KATE MARTIN: Welcome to the National Trust Podcast.
I'm Kate Martin area ranger at Formby on the beautiful Sefton
Coast and a full on nature lover.
I'll be taking you on some amazing walks delving into the
stories and characters that make each place so special.
We'll be traveling all around the country from hilltop to
seaside. We'll tread sandy paths and the polished wooden floors
of country homes.
Delight in birdsong, sublime views and exceptionally good
cream teas.
So come and join me on this journey and immerse yourself in
the wonders of the National Trust.
The sound of the Irish Sea lapping, the incredible shape
shifting dunes of the Sefton Coast near Liverpool. This week
we're on my home turf at Formby where the National Trust manage
around 1000 acres of land.
I've been a ranger here for eight years now, but this
stunning sea view never fails to take my breath away.
And here we are standing on this glorious golden sandy beach
which is just sloping very gently into the Irish Sea, which
today is a little bit rough. So there's nice big waves just
crashing in.
To the south of me I can see Wales and the Wirral Peninsula
and then to the North, I can see the tower at Blackpool and the
big one and then up to the western lakes and the fells
there.
In the summer months, hoards of city dwellers flock to Formby
leaving behind the hubbub of nearby towns and cities like
Liverpool and Manchester, Warrington and Preston in search
of wilderness and a little bit of a breath of fresh air.
But today, the place is quite subdued. There's only a handful
of people enjoying gentle walks through the dunes and those
beautiful windswept pine trees.
But no matter the time of year for me really does have
something for everyone.
If you're a wildlife fan, This is the perfect place to catch a
glimpse of endangered species like Red Squirrels or my
personal favourite, the beautiful Natterjack Toad. But
if history is more your bag, this coastline holds evidence of
our ancient ancestors as well as relics of our more recent past.
Today I'll be guiding you through sandy dunes, woodlands
and grasslands and introducing you to some of my colleagues who
will help tell the story of this really special place. We'll
start inland in the sweeping Formby pinewoods.
The walk we're on now on the path. One is actually all part
of the Red Squirrel walk, which is one of the walks available on
the Formby website.
For those who fancy a shorter walk in Formby this route is
perfect. It's just under two miles. So ideal for those with
small children. One of the reasons why the woodlands here
at Formby are particularly popular with people, not just
locally, but people come from hundreds of miles to do this
walk. And it's because of our Red Squirrels.
Oh, just through the woods there I can just see a little red
squirrel. It's obviously an adult. It's got its full ear
tufts going. This is quite a dark red one.
They're really active trying to fatten themselves up for the
winter months. And this one here is just running around, by the
look of it- It looks like it's probably searching for something
it's buried a while ago and probably forgotten where it is.
These woods may look natural but they're certainly not. And
actually somebody who knows an awful lot about this area is
Doctor Phil Smith, a local ecologist and a real expert on
the Sefton Coast.
DR PHIL SMITH: The landscape here a couple of 100 years ago
was absolutely totally different. The dunes were very
wild, very open and sandy.
And we have accounts for this area from 200 years ago by a
chap called Richard Ayton. He describes the Formby the area
in, in great detail over several pages and it's an absolute
revelation to to see what it was like only 200 years ago.
He was in Formby overnight and then he says in the morning, I
returned to the shore over a waist of sand hills on a scale
of such grandeur and covering such an extent of ground that,
familiarized as I was with sand, the effect was somewhat novel to
me!
They extended for at least a mile in depth and were thrown
into very exciting groups exactly resembling a range of
mountains with all their rigids, peaks and precipices.
Many of them were fully 60ft in height, rising precipitously on
all sides. They were all very thinly sprinkled with the sea
bent and exhibited a scene of frightful and irredeemable
barrenness that together with the wild confusion with which
they were grouped and heaped together, had something in it
almost amounting to the sublime.
But of course, things were were were to change partly as a
result of planting trees and the old the memorial estates, there
were two of them that Formby and the Weld Blundell owned most of
the coast.
One of the things that they were particularly keen to do was to
make a make money out of the dunes because they were viewed
at that time as quote " unprofitable waste."
And so in the 1880s, one of the landowners went down to Southern
France and he saw all the huge Conifer plantations on the, on
the dunes there and thought this could be a way of making money,
but that had a really dramatic effect on the coast as we see
today.
