For day 60 of 365 Days Wild I visited the next nature reserve to be found along the course of the River Trent. This is the Langford Lowfields Reserve, in Nottinghamshire. I was again accompanied by my mum, who, like me, is currently enjoying being able to get out of the house, post lockdown. We hadn’t actually intended to visit this nature reserve when we left the house – mainly because we didn’t actually know that it stretched quite so far down the river! We were following another path from the village of Collingham, where we lived over ten years ago now, down to the River Trent, when we spotted a rather grubby and faded RSPB sign on a gate.
It gave instructions on how to access the site – namely, along a foot path that we had walked straight past. We, of course, just had to go and explore.
The former gravel pits at Langford are managed by the RSPB in partnership with Tarmac. It’s a flagship program to showcase how wetland habitats can be created on a large scale. Unfortunately, as we hadn’t actually planned the trip – just a quick walk down to the river – our time was limited. We didn’t walk far enough to access the site properly or to view the resident wildlife. It seems it’s a 50 minute walk just to fully access the site! Wildlife highlights from the reserve are said to include bitterns, brown hares, bearded tits, marsh harriers, avocets, and wintering wildfowl, as well as mumurations of starlings. Next time we’ll plan the trip and set aside plenty of time for it.
We did enjoy following the footpaths for a while, though. We walked past fields of barley, as well as past stretches of grass and wild growth, particularly thistle and dock. We caught the occasionally glimpse of the gravel pits, beyond.
Even though we didn’t see the nature reserve at its best, it was still an enjoyable morning’s walk down some unexpected footpaths.
An Enchanted Place 
Often the unplanned walk is better than a planned one!
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