On this raw winter’s day a scalpel-sharp wind slices across my face as I head down the ancient steps in St Chad’s churchyard, each one created from gravestones, all slippery with leaves. And there it is in the distance, a bowl-like depression, wreathed in mist: Wybunbury Moss, a national nature reserve famed for its floating peat bog carpeted in sphagnum moss and its invertebrate populations.
I open a wooden gate and walk into a marshy field. The wind snatches at my woollen hat and bullies me down the hill. I pass a huddle of sheep, bleating pitifully, drizzle now pearling their grubby fleeces. A heron takes off on silent, silvery wings. A fetid stink hangs in the air. I squelch among bushes and clawing briars, between reeds, stopping to admire the tall, velvety, chocolate-brown bulrushes, standing stalk-stiff. In spring, when their heads split open, the air is filled with seeds; and in early summer, its flower looks like a cat’s tail, hence its American name, cattail. Today, they remind me of hot dogs on sticks.
Mud sucks on my boots; I slither and slide towards the schwingmoor, the “swinging bog” where, throughout the year, cotton sedge, the insectivorous sundew and poisonous bog-rosemary can be found. Three specimens of a rare and minute species of spider, Carorita limnaea, have been discovered here too, by painstakingly sifting through the sphagnum moss: one male and two females. I shiver, too cold to remove my gloves. Maybe I’ll try my luck in the summer.
Wybunbury Moss is a dangerous place to walk; it is only one metre thick in places, and beneath it a hidden lake, 13 metres deep. Access is restricted to the raised wooden walkways that lead me round the edges, yet there are still fascinating views of this waterlogged landscape, sour-green, tired-brown and scummy. A fallen branch from a silver birch tree is being swallowed ever so slowly by the bog. I hear a lone blackbird’s alarm call, and move on.
The drizzle turns to heavy rain, a sign: No Access Beyond This Point. I turn back, mindful of keeping to the path.
• The photograph on this article was changed on 6 January 2016. The picture used previously did not show sphagnum moss as suggested by the caption.
