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It's a beautiful July day and we're back in the glorious landscape that is the Yorkshire Dales.
We're in the little village of Hubberholm, just by the River Wharf, waiting to go on a walk with the cellist, singer and environmental campaigner, Sarah Smout, who comes from this area and takes the landscape and imbues it into her music.
Good morning, Sarah.It's lovely to see you.
And you've got your cello on your back.
Well, I feel like a tortoise.
Do you often carry it on a walk?
Especially for us, we're honoured.And just tell us where we are.
Okay, so we're actually in Huberholm at the moment. which derives its name, I believe, from the Viking warrior Huber.Yeah, and I've just been coming here since I was a kid.Got lots of memories here.
And, yeah, we're walking about a couple of miles to Jochenfurt.
And it's got a lovely pub here, hasn't it?It was pie night last night, so we had a very nice chicken and mushroom.And there's a very historic church just to our left.Oh, and a gate.We're actually in a farmyard next to the church.
And we should say we're in a kind of bowl here, aren't we?Because we're in the river valley of the River Wharf.And so the hills are going up all round us.And it's very green at the moment because it's July.It's just a beautiful setting for our walk.
And landscape's very important to you, isn't it, in terms of the way you're inspired to make music?
Yes.Absolutely, yeah.I mean, I grew up in not a very dissimilar environment, just outside of Skipton.
And I think, yeah, over the years as I've become more aware of what's happening with the climate and the environment, you know, it's kind of a natural, inevitable thing that's ended up weaving its way into my music.
I might have quite an interesting soundtrack today.
Oh, that's because you shouldn't be there.
They were making that noise last night.
So it's lovely to see the river, just we're slightly above the river here aren't we looking down into it and the sheep going up quite vocal on the other side on the hillside.What do you think we might see on the walk Sarah?
Various times I've been I've seen peregrine falcons, some buzzards, lots of wildflowers at the moment which will be lovely once we get into the wildflower meadows which are a triple SI so they stayed unmowed for the entire summer which is beautiful.
Fish, little troutlings and dippers, kingfishers.
Oh wow, that would be wonderful.
Fingers crossed we get all of those.
Yeah, there'll be a few cows and a few sheep as well.
And I think at the end you're going to take us to a peat restoration site.Yes.Why do you want to go there?
So I did a music video on Fleet Moss back in 2021 in collaboration with the Yorkshire Peat Partnership and they've been working on that site for a few years and it's actually finished now, so they've finished their restoration up there.
And I've not been up for a couple of years, so it'll be just a great opportunity to see how it's coming on, you know, because before it was a really degraded, looked pretty awful and lots of exposed peat everywhere.
And since then, they've been replanting it and re-wetting it.So it'd be lovely to see how it's doing.
And we're going to meet Jenny there, aren't we?
Jenny Sharman, yes.She works for the Peak Partnership and she's been involved with Fleet Moss from the very beginning.It's like her baby.So yeah, she'll have lots of interesting scientific insights for us as well.
Let's walk on.We've just come into a beautiful field of wildflowers here and There's a stone barn, rather picturesquely situated at the top of the hill, and some uneven stone steps going down towards the water.
But there's a riot of buttercups and dandelions.What else can we see, Sarah?
Well, there's a bit of clover here. It's just on its way over is the clover.Oh, there's some self-heal.
We've been reflecting a lot on these podcasts on the need to take things slowly and look at what you're walking past, because it's quite easy to get engrossed in your conversation and trample on through without looking right or left or down or...
Or indeed up into the birds.
It's important to pause and see things.
Absolutely.I've been trying to get better at IDing my wildflowers.It's nice because it does slow you down and you see things that you wouldn't have otherwise seen.
Oh yeah.That's dive-bombing.
Now these are all orchids.
That's incredible.That is incredible how many there are.
Hundreds and hundreds of them.
Yeah.I was here a month ago and there was probably about Well, nowhere near as many as this.So they've all just come out the last month.
And the hillside has got just this sort of sheen of purple.
