A glint of sun and hint of blue sky stole into February’s persistent pallor. Recovering from a winter bug, I was sure a walk at Oglet would provide a much-needed tonic. As I wandered along the shore, a watchful grey heron, redshanks and a flotilla of mallards were my only companions. The peace was tangible.
The clay-rich cliffs at Oglet have regionally important geodiversity sites (Rigs) status, recognised for the locally rare plant species that grow there. The cliffs are prone to occasional slumping, but one of my favourite plants – coltsfoot – favours this unstable ground and, although early in the year, I thought I might find signs of it.
But as I rounded the bend, I found chaos and destruction. Entire sections of cliff had slipped into the river, leaving only naked substrate, devoid of any vegetation. The language of landslide was made flesh: deformation, collapse, rotation and flow. A combination of heavy winter rains, recent storms and high tides had ravaged the cliffs, dispatching them into the Mersey.
Long bramble strands and sinuous ivy stems lay stranded. The energy of separation had inverted material so that topsoil was now subsoil. On the shore, one lobe of clay remained intact but translocated from its mid-slope home. A lone tree stood somehow upright in its new home, wearing a skirt of bleached lyme grass leaves but with roots exposed, desiccated by sun and wind, and now bathed in the Mersey’s waters twice daily.
I’m familiar with plant recolonisation on unstable ground, however, so I sought promise in the chaos. Some plants were still defiant: rosettes of common yarrow and ribwort plantain, and arrows of hard rush, had all survived the onslaught. Probably, none of them were where they had first established, but they are tenacious species. Lyme grass, familiar on sand dune systems, dominates the more stable slopes at Oglet, but even these sections were gone, the grass holding on to the lumps of cliff that remained on the shore.
February’s gloom had returned and I left dispirited. I resolved to monitor plants colonising the newly exposed slopes. Perhaps colt’s-foot will be the first I’ll find.
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