Peas with a view

Along the farm track between Shipley Park and the village of Mapperley, grows a plant more normally found growing in garden vegetable patches. Peas!

One of the Lathyrus species which are so difficult to seperate - possibly Lathyrus odoratus, the sweet pea. A beautiful, pink flowered variety with tendrils used for clambering amongst the other wayside plants and trees. In this case they were climbing up a Hawthorn tree and among the grasses.

The same pathway affords fine views across fields which are usually filled with cattle, towards Mapperley Village.

No cattle in the fields in this panorama, just newly cut hay and green hedgerows. If you look to the right of this picture, you can clearly see the darker trees on top of Shipley Hill - toward which we were headed, following a detour around Mapperley Reservoir. The village itself is rather small, with a population of around 400. The local pub was the first place in the area with it's own electricity, long before it was introduced to Ilkeston, the landlord of the Black Horse - curiously named Mr Beer - generated his own power from a small generator around the turn of the 20th Century.
Coal and Ironstone were mined from the village during the 18th and 19th Centuries and were worked by the locals. Output was small and slow until the mineral railways and Erewash Canal were built. The local church (Holy Trinity) suffered from subsidence as a result of the mining and had to be extensively rebuilt in the 1960's.