Flanders Moss NNR
Yesterday we welcomed Francesca Osowska, the Chief Executive of Scottish Natural Hertiage, to Flanders Moss as part of her Cycle for Nature challenge to cycle to all of the SNH offices and a number of SNH managed NNR’s through the summer.
She timed it well as she got to see the pictures produced as part of the Flanders Moss Under the Microscope art project as well as hearing about other aspects of the NNR. We talked about the history of the reserve and how it has developed from a degraded bog hardly visited by anyone to a well-loved site that is seen by 10-15000 people a year and a bog recovering with sphagnum spreading across the surface as the restoration of the peatlands progresses.
From her comments afterwards she appreciated the peace and tranquility of the site (once I had stopped talking that is) and has also started a trend of cycle shorts and wellies. And she was pleased to hear that if bogs were football clubs then Flanders would be Tottenham Hotspur (everyone has heard of it, not so many people visit but with some careful recent investment it is starting to perform much better and silverware beckons – you had to be there really!).
Of course time was limited so she was only able to hear a small part of the massive range of Flanders stories. Whales, strawberry orb-weavers, bog sun-jumpers, Graeme’s improvements, the magical properties of sundew, buckets, bog-walking, lagg fen and the joys of ditching damming weren’t covered this time. Maybe next time.
2 bogs, a swamp and some islands 