When I lived in Cambridgeshire I met many inspiring people – particularly those with expert knowledge of the natural world. I have been honoured to spend time with many articulate and interesting people who never tire of teaching others about the world around them. One of these people is Lynne Farrell – a botanist of national note. Lynne recently moved from Cambridgeshire to Cumbria and this is where we caught up with her just before Christmas 2017. Having lived for 38 years in Hemingford Grey, Lynne now lives in Arnside “the most biologically diverse area in the UK”.

Arnside is on the shores of Morecombe Bay, some 15 miles South West of Kendal. This is an AONB – Area of Outstanding National Beauty. The biological diversity includes being one of the few places in Britain where Maidenhair Fern occurs naturally, the others being Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Ireland. Arnside is the most northerly of these sites. The Maidenhair Fern is an attractive, delicate green plant, with fan-shaped leaf segments. It likes to grow in the grykes (fissures) of the tufa rock, which is a type of limestone formed by fresh water dissolving the limestone deposits. Even in Ireland Maidenhead Fern is not common – the only two areas where it grows wild are the limestone pavements of The Burran and the Aran Islands.

Something else I would not have known had we not met up with Lynne, is that there is a type of tree which grows around the Arnside area, but grows nowhere else on earth. It is called the Sorbus Lancastriensis, or Lancastrian Whitebeam. As with the Maidenhair Fern, this type of tree seems to favour the coastal Carboniferous limestone cliffs, crags and scree of Westmorland and the Morecombe Bay Area.

Nature is part of Lynne’s life and seeps into her house in the form of art:- wood; felt; stone; glass, all produced by craftspeople, not by machines. I particularly liked her beautiful Christmas decorations – mostly made from natural materials.

Nestling among the myriad Christmas cards was a handmade rectangular glass plate, in a greeny-blue colour. In front of the plate Lynne had placed a twig of spruce, which she had partially sprayed a dull white. Whether by accident or design, this created a winter scene reminiscent of the Northern Lights. I’m not religious, but I could also interpret the scene as the Christmas star in the night sky. Either way is was delicate and beautiful and perfect.

I am very shy about asking people if I can take photos. I now wish I had taken photos of Lynne’s decorations as they were perfectly in tune with my own tastes. I am getting a lot better at the photo thing, though – today I met a woman walking a bulldog (I am in Somerset now!). I have rarely come into close proximity with a bulldog (as opposed to a staffie or other big butch dog). I was fascinated and made a point of asking the woman if I could stroke the dog while I studied it carefully. I don’t know enough words to say how I felt, other than ‘fascinated’ – oh, ‘sad’ is another word, because I have heard that dogs with flat faces have breathing problems. I chatted to the woman about the dog’s protruding lower jaw and she told me that her dog’s jaw was unusual in that it didn’t protrude very much. God only knows how much a ‘normal’ one must protrude – I will have to have a look at Google images. Can’t do it right now though, as I am in deepest, darkest Somerset (Andy has just bought cider to prove it) and yes, naturally, we don’t have internet or phone signals. Forget government schemes for faster-than-the-speed-of-light broadband – just focus on getting any broadband at all…

But Zider in Zomerzet is getting ahead of myself, let’s go back to Arnside. As part of her work as a botanist, Lynne is the official plant recorder for the Isles of Mull, Coll and Tiree on the west coast of Scotland. This means that over the last two decades Lynne and her team have surveyed every tetrad of those islands (a tetrad being a 2km x 2km square) and as a result she is currently producing the most detailed record of what grows on any British off-shore island. It is not unknown for Lynne to go striding out in to the middle of nowhere in the wilds of Scotland and come night time, just bed down among the heather. I should make it clear that oftentimes Lynne would be out there totally alone! People think that I am brave to sleep in a layby in the motorhome – but I am sure I could not bivvy down, alone, in the total pitch dark in the middle of the Scottish wilderness. Each to their own, I guess!

And finally… to make you smile: