Amazing Cow Parsley

Can you take too many photos of a landscape? I was absolutely blown away on Monday walking through a local nature reserve which was absolutely stuffed to the gills with Cow Parsley! I usually get a lift back to The Parents' house from Rainbows (I'm a leader with the local unit) but I unexpectedly needed to walk back this week instead and I'm so pleased I did because this wonderful display greeted me. 

This land is a nature reserve and also a flood plain for the River Uck where it runs through the town so it's usually fairly boggy and through it is a raised walkway for people to trundle along without wading through the swamp. The path is flanked with lots of trees casting shade and it stretches right back until it hits a railway line so you really feel enclosed in it even though you are actually only metres from houses and the town centre. 

I've walked through here hundreds of times to get to the Guide hut, but I've never seen so much Cow Parsley here before. It was honestly breath taking. Every corner or twist in the path I rounded there was another view of this seemingly endless landscape - many of the stems taller than me!

Last time I came across such an amazing display I ended up creating my Cow Parsley Stitchscape, and you can see the blog post about that one here if you are interested. They're very pretty plants and they were absolutely alive with bees and other buzzing insects. 

A happy little me! This photo was to try and show you how tall some of these plants were. I'm 5ft 4" and I was standing on a raised path! I also really need a haircut. 

There are different sections as you walk through the reserve. If you start from the town end you walk through a gate and into a field with long grasses that dogs seem to love, then into a slightly more secluded pathway which cracks and crumbles like how I imagine the surface of the Moon to look. It's a great texture and I've definitely got some crackle print fabrics that would work with this. Finally you end up going over a little bridge and into the raised pathway/Cow Parsley extraordinaire section for a while before popping out into another field at the other end, at the top of which is our Guide hut. 

I'll have to try walking through here again to keep an eye on the seasonal changes.