At the head of Swaledale, high on Birkdale Common, close to the watershed with the Vale of Eden, is a remarkable landscape where a blanket of moorland peat has been eroded, leaving behind remnant islands.
Wind and rain have sporadically denuded most of the moor of its peat to a depth of two to three metres. Some of the surviving islands of peat expose the full depth of the previous blanket coverage and are still topped with the turf that was the previous ground level. Each island is surrounded by a halo of bare stony ground, marking the most recent erosion of the islands where new vegetation has not yet grown.
In the SWAAG database there are two photographic studies of this remarkable landscape, both created by SWAAG president Tim Laurie. The first was created in November 2011 and can be seen at Geographic category PDF – scroll to record 358 (5 photographs).
The second was created in September 2012, when a pollen sampling exercise was being undertaken by students from the University of York to investigate the vegetational history of upper Swaledale. See: Tree Sites 3 category PDF and scroll to record number 608 (21 photographs).
