Down to earth

BEACHCOMBING with JO BELASCO BA Hons History of Architecture and Design

It’s the perfect egg hunt for beachcombers. Over the Easter holidays The Fleet and Chesil Nature Reserve holds a Great Egg-case hunt where the information gathered is sent off for research purposes. “We are all marine biologists for the day,” exclaimed our lovely guide Marc. There were shark, skate and ray egg cases to search for between the pebbles. Marc amazed us by saying that sometimes there were visiting leather back turtles in the Fleet waters and even whales. As the sea was very calm that day we sat on the highest point of the Chesil bank and had a cetacean watch, basically looking out for the flap of a dolphin fin breaking the surface or gulls hovering over a certain area which would alert us to the possibility of whale or dolphin. We didn’t see any but it was a nice thing to do and there’s always next time. For years I had wanted to find enough egg cases to complete an ongoing project. To me the individual eggcases looked like chain mail but I never had found enough to realise my ambition to make a chain mail vest. With Marc’s guidance on where to look I slowly collected what I calculated was a vest’s worth. Working with the brittle Batman-like critters is fiddly but I was pleased with the final version. My mistake was to do the photo shoot at a beach. One rogue sea breeze and the whole crinkly vest got entangled in the thread I had used to string it together. The model and I pretended we were less doing a fashion shoot and more in a Dr Who episode, possibly, Attack of the Sea Necklace. Disappointed by the result I tried again in the safety of a frame. The Wild Chesil centre don’t just hold organised egg hunts at Easter but all through the year. Granted at Easter you do get the bonus of an Easter egg if you find an egg case but they can be found all year round. To see this and what other events are hosted by The Fleet and Chesil Reserve go to dorsetwildlife trust.org.uk or pop in for a cuppa and a look around. Well behaved dogs are allowed on the hunt on a lead and there is even special doggie ice cream available. Paid parking and toilets are available at The Fine Foundation Centre Wild Chesil Reserve, Portland Beach Road, DT4 9XE or phone 01305 206191.

Getting on the case in the big egg hunt

ON THE HUNT: The Great Eggcase Hunt at The Chesil Beach Centre. Above: Ray and shark eggcase chain mail vest and, below, making a necklace

The West Dorset Magazine, May 6, 2022 39 Down to earth Looking up is really therapeutic for you

Kevin Quinn is a Dark Sky Custodian for the Cranborne Chase Dark Sky Reserve who lives in Piddletrenthide. Read his blog at theastroguy.wordpress.com

As someone who lives with Parkinson’s, I’m keenly aware of the need to be mindful of my mental wellbeing, stress management, and of how I’m doing generally. Given the importance of sleep for health and well-being, it may seem counter-intuitive, then, to suggest staying up late to go stargazing, but doing exactly that has been shown to be very beneficial. There’s undoubtedly something calming about being outside under a dark starry sky, identifying constellations, checking out the colours of the stars, spotting shooting stars, the ISS and other satellites. And no equipment is necessary. In fact, as often as not when I’m out with my telescope, I spend as much time just staring up at the sky with the naked eye, drinking it all in, watching the Milky Way arch overhead, as many generations of humans have done since the dawn of time. It’s well known that being in the midst of nature in general helps relieve stress, calms the mind, and helps us put things into perspective. It’s not always considered as such, but the nocturnal environment is as much ‘nature’ as what we can see during the day. People are increasingly encouraged to fear the dark. Yet the night sky is our broader home and where we and everything around us came from. We are, after all, made of starstuff, the animate byproduct of the life cycle of stars and the passage of time. I find contemplating the time scales involved, the sizes of the objects that can be seen, and their distances from the Earth, gives a calming sense of perspective. The stars are tens to hundreds to thousands of light years away, there are a hundred billion of them in our galaxy alone, the next nearest galaxy (Andromeda) is 2.4 million light years away … yet all this is visible with the naked eye. Instead of feeling small and insignificant, experiencing such a vista is incredibly empowering and affirming. We’re able to say ‘yes, I saw all these things’. But it’s not all anecdotal … A 2014 scientific study (Dark Nature: Exploring potential benefits of nocturnal nature-based interaction for human and environmental health) indicated that participants at stargazing events ‘… highlighted a range of benefits, including a sense of personal growth, from developing skills to experiencing positive emotions and a variety of transcendent thoughts and experiences.’ In the 2015 study ‘Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior’ researchers wrote that: ‘Awe arises in evanescent experiences. Looking up at the starry expanse of the night sky. Gazing out across the blue vastness of the ocean … although often fleeting and hard to describe, serves a vital social function. By diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, awe may encourage people to forego strict self-interest to improve the welfare of others.’ So there you have it: stargazing makes you nicer … #fact :) Speaking of engaging with the nocturnal ecosystem and environment. Many’s the night I’ve spent sitting by my scope, listening to frogs croaking, foxes, deer and owls and goodness knows what calling, not to mention the many unidentifiable small rustlings, while innumerable stars glittered overhead. I mentioned earlier that no equipment is necessary, which is true, but binoculars and/or telescopes bring much more of the universe to view, deepening the experience and understanding. Stargazing, then, has much to recommend it for helping us deal with stresses, wellbeing issues, physical and mental health, personal growth, etc, by connecting us with the universe, experiencing the same sense of awe as generations of people before. Looking up at the stars, contemplating the cosmos, helps you enter into a meditative state where everyday stresses fade. It’s therapy; connecting you to nature, and bringing calmness to mind and body. So, what are you waiting for? Go outside and get looking up.

