramble leaf.
I’m not sure of the species but it does look like a bit of a digger wasp-type to me.
A good view of the ocelli (three eyes on the top of the head) in this photo. Gosh, don’t those thorns look hazardous!
How many photos of one fly do you need to see? You’re about to find out.
Definitely being ‘regarded’ by the fly here. But are they kind regards?
They are from me.
Warm regards with this lovely yellow backdrop.
Well hello! I have learned from iNaturalist that this is a marsh damsel bug. There is a lot of wet grassland in this landscape, though a lot of bogs have been drained in the last century.
I like this scene a lot. This is a tree my dad planted, a grey willow. It has been nibbled by the caterpillar below:
A hungry caterpillar, indeed. This is a type of sawfly in its larval stage. The image is quite heavily cropped to show the nibbling as best I could.
And finally, back to the grass heads. These hoverflies were catching some rays (there aren’t so many in this part of the world) from this prominent position.
This is probably marmalade hoverfly, and I love that it has been framed by a single circle of ‘bokeh’. One grass head has stooped, probably the work of a spider and their super-strength silk.
Killala, North Mayo Coast, Ireland, September 2024
In this post I try to unlock the land and seascape of one of my favourite coastal places – Killala Bay, a Special Area of Conservation on the North Mayo Coast. I have another post from 2025 which will follow in the months ahead. I also hope to visit again this year, it’s a fascinating, restorative place.
In recent months I’ve also posted about Downpatrick Head, to the west along the North Mayo Coast:
I’m a woodlander, not an oceanographer, so we’re beginning from a low baseline, which can be a lot of fun. I’ll try to unravel some local history along the way.
Killala was home to one of the final battles during the ultimately unsuccessful 1798 Irish Rebellion against British control, despite a bit of help from the French.
Two hundred and fifty years after that battle, there was no British flag flying in Killala. The red flag at the beach meant it wasn’t safe to enter the water. I’m not a swimmer, so had no intention anyway (nor is my mum, who was with me for this stroll).
The seaweed-covered boulders of the shoreline.
Killala Bay has a lot going for it, it’s a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), designated because of the range of special habitats including sand dunes, sea cliffs and salt meadows. You can read more about that here. The SAC designation is also given due to the presence of narrow-mouthed whorl snail (Vertigo angustior) which is Near Threatened, sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus), and common (harbour) seal (Phoca vitulina).
Looking across the bay to the dunes of Bartragh Island, special because it enjoys a lack of disturbance:
[T]he dune complex at Bartragh Island is relatively undisturbed and is considered to be one of the best in the country in terms of its naturalness and intact state
Irish Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht
I first visited Killala with my parents around 2009. We returned again in March 2013 to witness a flock of Brent geese (above) out beyond the shore. Brent geese are said to flock here in numbers (200) that are of international importance. Who can blame them, it’s a wonderful wild place for a goose.
In June 2017 I came back for the first time without the parents, but with my wife. Then a large ‘plunge’ of gannets were bombing the water, it was incredible (above).
The outcrop of the rock formation that underpins the area can be seen exposed on the right. I have a closer look at this later on.
Killala’s round tower
This is the view back to Killala. The wind farms are fairly common in this part of Ireland because it’s so windy. To the right is the Killala round tower:
Killala Round Tower is thought to have been built in the 12th Century. The tower stands 52 metres (170 feet) high. The original monastic foundation here possibly dates back to the 5th Century, when Saint Patrick appointed Muiredach as first Bishop of Killala.
The ancient tower can be seen around the centre of Killala, which has some interesting and traditionally colourful Irish frames, doors and signs.
The image of a tower like this will always remind me of the mighty Everton Football Club, whose crest holds a similar structure. Everton’s version is no tower, and was used to lock-up ‘drunks and criminals’. Killala’s tower is far more grand.
Back to the beach. The rocks here appear to have been removed from the land by waves eroding the hillside.
This building is the Ross Coastguard Station. It was built around 1880 but this blog thinks it fell into disuse around the time of the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921):
The year of the demise of the coastguard station is unknown but it was probably around the time of the War of Independence. Coastguards at isolated stations were generally seen as working for the British Empire and were thus extremely vulnerable to guerilla attacks.
The beach feels different around this bend, more remote, wild and sea-weedy.
Bladderwrack across the shoreline. Visiting Killala Bay has allowed me to learn a little bit about seaweeds. There’s plenty of it there. This sight over tourist sunbeds any day.
