The call...

Just dropping in...

Steep Holm - September 2011

Next to May, the beginning of September is my favourite time on Steep Holm.  It’s rather like having the house to yourself after a rowdy party; the blissful silence after the last guest has gone.  By the end of August, the vast majority of the gulls will have packed up and headed for the mainland - it’s not an uncommon sight, about now, to see them congregating on freshly ploughed fields like a flock of rooks.  They are clearly having a good time - and so shall I!

The trip across is smooth and even, the sea flat calm with no wind and low, unthreatening clouds.  During the summer months, there is usually a crowd of gulls on the pebble beach looking askance at our arrival and then taking off in a wheeling, complaining, squawking mob.  This time it is all very good mannered . . . and quiet.  Unsurprisingly with this wet summer, the island is ‘very green’ and the paths healthily grassed - but tidy; wardens Chris and Jenny have spent a long weekend with the mower before our arrival getting things straight.  It feels warm and still as we climb the zigzag path through the sycamore wood. Because the prevailing winds are usually from the west, this part of the island is the most sheltered and we can feel the warmth given off by the rock of the eastern cliffs.  So the island usually manages a warm welcome to its guests! 

Where the cliff path turns to make its final zag to the top, the wardens had just installed a light trap (borrowed from my friend David Agassiz) to determine what moths are inhabiting the island during late summer.

Beside the path that circumvents the top of the island, the brambles are loaded with blackberries providing the same good picking as last year - but small comfort for such a difficult season. 

By late morning, the sun makes an appearance and the still air encourages butterflies onto the wing; they dib and dab from flower to flower over the brambles: Red Admirals, Painted Ladies and Small Whites.  Every hour or so, the air is filled with instalments of swallows pitching and swooping over the island scrub, gathering food and energy at the start of their long African migration.  This is a magical time of year.

A little later, Jenny tells me that the Agassiz moth trap has caught seven Large Yellow Underwing moths and one unknown.  (David Agassiz was to later tell me the unknown moth is a moderately rare Large Tabby - island naturalist Tony Parsons came across one in Steep Holm’s Parsons’ Cave in 1992!)

Up on the top of the island, at Summit Battery, Mark Harris is working hard removing the corroded cast-iron stay plates that were used to anchor the battery’s 6-inch naval guns during WW2.  Each plate is bolted in place and set in concrete.  Once the concrete is hammered away, many of the bolts can be unscrewed with little evident corrosion.  Mark has already cleared the plates from Garden Battery - he tells me there is huge variation in the quality of workmanship with some plates being held by only a few bolts.  Just as well the guns were never fired in anger!

                                                                                    Howard Smith

For full booking information please visit the Steep Holm web site:  www.steepholm.org.uk or telephone the Booking Secretary on 01934 522125.

Steep Holm trips for 2011:    September: 17.  October:  1,  15.

Steep Holm - August 2011

RODNEY LEGG 1947 - 2011

When I was first able to get to Steep Holm in the late 1970s, Rodney Legg, who has just died, was its singular and eccentric warden.  Steep Holm had been bought in 1976 with money raised in the memory of Kenneth Allsop: one of the first environmental journalists of the television age.  Rodney had got to know Kenneth through the Dorset County Magazine of which Rodney was both founder and editor.  For some years they shared an intense and implacable environmental agenda.  After Kenneth’s death, Rodney, together with Mandy Allsop Kenneth’s daughter, John Percival and the renowned author John Fowles and his wife Elizabeth visited Steep Holm in November 1973.  As a result John Fowles wrote: “In everyway the island is experiencing an ecological low, yet it has immense potential and could become a place of great beauty again . . .”  The island was only just beginning to emerge from the depredations of the Second World War.

For a few years the island was leased to the Memorial Trust until it was eventually purchased, under very generous terms, in March 1976.  The previous few years hadn’t been wasted however, for Rodney along with Tony Parsons, Stan and Joan Rendell and innumerable volunteers had been busy clearing the debris of war and organising, for the first time, regular trips from the mainland.  Slowly, Steep Holm became less of ‘bomb site’, to use John Fowles’ description, and more of a nature reserve.  Around this time Rodney committed a few environmental misjudgements: the introduction of hedgehogs and muntjac deer to the island.  The hedgehogs did very well at first with a monumental population explosion, but this was followed by population collapse and extinction.  They had eaten themselves out of house and home.  The muntjacs were introduced in the hope they might reduce the prevalence of scrub.  The deer have survived and they are a surprise treat for visitors when they catch sight of them.  Unfortunately, they have had little effect on the scrub.

