The Wall at Rushend (1)

Many is the time I have driven along the gated lane from Falstone to Lanehead, following the line of the long-since redundant Border Counties Railway. The lane follows a contour along the valley side; the River North Tyne is below you to your right, the overgrown old trackbed alternately to one or the other side as bridges are crossed. In places the lane is separated from the occasional field, but more often from rough upland grassland, by post and wire fences. In other places, old field walls remain, some holding on, the majority decaying, tumbling and in places breached. At Thorneyburn, the level crossing gates are always open now but if your imagination ran away with you, you might still hear a distant train, whistling for them to be closed against you, or see a whiff of smoke rising from the brick chimney of the still-surviving plate-layer's hut.

Between Thorneyburn and Rushend the field wall is home to numerous species of lichen, and it was seeing Cladonias growing there on the moss which caused me to stop and take a closer look.

Looking westwards along the wall towards Thorneyburn station, beside the greening trees
The gaps between the coping stones were like miniature canyons, in places filled with forests of tiny Cladonia (and moss as in this first picture) ...


Using a penny to give scale to the Cladonia
All of them I think are Cladonia diversa

Looking down on a large group of Cladonia
A closer view of a smaller group
Here, the red apothecia have become confluent, covering the whole of the top of the cup
In following parts I will describe other lichens found living on the wall at Rushend.