That's amazing.I don't think I've seen this many in one place.
I don't think I ever have either.And as we go further up, in the short while, there's a little bridge that goes over a limestone gill, which is where we often find a few fossils.
Well let's do some foraging.
We were looking for the seashells in the rocks of the river. We were looking for the answers We were looking for the future Oh, be my mother
the older and wiser hold up the stones let me mirror their patterns time in our hands from a moment of chance is stolen for us until we go oh be my mother
So this little bridge is over a tributary of the river, is it?
This is a usually dry gill.It leads up to a little kind of pothole and eventually a caving system.
I'm warning you that the bridge is quite narrow.I'm worried about the cello getting across.Do you think you'll be able to make it?
I think we will, luckily, because it slants outwards.
So let me hold your cello if you want to go down there and have a look for some fossils.
I'll go down that side I think.It's on this big one.
Oh yes, look, there's a mark.
We've got some there and there and there. I mean, these look like maybe shellfish, but you get shellfish, corals and crinoids from the Carboniferous, I believe.
You get coral here, do you?
Yep.Yep.Because this was once a tropical seabed.
It was a tropical seabed?What, here?
Halfway up a hill.I know.That's unrockable to think of, isn't it?I know.But we're seeing the remains of what was here Millions of years ago?
About 360 million years ago.
Yeah, how can anyone comprehend that?Here you go.This has got loads of little things in.Look at that.I think that's, if it was in its proper form, it would look like a spiderweb and that's a sea lily.
And then all these other little bits of coral, potentially.My goodness.Lots of fragments.
Just in one three-inch long piece of rock, there's a number of different markings, aren't there?
Yep.What is hidden in the wild? Of a body that is grieving Time will carry all the pain
Time will measure all the changing I went looking for the ocean Breaking waves out at West Beach Breaking water through the ice sheet Greenland singing with the snow geese Oh, be my mother, be older and wiser.
Hold up the stones, let me mirror their patterns.Tie in our hands from the moment of chance is stolen for us until we go. Oh, be my mother All alone in my body Caught the eye of an eagle Snow Prince, tell me that you've been here
Ice left clinging to the seaweed And if you're looking for an answer Wear your heart like the otter Slip into the realm of water Carve your name in many colours
So be my mother, the older and wiser Hold up the stones, let me mirror the patterns Tied in our hands from a moment of chances Stolen for us until we go home That was beautiful.
Was that its first public performance?
How does it feel to sing it here by the River Wharf?
Obviously slightly terrifying, because it always is the first time you sing a song outside of just yourself.But very special.
It's where it was meant to be sung, I think, because that's where I began writing the first verse after the last time I'd been here.I feel like it was a song for the river.
And it's interesting about your creative process and how a song comes from that initial inspiration.Is it a struggle for you, or is it something that you find often just comes naturally?
I think sometimes it's a struggle.There's so much to think about with things that I tend to write about which are all to do with the environment and often the climate crisis and lots of kind of really big overwhelming subjects.
And I think what I've tried to do to sort of find my way in often is to find that really personal story within those wider narratives.
Telling my own story within the wider context of the environment and what's happening to the natural world seems to be often a place that I end up in.
And that makes it human-sized, in a way, because the climate crisis is so overwhelming and so huge.
But if you can bring it back to an individual in some way and then use the individual as a way into the story, then it makes it easier for us to identify with.
Absolutely, yeah.The first verse, looking for the seashells in the rocks of the river, we were just speaking about those in the limestone gill.
And then, Obi, my mother, the older and wiser, the things that I was thinking about was nature as mother, as healer.But I realised that
There's lots of openness in the lyrics as well, which can be interpreted however people interpret them, which is the beauty of music.There's some personal things in there about grief and my own process of trying to find healing in nature.
And I think that that is something I feel generally about the natural world as well and the climate crisis. It's a lot, you know, when you think about the real science and what's happening and the sadness in that.
But then also just the amazing, just being part of where we are right now in this moment and all that it's giving us and all the stories that are here is just an amazing thing to capture and sing about.
