Country diary: This wetland is dry and scratchy as a loofah – for now

The Guardian

21-07-2025

As wetlands go, this one isn't. It's a hot, dry day in what has so far been a hot, dry summer. There hasn't yet been summer enough to really frazzle the landscape, and green still just about holds the balance over parched yellow. Indeed, the only water here at Brearley Fields, in the deep trough of the Calder Valley, occupies that grey area between small pond and large puddle. Elsewhere, grasshoppers chirp and reel in the scrub. Fibrous grasses, cleavers, thistles and greater plantain grow waist-high. This is a wetland only when it needs to be.
The threat of flood has long hung over the towns and villages of the valley here. The harrowing Boxing Day floods of 2015 remain all too fresh in the memory, as does the dismal wail of the repurposed second world war air-raid sirens that serve as the valley's flood alert. This is why Slow The Flow, a local volunteer force, is working to find natural, sustainable ways to accommodate the flood waters of the Calder in spate.
The conversion of the old Brearley playing fields into a wetland was one of those ways. If today the reserve feels as stiff and sharp and scratchy as a dried-out loofah, that's only because the Calder is low and quiet, and burbles agreeably past the exposed shingle foreshore to the south (a rusted shopping trolley watches on). Once the rains come and the Calder gets its dander up, this transient wetland will give the river room to breathe and the baked soil will quickly turn soggy, squelching, soused, drenched: wonderful words to a man stood squinting in the sunshine with scratched ankles and a red neck.
On its own, of course, this little wetland would make only a marginal difference to floodwater levels, but it isn't on its own – it's just one safety valve in a network of new flood projects across the region.
A garden warbler is singing. The translucent new berries of the rowan saplings planted along the fence catch the sun like glass beads. From deep in the grass, the soft butter-and-eggs peaflowers of greater bird's-foot trefoil peep out – a marsh plant, a damp lover, an intimation of what is to come.
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