For many years, Rodney with Chris Maslen and Jenny Smith worked on the restoration of the old inn that overlooks the island’s pebble beach.  Rodney could usually be found labouring on an inn wall wearing a pair of candy-pink, Marigold, rubber gloves.  Sadly, problems with the inn’s restoration proved insurmountable and the island trust switched its energies to the Victorian Barracks.  While all this was going on, Rodney wrote and published four books on Steep Holm all of which are a delightful read.  In 1985, he also produced the island’s first guide which remains something of a classic.

Rodney retired from wardening Steep Holm in 1998, but he kept very busy.  He wrote many walking guides which included the Mendip and Blackdown Hills, and the Dorset and Somerset coastlines.  Indeed, he published something like 125 books in all!  He was an engaged committee member of the Open Spaces Society and the National Trust - often upsetting people with his views.  He worked ceaselessly keeping Dorset’s footpaths clear and accessible - often with his own secateurs.  For me, Rodney was always kind, welcoming and slightly mad.  I especially remember falling off the boat and into Pescara’s Pizzeria (now Tarantella’s) in St. James Street after a hot day on the island and being surprised by Rodney’s unexpected arrival a while later - still wearing his pink Marigold gloves.

                                                                                                Howard Smith

Steep Holm Trips for 2011

August: 30.  September: 11, 14, 17.  October: 1, 15.

For information about Steep Holm visit:  www.steepholm.org.uk

Or contact the Booking Secretary on 01934 522125.

A View From The Island

Steep Holm May 2011

The trip to Steep Holm was rather different this time.  This season, the island’s trust has engaged the services of Cardiff Sea Safaris who employ high-speed, rigid inflatable boats (ribs) each of which can carry twelve passengers.  The two ribcraft arrived on time at 9 am and loading/embarkation was quick and easy.  Children got themselves into the front seats, almost beside themselves with excitement - fitting the life jackets just heightened the sense of anticipation.  And then we were off!!  The two powerful Suzuki Marine engines opened up and we left Knightstone Harbour with a silky roar. 

After weeks of sunny weather, the morning was overcast but still warm.  A slight Force 3-4 breeze blowing from the south-west.  The sea was reasonably calm with only a moderate swell - which probably disappointed the youngsters because we only really took off three or four times!  But it was very exciting and surprisingly comfortable.  The harbour and pier disappeared to our stern while Brean Down slid away to port with us barely noticing.  Meanwhile the island was coming towards us as though viewed through a zoom lens.  Well maybe not quite like that - but you know what I mean!  And then we were there, after about twelve minutes of blistering activity we were pressing against the pebbles of Steep Holm’s East Beach.  A wide metal gantry was pushed into place and disembarkation was easy with no wet feet.  Each craft was emptied within a matter of minutes and set off immediately for the further 24 passengers waiting at Knightstone.  It seemed like an impossibly short time before the boats were back and everyone was ashore.

Yellow wallflowers illuminated the eastern cliffs and, after all the dry weather, I was surprised at how green the island was.  Wardens, Chris Maslen and Jenny Smith had already been able to spend a week or two on the island and the cleared paths were in perfect shape.   The gulls appeared to agree because they were nesting on the short, warm turf all along the path sides and most of the nests had three eggs.  Last year, many gull chicks had perished during the dry summer - so far as I could tell that hadn’t affected gull numbers.   On the brambles above Rudder Rock (the western tip), caterpillars of the Brown-tail moth were at work stripping the leaves and beginning to move onto the cherry and whitebeam trees.  Jenny assured me the brown-tail season will soon end - but then comes the Lackey moth time and we have had serious plagues of those in the past - practically defoliating the island.  Unfortunately, the celebrated Steep Holm peonies had already flowered a few weeks previously.  Usually, if you get to the island in early May, you’ll catch them.  Ah well, there’s always next year.

At the Priory site, a team of National Trust dry-stone wallers were at work repairing the south perimeter wall.  One of the main problems is the availability of suitable stone - there’s a lot of scavenging and gleaning to be done before the work can actually start.  Steep Holm’s lucky, for two of the wallers had worked on Mendip’s dry stone walls at Wavering Down.

The weather held all day.  The ribcraft arrived on time and proceeded with the furiously exciting return journey - whoops and shrieks all the way.  We had to wait awhile at Knightstone for the tide to catch up but the consensus was the trips had been brilliant!!

Howard Smith

Steep Holm Trips for 2011

May: 18, 21.  
June: 2, 4, 16, 18.  
July: 2, 4, 16, 18, 30. 
August: 2, 14, 16, 18, 30.  
September: 11, 14, 17.  
October: 1, 15.

For information about Steep Holm visit:  www.steepholm.org.uk

Or contact the Booking Secretary on 01934 522125.

Download the podcast: May: Notes From An Even Smaller Island

Visitor's video of gull chicks on Steep Holm

Visitor's video of a Muntjac on Steep Holm