As a coastal Ecologist, I I prefer the open dunes which are
far richer in species than the- than the woodlands.
KATE MARTIN: I'm coming to the end of the red squirrel walk.
And before I set off on the next leg of my journey around Formby,
I'm passing over to my colleague who's going to guide you to
something rather magical.
JAMIE LUND: My name is Jamie Lund and I'm the archaeologist
for the National Trust in the North region. If the tide is
being friendly to us, we should see exposures of prehistoric
footprints which might be somewhere in the region of 7000
to 4000 years old.
It's very simple walk to pick up the trail of. You simply park in
the National Trust car park and follow the directional signage
up over the small bank of dunes down again onto the foreshore
and then look left and right and start looking for footprints.
The sweet spot is about 70 to 80m from the toe of the dunes on
the beach. We've got this wonderful golden sand here at
Formby, but sand isn't what we're looking for. We're looking
for an underlying strata of dark brown muddy beds.
Hello there. I can guess what you're doing. Have you had any
luck? [Cross-talk] I thought you might have been looking for
prehistoric foot prints?
GENERIC: Yeah, we were actually and I wasn't sure where they
are?
JAMIE LUND: They're definitely on here- [Cross-talk]
GENERIC: Horse shoe shaped ones up there [Cross-talk]
JAMIE LUND: Horses are a pain you're trying to spot the
prehistoric footprints [ Cross-talk]
GENERIC: Somewhere around here? I think we're all day.
JAMIE LUND: Good luck!
GENERIC: Thank you.
JAMIE LUND: See you!
Oh, then what have we got here? This looks quite promising.
This is our first good plausible footprint I would say.
It's a red deer print.
The landscape would have looked very different to what it does
now, at a time when the deer and the other animals and people
that have left their footprints at Formby would have been
walking along this area.
And it would have been this wonderful, muddy lagoon type
environment that would have been very attractive for animals
wanting to perhaps wallow or find pools of fresh water to
drink.
And of course, where you've got herds of herbivores, you've got
predators. And of course, at the top of that apex of hunters are
people themselves.
Prehistoric hunter gatherers, on a single day, you could have
gone inshore fishing. You could have collected all sorts of
edible seaweeds and other greens that are growing in the muds and
along the sand dune.
We're very lucky that these prehistoric footprints have
survived here at Formby. Once they'd actually been formed by a
foot going into this soft layer of wet mud, It was obviously
hardened by the sun.
So straight away that tells us that the person must have been
walking here in late spring or summer and there was sufficient
strength in the sun to bake that mud and create a hard crust that
didn't just simply smooth down and ebb way.
It was then covered over by just a light dusting of sand and had
the effect of, of a sheet of grease proof paper. It stopped
all of these different layers of sediment sticking together into
one homogenous layer.
So that today when the tide comes and starts to erode a
layer, it peels off very neatly without trying to pull off the
upper surface of the layer below.
Those people with a specialist eye can tell an awful lot about
the prehistoric footprints that we can find here just looking at
the way that the foot has landed on the ground and the way that
the weight has been distributed across the foot, you can tell
whether people are walking normally, whether they're
limping.
We can spot the difference between men and women and we can
even spot, women who are probably pregnant by the way
that they tend to lean back onto their heels.
So I often look at the footprints that I see at Formby
and wonder, well, are they hunting and gathering or are
they playing? Are they simply going for a walk?
And I think in being able to see these footprints and see the
traces left by people 6000 years ago, it really encourages you to
open your mind to exactly what their lived experiences might
have been like.
There, there was a huge concentration of a couple of
hundred footprints in one area. And after a few minutes of
looking, we could see that people had approached the
central point from all points of the compass as five or six
people coming from different angles.
And they'd come together in a huge scrum and people's feet
were spinning around, they were rotating, they were digging
their toes in as if they were trying to get pressure.
And I was trying to think what, what on earth does this mean?
What was happening here? And I thought about, you know, are
they trying to corner something?
Are they catching something or is this a game? You know, are
they falling around? Are they wrestling? They're pushing each
over in the mud and having a- you know, a whale of a time? And
of course, you'll never know. But I think each of those
scenarios is, is very interesting.