And it lifts our spirits, doesn't it?I hope so.So have you used nature when you've gone through a particularly sad period in your life?
Yes, absolutely.I think I was lucky to grow up in a really natural environment. And so I've always had a connection to this kind of place.
And as I get older, I see that as a real, real benefit for lots of things, my mental health, my physical health, and just really knowing a place as well and returning to the same places again and again and feeling a sense of individual connection to it.
So you get to know it in depth, not just on a surface level, not just passing through.
Yeah, absolutely.Yeah, I think getting to know a place in depth is something that really does help me personally, but also does inspire what I like to create as well in my music and my poetry.
The life of a touring musician is very difficult nowadays for lots of reasons and I often find myself sat at home thinking, is this really what I want to be doing?
Because often you're going to a place and you're not really finding anything out about that place. or connecting with the communities there because, you know, the kind of traditional touring method doesn't allow that time for that to happen.
So I've tried to do things in the past and continue to do gigs where the gigs are part of a kind of almost research and inquiry led process in a way of finding out about that place, the people, what are the issues, what's the kind of mutual exchange that can happen between me and that place and its people.
Can you give me an example of one that you've done like that?
So I went to Iceland a few years ago.I went with a friend who's a singer called Sophie Ramsey and we went to Iceland by boat via Orkney, Shetland and the Faroes.
We took ferries between Orkney and the Faroes and Iceland but between Shetland and the Faroes there's no service anymore so we actually managed to hitch a ride on a very small yacht.
which we thought was a great idea at the time, turned out to be 36 hours of seasickness.
Oh my goodness, was the weather really wild?
It was really, really rough.Even the skipper's family, and the skipper himself was a little bit sick.So I felt less bad, because I'd never been seasick before, I thought I was quite seafady, which is the Shetland word for seaworthy.
And so that was a series of gigs that you did touring by boat.Slow touring, I suppose you might call it.
Yeah, you could.Yeah, we did gigs on each island.
It was a very DIY process and we set up the gigs ourselves so we got to know the people who were putting the gig on and putting us up and we had a Tascam with us, a Zoom recorder and we recorded lots of interviews with people about their connection to these places and why they were there because not all of them had been there for a long time.
As you know lots of these places people tend to move there perhaps in their later years looking for peace and quiet and Lots of interesting stories from the people, but also lots of natural sounds as well.Sea sounds, bird sounds.
And we took in the local names, the dialect names for the flowers and the animals. And so that's the show that I've been doing in the last few years.
So a lot of music came out of that process.
Yeah, a lot of music, a lot of words, a lot of poetry.And that's why the loop pedal seems to work so well with it, because you can create all these layered soundscapes and evoke that sense of place as best you can whilst not being there.
But my next adventure, hopefully, Well, I'm meant to be going, but it feels really, really far off is Foulbard in April.
And I'm hoping to get as much of the way there as I can by boat.
Sounds absolutely fascinating, if a little daunting.
Now you've whetted my appetite, I wonder if we walk on a bit, we might get some of your poetry.
I would think that is highly likely.Excellent. Returning again and again to the river.To the moss and weed under my toes.To the dipper taking stock of mayflies.Catches my heart, snags like hawthorn.
The creatures in the clay, layer upon layer of all that has happened. sea, ice, fire and rock underneath the brown gold water where troutlings gleam and everything seems as it should be. Layer upon layer, all our stories held in water and rock.
Moving, solid, fragile, brief.We are bound here in sediment, upturned in the storms.Layer upon layer of memory in the riverbed.Banking up time, limestone undoing. Our childhood is somewhere, buried with the pebbles we threw.
Hubba is there too, axe thrown where sheep tracks lead down to the edge.It is all here.The bluebells are early, swallows too and not as many.Curlew song spirals. a knife edge, a tilt too far, all our stories held in water and rock.
So while we're walking along in the valley, we can see the hills going up with the sunlight and the cloud shapes moving across them.This part of the path is a combination of fern and then pale yellow meadowsweet, just stretching away to our right.
