Kenfig Pool and Kenfig Sand Dunes

Kenfig Pool (Photo: Public Domain)

I was thinking about places in the countryside that I remember from my childhood and thought I would like to tell you about Kenfig Pool and the sand dunes there. My parents used to take me to this amazing place when I was a boy. We used to go on lots of days out, visiting the countryside. My dad had a blue Vanguard car and this is what we would go out in. Mum and Dad were always encouraging when it came to my interest in nature and they used to buy me lots of books. I had most of the Observer’s Books.

Observer's Books (Photo: Wikipedia, Fair use for illustrative purposes)

I had the Observer’s Book of British Wild Flowers, and the book on fungi and British birds, and wild animals, and freshwater fish, and even the Observer’s Book of Mosses and Liverworts. That last book was given to me when I was only five, and I know that because it has survived and is at my Dad’s house still, I think, and it is signed to me in the front for my “Fifth birthday.”

Anyway, one place we used to go which I really used to love was Kenfig. It is near Porthcawl but much wilder. There is a big lake called Kenfig Pool and miles and miles of sand dunes.

These dunes have rough paths through them and eventually you can get to a long sandy beach by the sea. It takes well over an hour, as I remember it, to get from the carpark to the beach. But the walk is the real fun of it all. There were so many wild flowers I could look out for and insects and newts and frogs and toads, lizards too.

Kenfig Pool

There were temporary pools that formed in the dunes and they had boggy bits around them with sphagnum moss and bog myrtle. I used to love the smell of marshy ground, especially if there was water mint that added its aroma if you stepped on it or brushed by it as you were walking. In these pools there were newts and water beetles and other water insects. I was always fascinated by water, by ponds, streams and rivers, and rock pools when we went to beaches. I used to wear my Wellingtons so I could investigate the watery places without getting my feet wet, though often I did get water in my boots and my Mum used to get mad at me because of this.

Part of the fascination was I never knew what I would find. I was exploring. It was like it stirred some sort of instinct to hunt for life; I was a hunter-gatherer boy. In those days, I was forever turning stones over, looking under boards and corrugated iron on waste ground, wading around in muddy ponds, seeing what I could catch in rivers and streams, and exploring the railway bank behind where we lived. Nature was my world. It meant much more to me than people and the human world and I hated school.

Viper's Bugloss (Photo: Public Domain)

But getting back to Kenfig, one of the reasons I was so excited by the place was because there were rare wild flowers to be found there. I used to like looking up plants in my wild-flower books. I used to always be on the lookout for new species and hoping I would discover something really rare. Wintergreen, hound’s tongue and many types of orchids were some of the rare plants that grew at Kenfig Dunes. I used to find blue viper’s bugloss and pink centaury and also we used to look out for dewberries, a type of blackberry that grew in the dunes. We used to collect them and take them home so Mum could make pie which we used to have with custard. I used to love eating blackberry pie and custard or just stewed blackberries and custard.

Often I used to go on ahead of my family, or be lagging behind them, as we made our way over the dunes. I was always investigating some marshy ground, turning over any boulders or rubbish I found or searching in the vegetation. I remember there were some parts where you could find common lizards. They would bask on bits of discarded iron sheeting and on boards and other rubbish that littered the dunes even then….this was back in the early 1960s.

Great Green Grasshopper (Photo: Pixabay/Public Domain)

I used to try and spot great green grasshoppers too. These insects are, as their name suggests, very big, the size of locusts. They lived in some parts of the dunes and you could hear them singing but they are really difficult to find. The insects blend in so well with the vegetation and they stop singing as soon as you get anywhere near them. Most frustrating!

Often I found young toads and they seemed happy in the sandy soil. I remember thinking about natterjack toads I had read about in my books. They liked habitats like this but were very rare and didn’t live in South Wales but that didn’t stop me dreaming I would find them there.

Six-Spot Burnet (Photo: Pixabay/Public Domain)

There were lots of butterflies too. Wall butterflies, meadow browns, common blues, small coppers, small heaths and the colourful day-flying moths known as burnet moths. Many of these types of butterfly you hardly ever see in Britain today. It has always depressed me to watch wildlife vanishing. I never thought it would happen when I was younger. I mean, you don’t think about these things. You think everything will always be there somehow.

In spring though it was amazing because that is when there were most wild-flowers in bloom and the ponds were full of water. At this time too, if you happened to get there at the right time, it was possible to see thousands of adult toads making their way to Kenfig Pool. They used to use the lake to breed in and I remember seeing these amphibians all over the ground on the shores of the lake and in the water around the edges. many of them were mated pairs, in what naturalists call amplexus, where the male toad grasps the female with his arms round her and rides on her back.