Up close the bladderwrack has a golden shade, the pods a bit like beans. Really these are pneumatocysts. They contain gas that allows them to float, meaning they can photosynthesise better than if they were further underwater.
Bladderwrack is also where iodine was first extracted for medical purposes. They are described as ‘brown alga’, lacking the phloem (tissue that transport sugars) and xylem (tissue that transports water) that vascular plants like trees and flowers have. The growths among the seaweed are barnacles.
These exposed rocks are part of the Mullaghmore Sandstone Formation (I think, please correct me in the comments if I’m wrong). The rocks are sandstone, siltstone, and shale. I used this map of Irish Geology to try and identify the rocks.
As you walk around the beach the rocks spread out like layers of cake.
Eventually you reach the end of the formation and a meet mysterious stone ruin.
I’ve read online that this was a lifeboat station, which would make sense. It’s not surprising, there have been many reported shipwrecks in Killala Bay. Some of them are wrecked intentionally:
In 2025 a smugglers ship was sunk to create an artificial reef after a campaign by the local community. Asbestos and other polluting materials had to be removed from the ship’s structure before it could be sunk.
This photo shows a stone jetty that has largely been destroyed by the waves over the years. I can’t find anything else about this structure online. Do you know? Please add a comment.
The Mullaghmore Sandstone Formation (TBC) spreads out to sea, complete with seaweed and limpet shells.
Limpets are fascinating. I read a great article about them in British Wildlife (apologies to the Irish wildlife). Limpets’ teeth are the strongest material in the world. They are also able to change sex more than once. This species is the common European limpet, a type of sea snail. Above them are more barnacles.
There was a Country Diary entry in August 2026 where a writer lamented the sight of children killing limpets with hammers in south-west England, their parents unbothered. No such behaviour here, folks.
I’ve seen rock pipits on most visits to the area. They’re usually hopping between rock and sand.
Rock pipit on sand.
This bewitching snail shell belongs to a purple topshell (Steromphala umbilicalis). Looking at the map, they appear to have a very westerly coastal presence, found as far south as Morocco.
Regular readers (both of you) may be aware that my blog has become slower in posting, but the posts I am putting out are longer and reaching new depths. Not of depravity, but with more research and history included.
It’s something I spend a fair amount of time thinking about – what is the point of taking all these photos and writing all these words – what is it all for?
I’ve spliced in photos from a phone camera project I have called ‘rogue vessels’, to make what I’m about to write sound less pretentious.
Photoblogs help me in the act of unlocking a landscape™️, peeling back the layers of history, culture and industry, whatever the scale, however far I get with it.
Photography is extremely effective in capturing a seemingly innocuous scene which, in fact, contains multitudes. This is not a boast of what I am putting together but the richness of the world around us. Photography is not just an artform but scientific, too.
The still image can be a pushback against the overwhelming barrage of video, AI-guff, and all-out nonsense that Facebook, whatever Twitter has become, and TikTok churn out. Stills can engage your brain and allow you to think for yourself in ways short video doesn’t.
So will photoblogs save the world? Mine won’t, but they can provide a deeper understanding for both the writer and the reader, which surely is somewhere we all need to be going in this age of political entrenchment, outrage, and mainstreaming of extreme ideology.
Below are some recent photoblogs, many of them from Ireland. I have so many interesting blogs to come in the next year, I hope they provide you with a glimmer of light (as they do for me).
What I’m writing – recent blogs
I’ve been posting my photos from my 2024 visit to Ireland which has proved surprisingly fruitful. I’ve posted several blogs about the trip and there are more to come!
I’ve learned a lot about Dublin Bay from writing this post, and have even started reading James Joyce’s Ulysses to keep the bay in my life. Yes, I have found the novel very hard going, and it’s on pause at the moment while I try and understand what is actually going on in it.
This is a post I’ve been thinking about for quite a while. I needed more time at Rathcroghan, rather than a pit stop, to capture more of the landscape and to learn more about the dynamic Celtic and pagan history of the place.
Closer to home I delved into 2024 again to share some images from a lovely summer’s day in the South Downs.
What I’m reading
Mount Vesuvius as seen from Pompeii
Below is a selection of what I’ve managed to read cover to cover in recent months:
Pompeii – Mary Beard (above, February 2026). I visited Pompeii for the first time in February and have a post or two in mind for this wonderful place. Mary Beard’s interpretation of Pompeii’s history is essential reading.
