Clara Bog boardwalk

Clara Bog used to have a car parking area on the road that travels through it, but it barely has a pull in spot any more. The road side walk is fine, but to really see the bog and know how it squidges and smells and sounds you need to get stuck into the middle of it, but in a way that doesn't result in you sinking fast and wishing you had stayed at home. Bogholes are not noted for their hospitality.

The kind people at the National Parks and Wildlife Service have built a board walk, which you reach by going a small wooded area, mostly birch. It's a very pleasant walk with plenty for young aspiring naturalist/photographers to have a look at. C2 and I headed there yesterday while C1 was swimming.

We made a quick stop to check out the tadpoles - no big changes to report - and then headed for the walk, which brings you from the Derries to Clara, if the fancy takes you.

(click on any image to see a much bigger version)

View Larger Map

Butterflies were out in force, but proved largely impossible to photograph. They gave C2 a run for his money, but he did manage to spot this one, which we think is a Holly Blue

(we're using http://www.irishbutterflies.com/holly_blue_butterfly_of_ireland.html to help us identify butterflies)
We also saw Cabbage whites, Orange Tips (I'd forgotten how orange that orange actually is) and the fantastically named Brimstone, which looked like they'd been coloured with a fluorescent green pen as they were flying about, and certainly blend in well with early spring foliage shapes and colours. These are the early guys, red adrmirals and tortiseshells arn't flitting about yet, they're not fans of early spring it seems.

Adult me walked along absorbing sunshine, insect drones intermingling with leaf sighs and birdsong, keenly observing colours and texture variations, birch dapple, and flitting butterflies. Child C2 wanted to chase the butterflies, beat the undergrowth with sticks, climb rocks and trees and find dragons in stones.

I think parents can expect that children will somehow see, feel, hear and smell with adult senses instead of a child's. I hugely enjoy seeing things through his eyes and showing him things from my perspective. I can pass on the test to see if bog "squishiness tastes the same way it smells" though.

C2 is a keen fossil hunter, so there was a mandatory hunt for promising stones he can hammer in his grandad's workshop. This is his latest:

There was a massive patch of wild garlic along the path, I asked him to guess what it was which he did, and I threatened to roll him in it to infuse him with the smell of garlic so that when C1 returned from swimming, starving, he might mistake C2 for his favouite garlic bread. He didn't seem to alarmed at the idea, and stuffed my camera bag pocket with leaves. He reckons the smell is pleasant "except for the peppery bit that itches your nose"

On the bug side of things here's some gorgeous green beetles, their shells seem like something we should make treasure out of.

and a banded snail of some variety or other

We also came across a craggy, well bet up old rock presumably an ice age visitor abandoned on the bog as the ice retreated which C2 gleefully clambered all over. I've always loved these when they get swallowed up by trees, adorned by small flowers ferns and shaggy mosses and entwined by dense, small leaved ivies. The rock itself looked chewed on in places, I couldn't help thinking of Terry Practchett's trolls or the rock biter from the Neverending Story. Intriguing tunnels from some hitherto unknown rock eating variety of rabbit were also well in evidence. In the surrounding area were flourishing communities of violets, wood sorrell and ferns. Ferns have always intrigued me, they look properly prehistoric, especially when they're curled up.

The bog itself is still largely unimpressive, with only clouds of a coppery coloured plant (haven't identified it yet), an occasional splodge of undead green lichen and old bog cotton, well past it's sell by date, to break up the dead brown of sleeping heather. Bog cotton, even the old stuff, is very cheerfull stuff though, bopping about in the breeze.