Common Toad (Photo: Public Domain)

I used to like the idea of how wild it felt once you got away from the road and ‘civilisation.’ It was just miles of sand dunes covered in marram grass and other plants that tolerated the sandy soil, the sky above and hardly a soul ever in sight. Most people stayed in the car-park, few ventured into the dunes and were prepared to make the long trek.

When we were getting near the beach area you could tell. There were visible signs if you knew what to look out for. The sand got more so, less covered in vegetation, and new plants appeared.  The weird and prickly sea holly and sea spurge, food-plant for the rare spurge hawk moth. It was a moth I always hoped to someday see but never did. It is funny how we can live in expectation of some dream coming true, even though it is very much against the odds. It seems easier to do this when you are younger.

Gatekeeper on Sea Holly (Photo: Pixabay/Public Domain)

In this part of Kenfig it was like a zone, a border between the dunes and the beach, a place where different plants would grow. Then there was the top of the beach proper with rotting seaweed, bladderwrack with sandhoppers underneath it. I always used to enjoy moving the weed and seeing the hundreds of little crustaceans jumping about and seeking cover. It fascinated me how they all lived under these piles of seaweed.

Sandhoppers

So Kenfig was very much a part of my childhood and early teens. I don’t know what it is like today, probably spoiled to some degree. Most of my life and growing up I bore witness to seeing places I loved in the countryside getting ruined. I am sure you know what I mean, I mean watching places get built all over, ponds drained, roads built etc etc. Reminds me of the Joni Mitchell song: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” But the wild places are still there in my head, in my memories, and are very much a part of what has made me as I am.

Footnote: This is the slightly edited first chapter of an unpublished book I began writing. More chapters will appear in future blogs.

The Coal-yard

The Coal-yard That Became Housing

Restharrow - Ononis repens (Photo: Public Domain)

Today, I am going to write about somewhere my family called “The Coal-yard.” It was on the other side of the railway line and railway bank behind where we lived. As a child fascinated by nature, I used to go there to look for wildflowers, butterflies, moths and once common reptiles. The coal-yard was a wonderful unrecognised nature reserve because it supported so many species of wildlife. It was presumably viewed by the local authorities as little more than waste ground, of no use now the coal mines were no longer a thriving business and British Railways were no longer using it. What was once my coal-yard was destroyed and became a site for housing and a short road, together with the almost obligatory lawns.

All of the wildflowers and wildlife have gone, including the common lizards that lived there.

Small Copper (Photo: Public Domain) 

I recently blogged about habitat destruction and natural environments that I have seen destroyed and vanish locally. The same picture is happening globally. Just think about how many woods, fields, ponds or other wild places that have gone from the area you live in. I am sure you will know what I mean.

Here is a poem I wrote describing the coal-yard and what was once there.

Common Lizard (photo: Public Domain)

The Coal-yard of my Vanishing World

The coal-yard has long gone,

Once there were wildflowers in the abandoned sidings,

Pink restharrow, golden bird’s-foot trefoil and purplish tufted vetch

Added colour to the picture

And nectar for the bees and butterflies;

Small heath, small copper,

Common blue, grayling,

Wall brown, meadow brown,

Small tortoiseshell, and the day-flying burnet moths,

Once added their beauty on the wing,

Flitting from one floral delight to the next,

Basking in the sunlight.

Lizards sunned on sleepers and anthill mounds,

Slow-worms slithered under rusty corrugated iron;

Catch them if you can, and I often did.

It was a boy naturalist’s paradise,

Over the railway bank,

A secret heaven,

A pasture of delights.

Now apartment blocks, a cul-de-sac

And manicured lawns are the replacements.

Plums and apples fall in season

And rot on the grass,

Where tenants leave them,

And passers-by pass by.

People are starving elsewhere in my vanishing world.

About the Butterflies

Several species of the butterflies mentioned are now recognised as being in a serious decline in numbers throughout the UK. The small heath (Coenonympha pamphilus) is, as its name implies, a small butterfly and fairly inconspicuous with its yellowish-brown wings. It likes a grassy area and its caterpillars feed on various grasses. It was once very plentiful, and although still widely distributed, many of its former colonies have gone.

The wall brown, or simply wall butterfly (Lasiomammata megera) was once very common but has suffered serious declines, although Climate Change is thought to be a reason behind its disappearance. Like the small heath, its caterpillars feed on grasses, so lack of food-plants is not a problem for these species.