Pax – Tom Holland. I was in total Roman mode when I got back from Italy (as in reading, not militarily), and finally got round to reading one of the more famous books from Tom Holland. I once met and photographed Tom at Sydenham Hill Wood when he was supporting London Wildlife Trust. Lovely man. I’ll be reading more of his work in future. Congratulations, Tom.
The Great Irish Famine: A History in Four Lives – Enda Delaney. I borrowed this book from my local library and tore through it with my eyes. The Great Famine of 1845-52 directly impacted my ancestors in Mayo so it’s something I am keen to educate myself about, and it’s an area of Britain’s colonial past we should know more about. It’s a complex subject, but there is plenty of evidence here to argue that English politicians saw the Famine as divine punishment for a people deemed beneath them. I learned that many more people died because ideology and prejudice deterred people in power from taking action. In some places, people even profited from it.
What I’m hearing
I actually went to a gig in June! Ye Vagabonds are a family band from Co. Carlow. The band were fantastic live, the final leg of their tour promoting their new album All Tied Together (January 2026). The songs are lovely.
What I’m watching
Thanks to a wonderful Blindboy podcast episode I learned about the work of David Keohan, who is now famous for reigniting the interest in Irish stone lifting. This short film nicely encapsulates how David goes about his work to rediscover old stones in Ireland, and to lift them again after several decades of mostly being stuck to the ground. David also has a book out called The Wind Beneath the Stone.
What began as me non-chalantly taking some photos from the deck of the ferry leaving Dublin Port emerged as a deep-dive (not literally) into the ecology and history of Dublin Bay. It has taken me weeks to complete this, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have learning about Dublin Bay.
Through the process of writing this post, I have also somehow ended up watching livestreams of ferries leaving the port! Also, I’ve taken the plunge (lol) and borrowed my late father’s copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses because some of it is set in Dublin Bay (thanks Mum). This blog can’t wait for me to read those 900+ pages, however, but I’ve included a few snapshots of the Bay from the first chapter.
This ferry journey is deeply ingrained in my childhood memories, from summers spent visiting my grandparents in Dublin and then usually down south to Cork. I have one memory of leaving on a summer evening in the 1990s, with the golden evening sunlight draped across Howth to the north as we began our journey to Holyhead. How many other people must have similar memories.
From the deck of the boat you have great views of gulls flying by. Gulls don’t just follow trawlers, they also swoop alongside ferries. The vantage point of the ferry deck is a great spot for gull photography, which is something that most people don’t really spend time doing. Those people are missing out.
Identifying gulls is not easy, especially with the pre-adult phase plumages. This looks like it could be a herring gull due to the black tips to the wings, but it may also be a juvenile like the one in the previous image.
This is another juvenile gull. Dublin Port must be a fun place for a gull to grow up.
It would have been more fun before the port developed, when it was more of a natural estuary with mudflats and saltmarsh that have over the centuries been lost to a booming shipping industry. That era is captured in this 17th-18th century map.
The gulls really are rather mesmerising among the ferry churn as it departs.
Who knew rooks were seabirds, too (they’re not). They’re very intelligent though, my aunt Sally is a particular fan of these communal roosters.
Though industry has gulped down much of the natural landscape of Dublin Bay, there’s ongoing conservation work with Birdwatch Ireland supporting Dublin Port to understand the birds of the Bay.
One of the views before embarkation, which I will come back to when the ferry pulls up alongside this view. The Georgian-looking house on the right is Pigeon House, named after the couple who once managed it.
This scene reminds me of The Wire series two, though I’m not suggesting the same is going on down there.
As the ferry exits the dock the Liffey comes into view among a cluster of ships, cranes and containers.
This seascape is a mystery to me. Something that helped me to understand the complexity of the area was this perfectly-timed episode from the Irish History Podcast: Dublin Port has seen it all: 1200 years of history
The famous Harp bridge becomes visible as the Liffey opens up. Imagine the Vikings travelling up here long ago as they first set foot in Ireland. They founded the Kingdom of Dublin.
I cropped this photo to show the ‘Ceasefire Now’ banner that covers the tower block alongside the river (mid-right). It of course refers to the Israeli military’s military campaign in Gaza, which has killed 70,000 Palestinians as of 2026.
I think this ship goes to either Rotterdam or Antwerp. Rotterdam is one of the most important ports in Europe, especially for British and Irish shipping (more about that in the Irish History Podcast episode about the port).
My London-Irish uncle Jimmy (and reader of this blog, I think) shared a memory about these cranes:
‘One Halloween we were arriving at the port on a Stena boat and the crane was very busy at the dock picking up containers, but the crane driver had time, as we passed, to switch on his microphone and do a very creepy Vincent Price type of accent, and announced: “welcome to Dublin”. It was very funny’.
These iconic towers are known as the Poolbeg Stacks. You can see Pigeon House on the right.
Pigeon House was a hotel and today is available for use from the Dublin Film Office. It dates to the late 18th century:
The hotel did not last long for after the 1798 Rebellion, the area was transformed into a military fort, the Pigeon House Fort. The hotel building was converted into the officers’ accommodation within the fort, which then grew over the next hundred years to include an armory, a hospital, and trenches crossed by drawbridges.
The Great South Wall’s construction began in 1717 to make the mouth of the Liffey suitable for shipping. Dublin Bay is sandy and the Liffey had problems with silting up, which didn’t allow for larger ships to move close enough inland to easily remove cargo and people.
The visibility wasn’t good on the day, but the Great Sugarloaf mountain was visible over in Wicklow. I asked a friend from Bray, south of Dublin, if he had any info to share about the mountains there. His reply:
‘We used to climb it every New Year holidays when we were young. It has a sister mountain called the Little Sugarloaf. But I’ve never been up that one, cause Dad accidentally took us up the bigger one when we were little and never bothered to go up the smaller one’.
There’s quite a lot happening here. From the left three people huddle behind the wall, someone in swimming trunks on the other side, and someone crouching down to their dog.
I found this 18th century picture of the Wicklow mountains and Dublin Bay, and possibly even the site of Dublin Harbour (as stated in the caption of the painting) before its modernisation.
Inside the South Wall still I got this somewhat blurry shot of two Atlantic grey seals. They are supposed to be coping well despite the major upgrades to the port. Seals appear in Ulysses:
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water, round.
James Joyce, Ulysses, p. 29 (1960)
At the end of the Great South Wall the Poolbeg Lighthouse is impossible to miss, which I suppose is the point! A lighthouse was first here in 1767 and the current lighthouse was built in 1820.
Ciao for now, Poolbeg Lighthouse.
Passing out of Dublin Harbour and entering Dublin Bay proper, little auks were floating on the surface of the sea. Is there any more difficult form of birding than sea-watching?
Beyond the Polsteam ship is Dalkey Island to the south-east of the port. You may not be surprised to read that Polsteam is a Polish shipping company.
The little building on the island is the Martello Tower, a building apparently constructed by the British to repel French invasion during the French Revolutionary Wars of the late 18th to early 19th centuries. Dalkey Island appears to be littered with archaeological and historical artefacts. In the distance is Bray Head, which Joyce describes in the early pages of Ulysses:
They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale.
James Joyce, Ulysses, p.14 (1960)
The Martello Tower in my photos is not the same as the one featured in Ulysses. I thought I recognised the shape, actually, and it was because of this Penguin Modern Classics front cover being lodged in my mind as a book I needed to read! This is now known as James Joyce Tower and is found in Sandycove on the coastal mainland of Dublin.
I switched to look north toward Howth on the other side of the deck. The ‘spit’ of Howth’s Great Baily was framed so nicely by the arch of the ferry, with Baily Lighthouse at the tip.
A more advanced view. A lighthouse has been on the site since 1667.
I visited Howth during my stag weekend in earlier in 2024 and did the cliff walk with friends and family. How sophisticated.
Ireland’s Eye is an uninhabited island that hoves into view beyond Howth as the ferry journey progresses. It’s part of the Dublin Bay Special Protection Area (one of the highest EU designations for nature) and is important for its breeding seabird populations and plants.
You can read the management plan if you’re into ecology PDFs.
Ireland’s Eye visible from the coast of Howth in better weather in March 2024, when I didn’t know what it was.
And that’s where this story ends (we made it to Holyhead, don’t worry). Keep an eye out for more Irish coastal blogs in the coming months, but those will be on the Atlantic coast of Ireland.
Here’s a short video of the ferry leaving Dublin Bay in better weather.
This short post shows some of the images I snaffled from a pit stop at the ancient Celtic landscape of Rathcroghan, while travelling from Mayo to Dublin.
Apologies if I mangle any of the Irish mythology, it is not a subject I’m at all familiar with.
Rathcroghan is one of the most significant archaeological and cultural landscapes in the whole of Ireland, and has influenced western culture in surprising ways. I definitely hope to go back to visit the museum and explore more of the landscape itself.