STARSTRUCK: Don’t let yourself get so distracted that you miss out on what’s going on above your head

Reflections on the Portesham Mirror

PAGAN VIEWS

By Jo Belasco

It’s only natural that our special places are mostly local. Places with memories of friends and family, places where special events occurred. Sometimes , they are not the ‘main event’ – for instance, when I walk to what is commonly known as the Portesham Dinosaur (a dinosaur sculpted from farm machinery) what I am actually drawn to is the gateway into nowhere a little higher up the hill. It hints at Narnian adventures and that combined with the tunnel of arches (once apparatus for transporting stone at this old quarry) makes this area one of pilgrimage to me. A footpath goes from Winters Lane up through Portesham farm and round down the steep Portesham hill. Somewhere in the village, The Portesham Mirror was discovered in the 1990s and is now displayed at Dorchester County Museum. The Mirror is from an Iron Age grave of a older lady and made of beautiful polished bronze in the style of Celtic Art. A few years ago I took a photo of Zelda swimming in a little pool at the top of the hill and stuck it on Facebook naming it, Alternative Portesham Mirror as the pond looks out over the village of Portesham below and resembles a mirror of kinds. I loved the idea of capturing the sun in the reflection. I wondered if our ancestors loved that idea too and as the pond dries up in late Summer used a mirror as a substitute mechanism for ‘capturing’ the sun. This led me to research into iron age mirror design and use. The mainline Christian theory of mirrors is that they were used for purposes of vanity and indeed often symbolized vanity as in the mermaid often depicted with a mirror and comb. However, recent scholarly research has offered an alternative suggestion. Melanie Giles and Jody Joy write: “It (the mirror) may also have been associated with powers of augery and insight into the past, or access to ancestral or spiritual worlds” –(Mirrors in the British Iron Age: Performance, Revelation and Power, available to download online). Of course, this whips my imagination into overdrive as the name Portesham already lends itself to interpretations of magical portals. I copied this pattern of the mirror design from other articles by the aforementioned archaeologists. t was hard to draw the weird shapes and the result lacks finesse but I hope piques your interest in The Portesham Mirror and its Pagan possibilities.