KATE MARTIN: That was Jamie Lund looking at the amazing ancient
footprints on Formby's Beach and for anyone visiting Formby, it's
definitely well worth a trip to see these footprints, It really
is magical.
For me, It's the idea of actually standing on the very
same mud that these people actually walked in. That real
connection to the people that once lived here.
I wonder what they would have made of today's walkers. And to
be honest, they probably would have thought we were mad just
walking around for fun and not for anything in particular!
We heard from Jamie about how ancient people reaped food from
this land. But let's fast forward a few thousand years.
And the inhabitants of Formby had acquired a taste for
something a little bit more refined.
Asparagus!
Now I'm headed on another short walk that's actually named after
this fine food which was once grown in abundance here at
Formby.
Today, Asparagus production has declined. There is only one form
the Asparagus grower left, but you can still see the flat sandy
fields where the crop once thrived and grew here.
There are two asparagus walks around Formby, a shorter trail,
It's about a mile and three quarters which is suitable for
people of all abilities.
But the walk I'm doing today is a little bit more challenging.
It's just under three miles and joining me on this stroll is
John Dempsey who is the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership
scheme project officer.
Hi, John.
JOHN DEMPSEY: Hi Kate, how are you doing?
KATE MARTIN: I'm alright!
JOHN DEMPSEY: It's a lovely morning.
KATE MARTIN: It's lovely!
The area in front of us is very, very flat and this area is
famous for its asparagus, isn't it, John?
JOHN DEMPSEY: It is. I mean, this is an eye onto onto form's
history if you like.
The Formby asparagus, of course, is world famous.
KATE MARTIN: I don't think a lot of people who visit for me
realize just how much asparagus changed this landscape and how
much the cultivation left its footprint here.
JOHN DEMPSEY: It's quite strange that these open areas that are
the result of asparagus have actually ended up being almost a
good refuge for some of the dune species that might struggle
otherwise.
But I don't think the guys who are planting the asparagus
thought of it that way. As humans, sometimes we, we're
quite unaware of the effects our footprints have on the
landscape.
But it's interesting nonetheless.
It's lovely just to look on some of the fields as well now at
this time of year to see how the local wildlife moves perhaps
from out of the dunes into these flat areas. You can see a few
rabbits legging around over there.
Rabbits, of course, are vital for our dune system where we're
heading now. Because they're the natural grazers on this
coastline.
These are the guys we rely upon to keep the vegetation down,
open sand means all the wonderful species we hopefully
get in the the dunes can survive there.
We have some wonderful species on this coast?
Things like the Dark Green Fritillary, lovely big orange
butterfly that we enjoy on the wind here in summer.
It's something that loves plants like Heath Dog Violet, which is
a dune specialist. The caterpillars feed on that
earlier on in the year and of course, a good year for the
Heath Dog Violet means a good year for the butterflies.
We're moving now into all the lovely Marram Grass, which is
the thing that binds all the dunes together on the Sefton
Coast.
People forget as well. Sometimes I think that our wonderful
little Natterjack Toads later in the summer, they'll move out
into the dunes and onto the tide line as well to feed. So, an
open sandy system like this is absolutely vital.
KATE MARTIN: Natterjacks, they're slightly bigger than the
common toad. But the real sort of telling sign of them, they
have a yellow stripe that goes down the back when they're
adults, they've got the most beautiful amber eyes that are
sort of flecked with a deeper brown.
They crawl, they're not hoppers, like sort of common frogs. They
are nocturnal and it's the males that come out first and then
they will start calling.
A sort of deep ratchet like call, that the males make, to
call to the females and you can hear them from miles away,
certainly a mile away. You can hear them calling.
We've just walked out over the dune system and to this open
expanse of gold and sandy beach.
JOHN DEMPSEY: An incredible place to watch the ships coming
and going from all over the world. And of course, you know,
we've got such a tremendous maritime heritage here, but it's
full of wildlife as well a day like today, lovely bit of a chop
on the sea. So it's a bit hard to spot, but there'll be Grey
Seals out there.
There'll be thousands of Common Scoters, these lovely duck that
come down and spend the winter with us after having bred up in
the far North. Just a magnificent place.
There's divers out there, greebes, all sorts of wonderful
things and of course, jellyfish, we're getting more and more
jellyfish now.