Small Tortoiseshell (Photo: Public Domain)

The small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) was once one of the most common British butterflies and was found in a  wide range of habitats, including our gardens. Over the past decades, however, it has experienced a dramatic slump in its number. This is not adequately explained because its food-plant is the stinging nettle and there are plenty of these plants about. It is thought that changes in weather brought about by Climate Change are negatively affecting this pretty butterfly.

My Vanishing World

Endangered Species in a Vanishing World

Llandaff Weir (Photo: Steve Andrews)

Throughout my life I have been very sadly watching the natural world being destroyed bit by bit, pond by pond, forest by forest, field by field, habitat by habitat. Most of this is done in the name of ‘development’ and ‘progress’ and even in the name of safety, e.g. when trees are felled for being potentially dangerous and ponds are drained because a child could fall in and drown. These are the sort of reasons given for destroying part of the natural world, and each part that is destroyed was the home for many species of animal and plant.

As a child and teenager who delighted in the wonders of nature I was discovering, I never dreamed that once common birds, animals, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians and wild flowers would become rare or even endangered species. But this has happened. Here in the UK, the decline in wildlife is truly alarming.

Small Tortoiseshell, a once common butterfly (Photo: Public Domain) 

The honeybee is having problems all over the world, and the new term “colony collapse disorder” is in use to describe their decline. Once common butterflies, like the small tortoiseshell are no longer frequently seen. The numbers of the house-sparrow and starling have dropped drastically. Both these birds used to be seen all over cities and towns and were regular visitors to most gardens but not now. The common lizard isn’t common. Ask yourself this: when did you last see one? Perhaps you have never seen one! The hedgehog, which used to be often seen in gardens, and often seen as a victim of road-kill is not even seen dead on our roads. There are so few hedgehogs about they are not there to get killed by traffic any more. The European eel that I remember seeing in their millions as elvers coming up rivers and streams each year is now listed as a critically endangered species.

Habitat Destruction

Habitat destruction is a massive part of the problem, and it doesn’t have to be tropical rainforest that we need to worry about, although of course the destruction of our jungles is a very alarming threat to the world’s wildlife and ecosystems. Natural environments much closer to home are continuing to be destroyed.

Llandaff Weir

Where elvers once climbed (Photo: Steve Andrews)

In Llandaff and Fairwater, in Cardiff, where I was brought up, there used to be many places where you could find newts, frogs and toads. In other words, there were a number of ponds available for them to breed in. I remember a large pond behind what was then Waterhall School in Fairwater but that has long gone. Right next to Llandaff Village is the River Taff and Llandaff Weir. When I was a boy there were two ponds on the river bank that supported newts, frogs and toads. There were also sticklebacks, as well as various pond snails, water beetles and dragonflies and damselflies that called these ponds their home. Both ponds were destroyed many years ago. The ground was bulldozed flat or made into embankment. Where did all the amphibians go when they returned in spring to find their breeding pools gone?

Elvers
I went along to Llandaff Weir recently with my friend Roger and we were looking at where the ponds used to be and also at the river and the weir. I remember when the elvers used to leave the water and slither their way up the wet concrete and stonework at the edge of the weir. There used to be so many that it was easy to fill a bucket by putting one under the mass of wriggling elvers and dislodging them into it. Every rock in the river would have an elver or elvers under it. This was normal. Now this species is in such small numbers it is listed as critically endangered, as already pointed out.

As a  matter of interest, the River Taff was terribly polluted when I used to go there as a boy back in the early 1960s. The water was black with coal dust from the mines up the Valleys, it foamed with detergents washed down in drains and the mud was also black and had an awful stench. No water plants would grow in the river. Amazingly though, there were minnows, bullheads, stone loaches, sticklebacks, and roach, all to be easily found doing surprisingly well at that time. The minnows and bullheads were the biggest I have ever seen, and this was really surprising because both these fish like clean well aerated water. I think the reason the fish thrived despite the terrible pollution was because of the vast numbers of tubifex worms that lived in the mud.  I used to carry this mud home and put it in a container and let it dry out. The pink or red worms would form into tangled balls as the mud dried out. This made them easy to remove, and after washing them they were ideal live food for the many tropical fish I used to keep.

I don’t know what fish live in the cleaner River Taff as it is today, although I do know that salmon and sea-trout can be seen jumping at Blackweir which is another weir a mile or so downstream. The river has improved in many ways but at the same time it has lost a lot. It has lost at least two ponds that were once on its riverbanks.

This story illustrates well the reason why it makes a great contribution to wildlife conservation if you have a garden pond. The more garden pools there are the better because they can serve as a partial replacement for the ponds that have been destroyed.