Next Sunday - the 8th of June is Open Farm Sunday and our graziers Edward and Nicola Duggleby of Beswick Hall Farms are opening up their excellent farm down the road at Beswick.
Activities include a guided farm walk. tractor and trailer ride, national insect count, brush a lamb, sit on a combine, learn about the foods we produce - followed by refreshments and bbq where you can sample some of the belted galloway herd that help graze Tophill for a small fee.
It's a great opportunity to see a well managed farm with some outstanding habitat - Edward and Nicola entered a lot of their land under Natural England's Higher Level Stewardship scheme and woodlands at the last survey still held breeding turtle dove. Wet meadows have had scrapes excavated in them for lapwing and waders which former warden Peter Izzard and myself helped advise upon. In return a few plants have been swapped - some of our wetland specialities for some of their woodlands ones (The plantations around Barff Hill covert are very similar to what Tophill Low would have been like prior to the creation of the water works and did not suffer the bulldozer) - as such plants like lords and ladies have been introduced at Tophill as the nearest genetic progeny.
Clearly it'll be quite popular as places are strictly limited - so if interested please contact the Duggleby's on 01377 270387 or 07818 169025
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Forewarning too on another exciting series of events coming up in September:
We're teaming up with Beverley Boat Hire to run three riverine adventures to Tophill Low as part of the Visit Hull and East Yorkshire Walking and Outdoor festival. We'll be running two trips from North Frodingham and one from Beverley to travel the river Hull to the Nature Reserve and dropping anchor at Hempholme Lock where there'll be a two hour tour of the reserve
Prices and exact timings are yet to be finalised - but please send us an e-mail or drop a line if you have an expression of interest.
It should be a brilliant opportunity to see neighbouring areas seldom seen like Emmotland, West beck tributaries, Bethell's bridge to the north and Swinemoor, Leven Canal, High Eske and the like to the south. We can't guarantee shearwaters and bonxies - but kingfishers, harriers, otter trails should all be in evdience.
Going forward we hope to be able to run these trips regularly with closer and better berthing to give people a great wildlife experience and 'go all green' instead of reliance on cars to get to Tophill...
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No bbq or boats - but there will be the old faithful reserve walk on too - 10am this Saturday the 7th. Free with standard admission
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Plus two places left on this years final otter watch on the 13th - book in advance
