A Walk around Silverdale

Polar and Grizzly have less work to do in the garden and on the allotment now autumn is here, so they try to get exercise by going for walks - with us bears, of course!

This autumn, they are exploring some of the parks and country parks in our area, including some they haven't been to before.  Last week, we all went to Silverdale Country Park in Newcastle-under-Lyme borough.  On the way, Polar showed us a bus-stop in the village of Scott Hay that had been yarn bombed.

Silverdale Country Park used to be a huge mine and didn't close until the late 1990s.  Although it provided the local humans with lots of jobs, it messed the countryside up very badly and until very recently there was still an underground fire burning in one of the abandoned coal seams!

But now it is a big area of wild countryside, planted to encourage rare birds to nest and fenced to keep people and dogs away from some areas so the birds can thrive.  When we visited, a bird-watching man with a telescope pointed out a flock of meadow pippits and told us to look out for stonechats (Polar saw one) and we saw a flock of linnets and a big flock of lapwings.

 

Polar let us have a run in a big field near the car park and Endon found a toadstool and a big mossy rock.  In places, the ground was very soft and quite boggy, although other areas were very dry with very dark, gritty soil, because they were made up of spoil from the coal mines.

Most of the birds on the lake were mallards, coots and seagulls, but there was a great-crested grebe too - we love to see them.  We expect there are different ducks and geese during the winter, so we'll see if we go again.

On this visit, we didn't walk all round the lake, but went along one side, then up through the meadows to the ridge at the top for a good view of the whole lake.

 

There is also a small pond on the site, but that's fenced off as it's just for the fishing club.

 

From the top of the old spoil heap, which is now planted with meadow grasses, shrubs and trees, you can see all the way to Hanley (the town, not the bear!) and to the centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme.

You can see one of the new buildings at Keele University too, and the church tower in the centre of Silverdale village.  We bears sat up on Polar's shoulders for the best view and tried to see how many places we could recognise.

Polar let us have a run along a path that leads down from the miner's statue towards the lake, so we could sniff the grasses and see what plants we could find.  We saw someone riding a horse along the trail at the top of the hill.

'I wonder if Polar will ever go horse-riding again?' said Endon.

'If she does, maybe we could go too?' said Hanley.

I thought that might be rather dangerous for small bears, so I didn't say anything!

We found a big warm stone to sit on while we waited for Polar and Grizzly to catch us up, and listened to all the birds tweeting.  It was hard to imagine that this used to be all noisy, dirty and industrial!

Before she lifted us back into the bear bag for the long walk back to the car, Polar took our photograph.

'I hope you enjoyed that, little bears,' she said.

'We did!' I told her.  'There was something for all of us to enjoy.  Plants for Endon, wild birds for me and lots of industrial history for Hanley Bear.'

'We'll come here again soon,' said Grizzly.  'But we'll visit some other parks and country parks first.  And now, it must be time for tea!'

 

We had done lots of running, so we had naps in the car on the way home, after we had looked for the yarn-bombed bus-stop!