And the river changes as we walk along, because here it's moving much more slowly, but it looks deeper and darker, and there's a kind of...
full flecks of foam on the surface of it and it's quite wide here isn't it quite broad it is yeah oh fish just jumped I love that kind of smell you get on this bit of path next to the river kind of mossy damp river smell
I actually think that that long narrow bit there, just remembered, used to be used as a sheet wash.
But as this is now an SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SSS, SS
Do you think the river here used to be used for washing sheep?
Well that bit there that we were looking at, the long wide bit, the slow bit, I think that was where they washed sheep.
So did they put sheep dip in the river?
Did this wash them in the river as it was?
I think they just put them in and swished them around a bit.
So do you often improvise in the landscape?
It's something that I like to do.I wish I could do it more often.
You just need someone to carry the cello.
The logistics of getting the cello to places can sometimes be a bit tricky.One of the other pieces of work I did with the Yorkshire Peak Partnership was a commissioned soundscape poem, again up at Fleet Moss.
That was about midway through its restoration.I was working alongside a visual artist, so she was drawing pictures of the peatland and kind of zooming in on some of the beautiful mosses and sundews that grow on the hill for peat bogs.
And I went up there and took some field recordings and what was really evident was the skylarks.And I listened to their song and just found it so mesmerising and learnt a little bit more about it and how they don't repeat a single syllable.
And they carry on singing as they go up and up and up, sometimes up to a thousand feet in the air before plunging descent back down to the ground. And so I thought, well, that's just, that's all I need, isn't it, for my musical direction.
Take the lead from the skylarks.
How did you first come into contact with the peat restoration work?
I was running some environmental meetings in Skipton and through that I met some people from Friends of the Dales who were already doing work with the peat partnership and at that time I was getting really interested in reading about various kinds of issues that were going on on the moors, these tensions that were
the local community surrounding what the malls were being used for.
So what sort of tensions?
Well grouse shooting is a big one because there was a lot of pressure to ban grouse shooting from some groups and obviously it's quite a historic tradition really. and also sheep.
It's very complex because, you know, these are communities that have been in this landscape for a long time and have a lot of knowledge of this place and a lot of valuable insights to share.
So you can't really come in and go, you're doing it all wrong, you're shooting the grass and, you know, dug all these channels.Yeah, I think the way that Peat Partnership and other organisations come at it is,
You know, it's just really diplomatic and human and looking at the wider picture and trying to get more incentives for landowners and farmers and people to think about putting these new practices into place, this restoration or rewilding essentially.
It was proposed that a video on top of a bog with a cello might be quite a good thing to do.
When you say it was proposed, was it you that proposed it by any chance?
It wasn't.I mean, I was thinking it, and I was maybe angling for it.
And you thought it would, what, draw attention to the cause of the work that they were doing?
Yeah, absolutely.I think just these collaborations where you can have art and science and raise awareness of a particular issue is just another interesting way of getting the message out there.
And so you went up there and filmed yourself, or somebody filmed you.Jenny filmed you, I think, who we're going to meet.
Jenny was on the filming team.She was the producer and I worked with a filming duo called Film on the Brain. And they had a drone, so we got some amazing footage of the restoration in action at the time.
And you sitting in the midst of it.Me sitting in the midst of it.On a chair.
Which is what we're going to repeat for this episode, aren't we?
Yeah, we're going to recreate it now, yeah.Now that the restoration has finished and the peat bog's getting back to its former glory, as it were.
So how long is it since you went up there last time?
Oh, at least a couple of years.
Oh right, so it might have changed quite significantly.
I think it probably will have, yeah.
Well, now you brought us right onto the top from the river valley.We're onto the top of the moors and Jenny Sharman's joined us.Lovely to see you, Jenny.Thank you.Where are we?
So this is a site called Fleet Moss and it's kind of become a bit of a flagship site for the Yorkshire Peak Partnership, who I work for.This was one of the sites that I actually was active in helping to restore.I project managed it.