Which means potentially we might even have turtles off this coast
at certain times of the year. In fact, remember Kate, that great
big storm we had in 2013, We had a wonderful Kemp's Ridleys
Turtle that was blown right the way across the Atlantic from the
Caribbean.
And the poor little fella came out on the beach just down the
coast from us here. A bit shocked, a bit surprised to find
herself not in the Caribbean, but that's how life goes
sometimes!
Which just shows you a sea like the Irish Sea an incredible
place.
And it's a doorstep to the world. I love looking out here
even seeing the modern ships and thinking, oh, where are you
going? Where are you come from? Absolutely wonderful.
KATE MARTIN: And talking about the shipping, there's also a lot
of ships that maybe weren't quite as successful on their
voyages. And there's a good few of them that you can see off the
coast here.
JOHN DEMPSEY: There are, Yeah.
I love the wrecks on the Sefton Coast. My obsession with them is
well known locally. We lead walks out throughout the year,
but you have to go with a guide really because like any low tide
area where we have such a big tidal range here-
There's a lot of soft mud, a lot of dangerous channels-
You need to know where you're going and conditions can can
change very quickly.
But if ever you get the chance come along because they, they're
wonderful things to see.
But there are some crackers. I mean, so many nice stories.
My favourite is our own whiskey galore story!
The story of the Pegu, which is on the beach just down from us
at the moment, about a mile or so down.
The Pegu was a ship heading out to Rangoon from Liverpool in
1939 and it ran aground for whatever reason. But the most
interesting thing about the, the Pegu was a cargo which of course
was, crate upon crate of whiskey.
When she ran aground, the customs men decided because
she's a long way out.
They decided that the wreck was safe where it was for, a little
while. And they wouldn't need to secure it on the night.
But the good people of Formby knew better and we're out there
like a shot, with their carts with wheelbarrows, which
whatever they could use and, and help themselves to the booty.
So what they decided to do a lot of these guys was, they hid the
whiskey down rabbit holes and buried it in the sand and for,
for years afterwards. So the story goes, the guys would pop
down again of an evening just to help themselves.
No more whiskey now, I'm afraid! That's long gone!
KATE MARTIN: We've had the beach pretty much to ourselves this
morning. We've had a few people wandering around in the
distance. But this area is really popular for walkers for
all different reasons. Families coming out for nice walks and
local people coming to walk their dogs.
Actually, there's a lady just in front of us here with a gorgeous
little dog.
Her name's not Lula is it?
GENERIC: No Lola!
KATE MARTIN: Lola, Lola. Yeah, I think I met your husband in when
I was clearing the boardwalk the other day down Lifeboat Road.
GENERIC: He's busy today. So I'm taking her, so I've walked down
the other way normally and come back through the dunes, but make
it a little bit easier today. And with the tide in it's such a
gorgeous place and peaceful and just, just lovely. Really?
KATE MARTIN: Yeah, I say, certainly meeting Lola the other
day. I know she certainly likes to, get into the sea and have a
ball thrown for her on this beach.
GENERIC: Well, she's like a child. She's just running down
the boardwalk, sort of full of excitement, ready for the ball
to be thrown all the time. And you can walk along the beach and
you hardly see a soul and it's just a beautiful place. So we
love it up here.
KATE MARTIN: We've come to the end of this walk here this
afternoon and this is my last podcast and I'm really sad
because I have really, really enjoyed it.
I've been to some beautiful places and the wonderful thing
about North Wales and the Peak District and here at Formby,
there are so many places you can walk.
It's just about getting out there, strapping your boots on
and seeing where the nature takes you.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the National Trust
Podcast.
For more information about Formby and to download maps and
information on today's walks, you can visit our website at
nationaltrust.org.uk/formby.
The next three episodes of this podcast will be taking you into
the world of books and literature through some of the
National Trust's amazing spaces.
I'll be handing you over to my esteemed colleague, James
Grasby, the National Trust curator for the Midlands.
In the next episode, he'll be your trusty guide through the
tranquil arts and crafts home of the playwright, politician and
philosopher George Bernard Shaw, one of the most quoted men in
the world.
That episode will be available in a couple of weeks, but there
will be a mini episode available next week where I'll be learning
about what's on the menu for Red Squirrels here at Formby.
Until the next season of the National Trust Podcast, from me,
Kate Martin. Goodbye.