SPECIAL PLACES: Zelda swimming in a pool, the Portesham Mirror design and, below, the gateway to another dimension

The West Dorset Magazine, May 6, 2022 41 Down to earth Reversing worrying spike in decline of hedgehogs

Sally Cooke lives in Tolpuddle with her husband, two grown up sons and her spotty rescue dog. Sally will be writing seasonal pieces for The West Dorset Magazine and you can see her work, Sparrows in a Puddle at Instagram.com/ sparrows.puddle.photos

When I was a child in the 1970s, the sight of flattened roadside hedgehogs was so common that jokes about hedgehogs crossing the road ‘to see their flatmates’ were shared in the playground and seemed harmless enough. If you were out after dark it was quite normal to see them snuffling about and I particularly remember them sneaking into my gran’s lean-to to steal the cat food each evening. Now, however, as habitat loss and other factors have caused Britain’s hedgehog population to decline drastically, I see even one dead hedgehog on the road as a tragedy and those childhood jokes seem in very poor taste. We are so pleased that hedgehogs regularly visit our Tolpuddle garden. We first noticed them scraping through the gravel outside the front door hunting for the sunflower hearts that had fallen from the birdfeeder above. Hedgehogs will eat virtually anything, but the high phosphorus/low calcium content of sunflower seeds can give them a crippling bone disease if they eat too many. So, for a few years now we’ve been putting bowls of hedgehog food and water under the feeder to give them something healthier before they head off around the garden to help with our slug control. Hedgehogs are known to travel around a mile each night foraging, so we’ve made sure there’s a gap under our fence to provide access from our garden to our neighbour’s.

May 1 to 7 is Hedgehog Awareness Week, organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS). As well as providing food and water and ‘hedgehog highways’ between gardens, the BHPS are also urging us to check for hedgehogs before mowing and strimming, make sure that garden ponds have a safe route out, cover drains and deep holes, stop using pesticides, keep netting at a safe height, and check compost heaps before digging the fork in. The next couple of months is peak mating season for our Dorset hedgehogs. Late one evening last May, the loud snorting and puffing of the male chasing a female around the garlic patch sounded to me just like a steam train. Hopefully, there’ll be more of the same this year and we might be rewarded by the sight of baby ‘hoglets’ later in the summer. Cooking and eating seaweed is a shore thing

JOHN WRIGHT is a naturalist and forager who lives in rural West Dorset. He has written eight books, four of which were for River Cottage. He wrote the award-winning Forager’s Calendar and in 2021 his Spotter’s Guide to Countryside Mysteries was published.

That the British have never taken to eating seaweed is a great pity considering that we are surrounded by millions of tons of the stuff. Yes, laver, (a seaweed that looks like brown clingfilm) is eaten in Wales, and dulse is occasionally eaten in northern parts of Britain. Having tried about 20 species of seaweed I am with the north in favouring dulse above all others. Dulse is a common red seaweed which looks like a cut-out of a hand and usually found attached to wracks, the brown seaweeds that dominate the shore. Your expedition should be on a calm day when there is a spring (large) tide, and it is safest collect your seaweed while the tide is going out. We are extraordinarily lucky in our tides from Portland to the Chapman’s Pool area in that during springs the tide goes out and stays out for nearly four hours giving us plenty of time for gathering. Seaweeds should be cut carefully, a little from each clump of fronds, as though you were already preparing it in your kitchen. This avoids over-picking and a great deal of wasted time later. Choose only the freshest looking specimens and those free from such things as sea mat (little, silvery cells arranged in a honeycomb formation). I dry most of my dulse on a sheet in the garden for a couple of days, then in a low oven for an hour until it is crispy. I then put it in my serious blender and turn it into a powder which I store in jars. This can be sprinkled on scallops or almost any fish dish. Or it can be used along with mushroom and onion powder as you would a stock cube – all three ingredients hitting the umami spot. Just steamed, it goes green instantly and tastes a bit like cabbage with just a hint of iodine – which at least shows how good it is for you. I have served steamed dulse in a flan with wild sea beet and smoked fish, an amazingly good dish. The ultimate, however, is very simple. Wash, then pat dry fresh dulse, then dust it with flour and drop a handful in a good cooking oil at 180C. Stand back a bit. When it stops fizzing, leave for another minute, then fish it out and leave to cool and drain on a clean cloth. Dulse crisps are the best, you will love them.