It's 160 hectares.It lies between two catchments.You've got the wharf to one side and the yore to the other.So it's a very, very important site in that all of the runoff that comes from this site goes into those two catchments and impacts it.
So in terms of keeping the peat up here rather than in the rivers, it's quite important.
And why is it important to restore the peat here?
The majority of peatlands, about 80% across the UK, are extremely badly damaged.It's important for a number of reasons and I think for me the primary reason that we need to be aware of is that this is a home.
to a myriad of really important critical species.So you know from a load of breeding birds, dragonflies, a lot of dragonflies wouldn't be able to breed if they didn't have peatlands like this.
The same with your curlews, your golden plovers, short-eared owls, you know a numerous number of raptor species as well.It's a critically important habitat for that.And obviously vegetation as well, different sorts of species.
But the other key thing is that peat actually stores carbon.So in its pristine form, it is the greatest terrestrial store of carbon that we have on this planet.So it's only the ocean that can store more carbon.So it's incredibly significant.
But at the moment, as I say, 80% of our peatlands are damaged.So all of that carbon is actually oxidizing and it's going up into the air and it's helping to cause climate change.
So if you look out here, as far as the sort of first brow of the hill as it starts to dip down, when I first came and stood here and looked at this landscape, it was black.It was moving peat.There was so much erosion.
It was just absolutely astonishing.And back then, it was so bleak and desolate that we nicknamed it the Somme because it was just, you know, it was shocking.It was shocking and hurtful, really, to see.
And how do they get damaged?What sort of practices in the landscape cause the damage?
In Yorkshire, the main reasons are drainage and fire.Post-World War II, there was a big drive to get as much agriculture going as possible in the UK, and the moorlands were one of the areas that people looked at to try and get more sheep up here.
But because it was so boggy, they had to drain it.
and thousands of kilometres of what are known as grips, which are effectively ditches, were put in across the landscape, and there are several out here on Fleet Moss, and they did exactly what they said on the tin and they drained it, and that immediately means that the vegetation can't survive, and everything, the whole ecosystem crashes, basically.
So we could get loads more sheep up here, but the sheep themselves then do a lot of damage. So as well as the drainage, it's the little mouths and hooves, you know, eating and tearing up the land that actually creates a hell of a lot of damage.
Fire as well.You can have wildfires.Anything basically that's going to damage the vegetation surface is going to hurt the peat.
Sarah, why is it such a special place for you?
Well, since we recorded the video up here and did the filming, I've got to know it, I suppose.I've done a few visits up here and the first time I came up I was just so shocked by it because I didn't know how damaged a peatland landscape could look.
And so when I first saw it, it was like looking at war trenches, like the sort of hags, these sort of like towering peatland kind of trenches, you know, higher than six foot in some places and just completely bare peat, really dry.
And that was when the restoration work was just beginning.And I've come back a couple of times and this is maybe the third time I've been back and I can already see, just from here, I can see the difference.It's greener. There's less bear peat.
For me, it's about how everything's connected.You know, this is connected to where we just were by the river.There's all sorts of things that benefit, like Jenny said, from this landscape being healthy.
Because the water from here goes to the river.
Yeah, yeah.So there's water quality issues all tied up with it all as well.And, you know, the whole carbon thing is just mind-blowing, really, when you think about how much peatland is actually damaged in this country.
And it's just amazing that Yorkshire Peat Partnership exists and other organisations exist to actually make positive change.And you can see it.That's what I love.
Like we were talking about how climate change and the issues surrounding it are so overwhelming.
so massive and sometimes it just feels like well there's nothing we can do it's just too big but then when you look at things like this and you see the results and you see the positive action when people come together and work together to make something happen and it's just yeah that that really galvanizes me as well because you know it's all about the ripple effect the domino effect of doing good in your patch.
So if you look out now, all of that area that you see now, you can just see the little white cotton grass heads and all the green.So if you can imagine, none of that was there.
So all of those little white dots are now on areas that were, five years ago, bare peat. So it's really done its job.Oh my goodness, every time I come up here, as you can see, I just grin from ear to ear because it's just so lovely and so gratifying.