Rathcroghan, Cruachan Aí, is known as the Ancient Capital of Connacht, where the festival of Samhain (Halloween) is said to originate. This majestic landscape is the oldest and largest unexcavated Royal Site in Europe.
The modern Halloween is inspired by Samhain, an Irish festival taking place on the evening of 31st October to sundown of 1st November. It could be a product of Rathcroghan folklore. Samhain celebrates the end of the harvest period and the beginning of winter. It’s celebrated on the evening of the 31st October because Celtic days begin and end when the sun goes down.
The story goes that every 31st October at nightfall monsters would emerge from the cave to kill livestock. It’s a time when the living world and that beyond death was at its closest (something you also hear about the Winter Solstice).
The cave is said to be “Ireland’s Gates to Hell”.
While not hellish, there is a melancholy to the sight of abandoned cottages across Rathcroghan, something that is so commonplace in Western Ireland (and which I love to see). I wonder if this cottage has older parts to it, where the tree (willow, maybe) is growing where the roof used to be. This is a bit like seeing an abandoned house on the site of Stonehenge (something you don’t see!).
The ebb and flow of the archaeology is likely visible here on the left where the mound can be seen. The openness of the landscape shows the advantage of the location – you can see far and wide, and also be seen.
Rathcroghan is said to be one of Ireland’s most important Pagan cemeteries. The visibility of the site reminds me of the South Downs, and how one archaeologist once described it as a hundred-mile-long cemetery, visible to all in the valleys below.
I don’t know about the age of the stone walls but presume they are post-medieval. You can see the land is farmed with cattle. The nettles in the foreground are the lip of the Rathcroghan Mound – seen in the next image.
The Ancient Capital of Connacht
The Rathcroghan Mound has lost a lot of its grandeur over the millenia, but it still has an allure. And that’s coming from someone who knows very little about the history of the place.
Apparently the mound looked like this in 1779 – which is quite hard to believe!
Now that’s more like it! For those who don’t know, Connacht is today one of Ireland’s four provinces which includes Mayo, Galway, Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon. In ancient times it was a Kingdom. The ancient Kingdom of Connacht’s capital (until it was abolished in 1451) was Rathcroghan. People would have travelled from far and wide to visit Rathcroghan, having been described as home to one of the “great fairs of Ireland”.
Not anymore, unfortunately. Everyone’s at home watching short videos on their phones.
The desire-line that people take up onto the Mound can be seen through the centre-right of the image. The diagonal line is probably a cattle path.
In September 2024 me and my mum drove to an area of the North Mayo Coast I’d never been to but had been hoping to visit for a while – the site of Dún Briste, otherwise known as Downpatrick Head. It’s the location of the iconic ‘sea stack’ that has become isolated from the mainland, apparently thanks to St. Patrick himself.
To get to Downpatrick Head you take the Wild Atlantic Way, the name for the road that wends its way around the Atlantic coast of Ireland.
You pass through the village of Ballycastle on the way. The yellow house on the corner reminds me of the Ireland we visited as a family in the 1990s, especially around Cork. The birds on the roof are jackdaws.
A tractor came roaring around the corner when I took this photo of ‘the Shambles’. It was once a market place and slaughterhouse that became a British military site temporarily during British colonisation (approx. 1500s-1931) in the 1800s. Don’t worry, it’s a picnic spot now.
Ballycastle was home to this charming scene of an ivy-covered cottage, complete with cat and teapot.
Fast forward a few miles, beyond the car park and up the hill towards Downpatrick Head, the statue of St. Patrick (Ireland’s Patron Saint) was installed in the 1980s. St. Patrick is said to have founded a church here, which the statue marks the site of.
Dún Briste or ‘Broken Fort ‘ was once joined to the mainland on north Mayo’s coastline. The ‘Sea Stack ‘ stands forty-five metres in height. Formed approximately three hundred million years ago during the Lower Carboniferous period
Geologically (rather than mythologically), the sea stack is believed to have become isolated from the mainland during a storm in 1393 that caused extreme erosion to the coastline. I think the stack looks like a stone frog emerging from below the cliff.
In 1980 archaeologists accessed the stack via helicopter and found several interesting things. The video above shows an ascent from 2016, and includes some footage of an old wall that can’t be seen from over on the mainland. I am wondering what legal protection the nesting birds have, the stack reportedly is home to puffins due to the lack of terrestrial predators.
The rock strata are layered in wafer-like stripes.
