Apricating

Wednesday 5th March 2025, Old Oswestry Hill Fort

A glorious dawn greeted us for this Wednesday outing.

However the red colours that, according to the well known saying, signify a day of bad weather were very misleading. What followed was a day of very warm, bright sunshine, making it hard to believe it was very early March.

We assembled in the car park by the Western Entrance to the large hill fort that overlooks modern day Oswestry.

The lichenologists were soon at work examining the gate to the site.

Making our way around them we came to a large board with information about the site.

The top of the hill fort is, now, a large expanse of grassland, but it is surrounded by a number of ramparts that form ascending concentric rings around the central area.

It was the valley between a couple of the ramparts about half way up the hill on the western face that we investigated first.

Not finding a great deal we moved up to the next rampart and explored a series of pools that had formed in the valley between the ramparts and buttress-like features radiating outwards.

Despite extensive searching of the vegetation around the pools very little of interest to us was revealing itself.

One insect we did find, in gorse, was a Gorse shieldbug. Unfortunately, it had had succumbed and was lifeless.

Photograph: David Williams

As the morning warmed up we decided to abandon our searches in this area and moved towards the ramparts that were south facing and warmer.

The downside was that this area was grazed by sheep and they had done a grand job chomping the grass down to pristine lawn length, denying small creatures places to hide and make their living.

Here is one surveying its work!

Photograph: David Williams

Looking out over the countryside, a flock of Linnets was spotted flying around some trees.

Yes, those black dots are Linnets!

Lunch was declared.

The sun was at its highest in the sky and it was very warm. This persuaded a few people to settle down to a short period apricating.

Before this week I would have called this sunbathing, but I have been introduced to apricating by my granddaughter, via my daughter as we sat in a shower of rain whilst visiting a nature reserve.

We roused ourselves.

And we climbed up to higher ramparts.

Some of us made it to the top where the sheep grazing the grassland under the clear blue sky was reminiscent of photographs of wildebeest and other large mammals roaming the grasslands of Africa.

Turning away from the grassland here is a view over one of the higher ramparts…

Photograph: David Williams

And looking eastwards, there on the horizon, is a hazy Wrekin.

You may have noticed that there is a lack of photographs of little beasts this week. This is not due to a failure of the photographers to photograph them, but our inability to find suitable subjects!

But here is a beetle, as yet unidentified, that we found in the afternoon.

Photograph: David Williams

We made our way back to the western side back into the area that was “Not grazed” but we still had very little success with our searches.

To finish here is a photograph of the information board speculating about the area that we had been exploring.

A wonderful site but, from our perspective, unfortunately, a disappointing day.

My thanks to English Heritage for granting us permission to do what we enjoy doing and the photographers for their excellent images and allowing me to use them in this report.