And as Sarah was saying, I feel really privileged and lucky to actually be part of a project where you can make such a difference.It's very empowering.
And how do you make that difference?What did you do to this landscape?
I mean it all starts with actually walking pretty much every inch of it and understanding where the problems are, why they've been caused and figuring out what's going to be best in terms of interventions to prevent it from continuing to degrade.
So there's an awful lot of different interventions here.
We'll see as we go down, one of the primary ones we've used is the coir logs, which is a coconut husk log that has come over from, the coir has actually come from Sri Lanka, but it's sustainably sourced and we're supporting a small village out there by doing this.
But that actually holds back the water, it slows the flow of water and actually allows the vegetation to return.It also stops the sediment from washing away into the rivers, as Sarah says, you know, that's a great pollutant. And it's instant.
So as soon as they're in, you can see the difference.It just instantly slows that water.And within a year, you start having the cotton grasses and the sphagnums and all of those beautiful species coming back.But there's lots of other interventions.
You have timber dams, stone dams.We have great big diggers that come up here and do all the reprofiling.So Sarah was mentioning about hags. You can just see some of these black edges here, and they are hags that we couldn't get to with the digger.
But over there you'll see there's just sort of green mounds.They were all once exactly like that, but they've been reprofiled by a digger and re-turved.What is a hag?So a hag, it's an eroded edge of peatland.
So you would have got a channel of water along the bottom of what you're looking at there, So the hag stands proud of the land, basically, and it would originally have all been one level.
You wouldn't have seen those hags, but because of the channels of water and the erosion, they've cut down into that and they've created this sort of surface that's above the current surface, if that makes sense.So you're seeing almost a wall of peat.
Right, and so you've smoothed those away with the digger and that's created this lovely green landscape to our left here.
Yes, just a lovely green landscape.So yes, it's a massive team effort and it's taken four, nearly five years to get this to where it is today and there's still more work to be done.
Yes, we have to have helicopters flying stuff in and I mean it's quite an operation Logistically you've got to you know be really on it.So it's yeah, it's been interesting.
Yes, absolutely Jenny, will you take us into the area and show us some of the species that we can find there?
So what can we see here, Jenny, on the ground here?
So this is sphagnum, and this is essentially the building block of peat.
So while all the vegetation that you see around here can form peat because of the sort of acidic conditions that there are up here, the waterlogged conditions, which means that vegetation decomposes very, very slowly, this actually is the key plant that you want on a bog.
Sphagnum moss, and it's got extraordinary properties.I mean, for the first thing, it manages to hold more than 20 times its volume in water.So if I'm squeezing it here, you can see all of that water that's coming out.
If I was to squeeze a normal moss, you wouldn't see that.So it's got these tiny little sort of capsules inside that kind of can contain the water. And it's also, it's got very acidic properties itself.It helps to create this kind of acid landscape.
But it was used in World War I as a wound dressing.So because of its antiseptic properties and also because it can obviously soak up quite a lot of blood.
Right, that's interesting.
Yeah, and it's used in nappies as well, has been used in nappies, it's been used to filter swimming pools and things like that, so it's a very kind of interesting and valuable plant.
There's many different sorts of sphagnum as well, many different species, so if I just step a couple of feet over here you can see there's From that bright green one that I just showed you, we've now got a red one here.
And each type of sphagnum will need a different sort of, will need different conditions, but basically they need water.That's the main thing.So as soon as you take the water away, they will disappear.
So the drainage will take the water away.And so your work is to keep the water here effectively to allow them to thrive and to grow again.And then they'll create the circumstances for the peat? Exactly.
So they will decompose.So you can see these sort of long tendrils that sphagnum has and this is what forms the peat.
So it's these that will be decomposing really, really slowly and peat is formed of that as a sort of organic matter along with all of the other species that you see around.But it's this, this is like the key species.
This is what creates the condition for everything else. Is it right that about a thousand years is a metre of peat?A thousand metres, yes, that's right.It takes a thousand years for a metre of peat to grow.