The coast to the east shows the different forms of erosion that’s taken place over the years, as the more recent soils have been hammered by wind and rain.
This person taking a photo among the strange tussock mounds reminds me a bit of St. Patrick’s statue. The coastal scene in the distance holds Céide Fields:
The remarkable neolithic site at Céide Fields in County Mayo, Ireland, contains the oldest known stone-walled fields in the world – dating back nearly 6,000 years.
A short video I filmed on my phone that shows how windy it was up there on the day the photos were taken.
A mysterious concrete cabin, presumably for military or other coastal observation purposes.
Looking east along the coast towards Sligo and the Ox Mountains.
The golden pipes are part of an installation that allows you to safely view the sea through a ‘blow hole’ cutting into the hillside. Legend has it that the hole was created after an altercation with St. Patrick and Crom Dubh:
Crom Dubh in desperation set a fire with which to hinder Patrick. This did not go down well! Picking up a stone, the holy man hurled it in anger into the middle of the fire, sinking it deep into the earth. Today, this hole is known as ‘Poll na Seantine’ (‘Hole of the Old Fire’).
Amberley to Washington, West Sussex, 4th June 2024
The photos in this post are a mix of Olympus EM-1 MIII mirrorless camera images using a 12-100mm (24-200mm full-frame) lens, with a few phone pics for detail. The photos have been cropped, marked and enhanced in places using Adobe Lightroom. I do not purposefully use Generative AI in any of my photos, which is basically sacrilege.
This is a prime early summer walk from June 2024, taking in my most frequented stretch of the South Downs. I had just returned from Switzerland when I did this walk. Arriving into Amberley on the train I realised how much my sense of altitude had changed when I saw the Downs appearing through the window. They looked so low! They have gradually grown back again in my estimation as my experience of the Swiss Alps has melted away into the past.
Every walk has its moment, for this one it was being attacked by a protective female pheasant at Kithurst Meadow. Thank goodness for my walking pole…
Everything was a shade of green and white as I left the station and began the walk along the eastern banks of the Arun. Ash leaves were abundant at the path edges.
The white flowers of umbellifers ran along the banks of the river, with the ubiquitous presence of elder reaching higher. In the distance you can see the lone blog of the Bury Hill ash tree in an open field.
Speaking of ash trees, this is a lovely one set back from the footpath in a field margin.
As you can see a large limb has fallen from the core of the trunk. Ash trees are prone to ‘summer limb-drop’, where a limb can fall from the tree without any clear warning signs. This ash looks to have some light dieback, meaning it may have been weakened by ash dieback disease.
This tree looks to have the structure of a sycamore but it could be an oak.
I always enjoy this finger post, the Arun valley’s very own leaning tower of Pisa.
In the distance is Amberley Mount where the South Downs Way passes, through ancient burial mounds and chalk grasslands (as well as plenty of intensive agriculture). The path between the fence posts here is very wet in winter but is ok for walking boots between June and September if it hasn’t rained too much.
After passing alongside Amberley Castle this large pond appears before the village. This is it at its best, I would say.
Amberley lies above the water meadows of the Arun and the adjacent castle (now a hotel) was an episcopal residence. It was built in place of a manor about 1380, though the church had enjoyed the favour of the bishops from a much earlier date. Neither has changed much since the Burrell Collection drawing of 1788.
The churchyard meadows are a model of good management, with oxeye daisies aplenty in June, though they seemed to flower earlier in 2025.
The wall paintings seen here inside the church are thought to date to the 1300s. There’s more detail about the paintings on the church’s official website. The paintings depict the resurrection of Christ, as can be seen in the central painting with the cross.
One more sniff of the meadows for the road.
Elsewhere in the churchyard is a large yew tree, likely dating to several hundred years.
Skipping over Amberley village and up towards the South Downs Way, this ash tree was declining in 2024 and was felled at some point in 2025.
I don’t know what breed of sheep these are, but they were newly shorn.
I think these are 2024 lambs, they were very playful.
Musk thistle (Carduus nutans on iNaturalist) is a beautiful flower and popular with bees. It flowers along the margins of the South Downs Way. The first photo is mirrorless camera, the second is from the phone.
One of the iconic hawthorns with the Arun valley expanding away in the distance.
