For the last eight years Blackwater Carr has been a major part and a central adventure in our lives. Yet things change, we change and now Maria and I have reluctantly conclude that we have to sell it. It has absorbed an enormous amount of our energy and planning and, in return it has given us great fulfilment, not to mention an unending supply of firewood for the woodburner. Our hope is that we can pass it on to someone who will love it for much the same reasons as ourselves and will continue to work with it to enhance its wildlife potential. It is presently on sale with Forests.co.uk and visits are managed by its staff member Bob Liles (click here).

However I thought it might be helpful to give any visitor or prospective buyer a virtual taster of it through the seasons so you can appreciate what it has to offer. If you can get to see it only in winter it is hard to imagine the extent of colour and the richness of wildlife that emerges in spring and summer. What’s so striking about Blackwater is its dynamism as a place, changing dramatically between the seasons.

The site was originally two fields of grazing marsh that started to scrub over with disuse after the war. The first field of about two acres, which I call Sallow Carr, is now well wooded with willow and increasingly alder. I am leaving this area to develop more completely into carr woodland and focus most of my interventions on what I call Oak Meadow. Even so Sallow Carr is a great place for butterflies, grasshoppers and bumblebees, all of which enjoy the stands of mixed flowers including meadowsweet, angelica, flag iris and great hairy willowherb which flourish every year.

Sallow Carr is really excellent for wildlife. I love to get down to Blackwater in April and find the first Willow Warblers and Blackcaps of the year, usually singing in the encircling alders. Both of the birds breed at the site. The flag irises that flourish near the entrance  flower in May and their great tubular flowers are a real draw for several types of hoverfly but also Garden Bumblebee. This beautiful creature has a tongue long enough to get into those deep iris nectaries.

From high summer through to autumn  Sallow Carr is  a favourite area for hunting dragonflies including both Scarce Chaser and Norfolk Hawker. The track runs through the tall vegetation and they like the corridors of warm air where insect prey are gathered. Perhaps the most beautiful, as well as one of the most common, is the Banded Demoiselle. Here’s a photo I took of a male in Sallow Carr, while the other species are Hairy Dragonfly (above: they are often the first dragonfly to appear in spring) and then Scare Chaser.

At the far side of Sallow Carr is a dividing dyke where I have recorded minnows. Its bank have grown thick with Goat Willow and i have freed up from encircling scrub a number of bird-sown Hawthorns and a single Ash tree. In the clearing, which has also become a great spot for Fleabane and Marsh Thistle, both much loved by insects especially bumblebees, I have also built and installed a site for solitary bees and wasps. You can see it on the right as you pass through from one meadow to the other.

Another detail in this area are the flowering hawthorns. They have been a major draw for a moth called Black-headed Gold pictured below (left). This is among the scarcer species found at Blackwater, which may have yielded more records for the moth than anywhere else in Norfolk. My other speciality is the Black-bordered Piercer, which turns up in early/mid April on the trunk of my Oak and nowhere else. I have scoured other areas in Norfolk for this unobtrusive little oak specialist but not found it anywhere.

Oak Meadow is the larger of my two fields (c3 acres)  and the place where I have concentrated a lot of my efforts. It is quieter and more secluded and the area on the far dyke gives you a great sense of being immersed in nature. It is the place where I camp or have barbecues and which is great for some of the children’s activities that we have run at Blackwater.

A major part of the work is cutting about an acre of meadow, firstly with a specialised mowing machine belonging to the Hawk & Owl Trust, then latterly with Austrian hand scythes, here operated by my brother Andy.

The L-shaped meadow has also been sown with Yellow Rattle, a hemiparasitic plant occurring naturally in many British meadow types. It saps the energy of the coarser grasses and allows more delicate plants to flourish. Since I started the annual meadow cut seven years ago a whole range of insects and plants have moved into the shorter sward. Marsh and spear thistle hardly occurred at all before I bought Blackwater, but have particularly increased and both are really welcome as important plants for bumblebees and other specialists. Click on the pics to make them larger. They are in clockwise order from left (ruby-tailed wasp, Gorytes laticinctus a Red-Data wasp, and an ichneumon a parasitoid wasp on marsh thistle laying its eggs probably in the larvae of  some kind of thistle gall fly.

Other plants that have flourished with my cutting are, of course, the Yellow Rattle itself, Ragged Robin, which was not present before, Fleabane and Greater Birdsfoot Trefoil. It is wonderful to see how the dried seeds become the flower-rich patch the following spring.

All the cuttings that we take off the meadow are put into a great fertile heap that maintains an elevated temperature in winter and is a fantastic refuge for small mammals, including voles and shrews, but also spiders especially tens of thousands of little wolf spiders. But it is also great for Grass Snakes that have started to lay their eggs in its depths.

Finally the veg pile known as ‘Slub Mountain’, which rises to 4 metres at the end of the hay festival, is great for people. Here are Andy, MC, Oscar and Rachy after a final session.

And here is the forest school group brought by Rosie Hoare to help with practical tasks but also to help put Blackwater to good use.

We normally try to combine work with pleasure and the hay cut usually involves a routine barbecue and beer.

Blackwater is a fantastic microcosm of the Broads National Park which surrounds it. To date I have recorded well over 600 species of plant and animal and am in no doubt that it would eventually produce a list of thousands. Encouraging experts in all sorts of fields has been part of the fun. Here are the lovely Helen Smith spider specialist with her friend and former county recorder on spiders Pip Collyer. Then Jackie Fortey with her husband Richard who is an acclaimed author as well as a top mycologist to boot, helped me sort out a few of my mushrooms.

All of this goes to show that Blackwater is great for nature and great for people. To date I have used it as a place to work, to camp, to gather wood, to teach writing, to catch and study moths, to inspire poets, to encourage children to work and play, to learn and to relax. I am hoping all of this can be continued. 

Here finally is a poem by my friend and poet Matt Howard who has played an enormous role in enhancing the patch for wildlife. His glorious Crome, which was inspired by Blackwater, appeared, in turn, in my book Our Place. Matt’s last line resonates powerfully throughout the entire book as a statement of what we need to do.

I cherish the idea of Blackwater inspiring people, who inspire action for places like Blackwater. I am hoping to find someone to continue the virtuous circle.

to cast a tool of ash and hooked iron

to take care in boots at the edge of standing water

to throw from the shoulder, then heave from the lumbar spine

to clear a dyke of leaf-fall and slub from the past three decades or further

to feel a suck and pop of sedge-roots tearing from bog

to spit splash-back of festered water from one’s lips

to wretch one’s balance of vows and curses where no one else is listening

to imagine a cut of clearer water

to haul deeper with long-drawn tines

to blister then callus both hands in unfavourable conditions

to consider the phased wing-strokes of dragonflies

to listen to the short, descending arc of willow warbler song whilst working

to see sunlight on the nodes of a Norfolk hawker’s forewing

to act with the whole body and mean it

‘Crome’, Matt Howard