That's how long it takes.But then in a matter of, what, 50 or so years, a lot of it was gone.
Yeah, because of how the land was managed.
So it's easier to destroy than it is to create.
Very much so.So each year is a millimetre of peat.That's why I hesitated.I had to do my maths quickly in my head.But it is, yeah, each year it grows a millimetre.So it is a tiny, tiny amount.And yeah, so yeah, very, very, very precious.
You have to be patient in your work.You do, you do.Yes.
But the first bit is just to make sure that it's not escaping, you know, that it's not, that we're managing to keep it where it belongs.Yeah. I'm just bringing you now to a little spot that has got a lot of significance.
What you see here, these little red and yellow plants, this is sundew.So it's a carnivorous plant.And if you look very, very closely, you will actually see little unfortunate insects that have been trapped by the kind of
sticky goo that's inside the the sundew um yes i can see one in there yeah so this is this is it eats insects it eats insects yeah there's not enough kind of nutrients that come from anywhere else so that's how it gets its nutrients is through clobbering insects um but it's a very it's a very kind of significant plant in terms of peatlands you
you don't see it on a very very damaged bog so the fact that we've actually got a proliferation of it here is really nice that it's beginning to respond really well to you know, the new conditions that it's finding.
And then it's surrounded by sphagnum as well.So, and these are tormentor.And your cotton grasses.So a lot of bog species all in this one little patch.
I think I remember you bringing me here before in search of like a single sundew.
Yeah, I know.And now there's like a whole bed of sundews.I know.It's amazing.
They're like miniature Venus fly traps.
That's right, exactly right.I think that's been the biggest lesson that I've learnt from these sites, is that if you get it right in terms of the ingredients that nature needs, it responds immediately and beautifully.It's a fantastic reward.
Can I ask you, Jenny, about the role of music in all of this?
It was felt that this would be a fantastic way of actually communicating to a new group of people about Peatlands.So Sarah's obviously got, you know, this fantastic audience and following as well, and to be able to reach out to them and...
talk to them about what's going on on Peatlands and it was fantastic that Sarah actually offered her time and her energy and spirit to do it because it was amazing it was just a it was triumphant honestly and she was brilliant it was really lovely and the first time I heard the song I cried and I still do it still gives me goosebumps.
She's going to sing it for us now you know.
Yay!I'll start sobbing.So it must be wonderful to get that response Sarah.
Yeah I love making people cry.
And tell us about the song.
Well, Atlas, yeah, I actually wrote it a while ago, but I hadn't released it and I recorded it in my
my living room at home during COVID actually and because we'd been talking about doing a video up here I thought it would just be the perfect song because the perspective of it is from a bird's eye view looking down on the landscape, looking down on all the changes happen
all the patterns kind of changing shape and wondering why.And so it just fitted really because up here it feels like we're on top of the world, doesn't it?Like there's Ingleborough just over there.So yeah.
So many miles to go I'm on the ocean road And I'm not alone for the journey So many wings take flight As we are told by time We're shadows to clouds And the springtime sun I've seen it all from up here Am I at last in the sky?
I've seen it all from a peak Where the mountains don't reach high Something has changed today.We're nearly always leaving but grasses are green for such a long time here.And something is stranger now.
Why do the oceans grow and the forests of old start to disappear?I've seen From a pea, am I at last in the sky?I've seen it all, from a pea, where the mountains don't Do you change your patterns just to feel the journey you think you're missing?
Another day will follow underneath my wing and I will I've seen it all from up here In my eyeless, in the sky From up here Where the mountains don't reach high I might be alone I might be alone today but I'm already bound for the judge
So wonderful, Sarah, absolutely wonderful to be in this extraordinary place and hear that extraordinary song.Thank you so much.Thank you.And thank you, Jenny, for showing us this extraordinary place.We're so grateful to you.
It's my real pleasure.And I'm going to cry again now.Thank you, Sarah.Just beautiful, really beautiful.Thank you.
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