On the northern side of the South Downs Way you can see the ‘lumps and bumps’ of tumuli – burial mounds that date back to at least the Iron Age (1200-550BC). There is evidence of Iron Age communities living below Amberley Mount, which this walk passes over:
We know that Late Bronze Age/early Iron Age families lived amidst their fields here around 1100 BC: two circular huts of this period on the south-face of Amberley Mount were excavated and remains of horses and ponies were discovered and were presumably used on the farm. One hut was 36 ft in diameter, the other 25 ft: sizeable dwellings that must have supported quite large family groups.
A South Downs Way fingerpost aged in lichen and weathered by rain.
This lovely scene at Kithurst meadow became a momentary nightmare after a little pheasant chick crossed my path. Their mother appeared and attacked me for a good minute or so, not allowing me to head back towards the South Downs Way.
Yellowhammer foraging along the South Downs Way. Thankfully it did not attack and I was allowed to pass.
Corn bunting, a now much rarer bird, along a stretch of the South Downs Way where I always find them in the spring and summer.
And here it is – Corn Bunt’ Alley.
The Downs plateau into arable fields here, sweeping towards the coastal towns.
Bloody-nosed beetle. I enjoy their boots.
A view north into the Sussex Weald.
Exiting the South Downs Way towards Washington.
Common spotted orchids live up to their name on the Downs.
The meadows to the left are some of the richest on this walk, particularly at the top of the hill.
A roe deer grazing in a field of buttercups.
At this point it’s goodbye to the South Downs Way and hello to Washington.
It’s time to unearth another Sussex gem from 2024 with a walk to the mysterious Brambletye Ruins. It was an after-work jaunt, starting in the village of Forest Row in East Sussex.
We didn’t stop, clocking up 6.5 miles in 2 hours which is unusually fast for me. There are a couple of B-roads to engage with so take care on those as people can be quite careless with their speed on rural roads. There are no streetlights so you may want to bring a hi-vis and a torch to make yourself visible in lower light.
East Sussex County Council is promoting a shorter version of our walk (3 miles compared with out 6.5) along the Forest Way which you can view here. The Forest Way is the route of the old railway line that used to run between East Grinstead and Forest Row. This line was closed by the infamous Dr. Beeching, and there’s some interesting information about that:
The Forest Row railway station opened in 1866. Although a busy commuter line, it was axed with the Beeching cuts in 1966. Ironically, Dr Beeching lived near Forest Row and regularly travelled up to London on the line when he was Chairman of British Rail.
Kill your darlings, as the creative writing teachers say.
This blog is a comprehensive account of the history of Brambletye (which doesn’t have a Wikipedia page!) from a local. If you want to see Brambletye in this blog you’ll have to get to the end as we left the highlight to the final stretch of the walk.
Woodcut showing a depcition of Brambletye Manor before its destruction ( From ‘Brambletye House’, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. 279, (1827; Project Gutenberg, 2005), pp. 265-267. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1594)
BBC Sussex recently published an article about Brambletye and a Secret Sussex podcast episode. This is an interview with Garen Ewing, a local illustrator who seems to be ‘the Brambletye Guy’. His website has a trove of information about the history of the house with a lot of interesting old images, which I wish were larger. The whole reason we did this walk was after a suggestion from my friend Edwin, who had learned about Brambletye from Garen’s crowdfunder for The Brambletye Box:
The photos in my post are a blend of mirrorless camera and phone, with the odd illustration and historical photograph where I could find some.
I parked in Forest Row in the village centre, where there are some typically oaky timber construction to be admired. This is an old entrance to the Chequers Inn Hotel. This is not the only reference to oak doors in this post.
The walk leaves Forest Row by crossing a golf course, which I still find quite weird because of the tiny white eggs flying around trying to kill you. Follow the ESCC footpath signs through here.
The view across the greens into the Weald was splendid. It was such a still evening, we could see a hot-air balloon beyond the birch trees in the distance.
Surviving the golf course, you enter into the heathy woodlands so typical of the Ashdown Forest area. This is something you can see along old footways, a mature beech tree with its roots exposed. It’s a nice indicator of how close to the surface tree roots can be. The root has adapted to life above ground and become more like a branch. It looks like there are some bricks or stones under the roots, so perhaps the tree grew on top of a wall.
We passed one stream which is typical of those in the Ashdown Forest. This stream had the brown-orange hue of a Wealden ghyll, caused by the iron ore discolouration that made the area so attractive for the famous iron works of centuries past.
The woods were a tangle of birch and honeysuckle. I’m never sure if these are truly ancient woodlands or recently wooded heathland, but the sighting of the plant below is helpful.
Common cow wheat is an ancient woodland indicator and is far from common. I’ve found it in ancient woodlands around the western side of the High Weald. It used to be found in south London’s oak woodlands but has been lost since the 1980s. Plant diversity declining before our very eyes. It’s in the figwort family, along with yellow rattle and foxglove, of which more later.
June can be a month of mushrooms, so I wasn’t hugely surprised to find this tawny grisette. For more mushrooms have a look at my Fungi Friday blog. After this we left the woodlands.
These heathlands are very birchy, brackeny, oaky and rushy, much like the New Forest.
I was intrigued by this wonderful pond, one of a network of three running east-west. It’s so large and, looking at the map, is clearly part of an historically wet landscape. The placenames nearby include Alder Moors (alder is a tree of wetlands), Hollow Shaw (hollow probably a place where water pools), Mudbrooks House, and Spring Hill Farm.
When the walk turns north out of the woods you pick up the Greenwich Meridian Trail. My parents used to take me and my sister to Greenwich Park most Sundays when we were kids, when it felt more like a south London park than a mass-tourist attraction. It’s nice to feel that connection. The Meridian Line runs through nearby East Court at East Grinstead, which this walk will take you to.
This is a phone pic looking back at the woodland we passed through, a large pond at the bottom of the slope.
On higher ground you have view towards Mid Sussex. For some reason the trunk of a dead oak rested up there on the snooker table grassland, presumably where it fell.
This fine living oak is passed along the way, with signs of cattle gathering underneath its branches for shelter. That’s what causes erosion to the roots, but I don’t know if this is harmful to the tree, or if it’s something they have evolved to cope with over millions of years shared with wild cattle and the like. I have read that the pocking caused by hooves may allow air to reach the roots move effectively than the flat compaction caused by modern human footwear and tyres, etc..
The shelter of the oak is too great to turn down. One oak’s ancient pagan names was ‘dur’, which ‘door’ derives from. This is probably because some oaks had cavities so large you could enter inside them. Also interesting that doors (as per the first image on the post) were once more commonly made from oak.
Nearby was an outcrop of rock! That’s exciting here because we don’t really have much in the way of rocky outcrops in the south-east, compared with the Dales, Dartmoor or the Lakes. This is probably the stone used to build Brambletye House, what I presume is a type of sandstone but I’m no geologist. You wonder if this little section has been quarried over the years.
This is our fine oak with the rocky outcrop seen to the other side.
This is a view north towards Weir Wood Reservoir. There’s a church on the horizon and a helicopter high in the sky. Dramatic clouds were developing but we escaped a downpour.
Let’s appreciate this lichen-touched public footpath stone, with its helpful update pointing us in the right direction.
A snapshot of the hedge and oak boundary we passed through on our way to Brambletye.
I was taken aback by this magnificent display of foxgloves. June is the peak for this wonderful flower, also a member of the figwort family along with common cow wheat as mentioned earlier!
As we neared the famous ruins, we passed over a little stone bridge, what is probably quarried from the same stone seen earlier. It amazes me that this is in fact a bridge over the River Medway, that mighty Kentish river of Dickens and my mate Pete. In fact, by writing this blog I’ve learned that the Medway rises nearby in Turners Hill.
The Medway and its tributaries are known as ‘Wealden Rivers’ – rising from springs across the High Weald where the sand meets impermeable clay.
We arrived behind the fence at Brambletye just as the sun began to set, the orange light clipping the tops of each remaining tower. According to Garen Ewing, each tower would have had a minaret similar to that of the western tower. This image is looking south with the towers running east-west.
This old illustration shows two of the towers ivy-clad, and a far more open landscape surrounding them. Now the clump of trees on the western side hides a tennis court, such is the wealth of the current landowner.
It was commissioned by Sir Henry Compton, a prominent landowner and political figure, and would have been one of the most impressive residences in Sussex at the time. However, the Compton family’s time at the manor was short-lived as by the late 17th Century they had left the property – for reasons unknown.
On the central tower you can see the date of Brambletye’s construction, 1681. Also note the bricked-up windows and what I am guessing is the family crest below. I was using my 24-200mm lens so could zoom in for some nice detail.
The eastern tower had yet more bricked-up windows – perhaps to avoid the window tax, introduced in 1696 in England, 16 years after Brambletye was built.
Western tower aglow in the setting sun, an architectural melange.
Me and Edwin are both bird nerds, and we were pleased to see a kestrel perched on the only complete tower. Kestrels love habitat like this, and the lack of suitable buildings to nest in has probably contributed to their decline in the UK.
