Settle Waxcaps near Mitchell Lane 22 October 2025

Wed 22 October 2025

Hygrocybe punicea

 22Oct 2025

Hygrocybe punicea

Apricot  Club Clavulinpis ludeoalba

Then I found two  large honey waxcaps  not photographed but I have a video: Hygrocybe reidii

I also found Meadow Waxcaps Cuphophyllus pratensis

Gliophorus irrigatus  Slimy waxcap

Hygrocybe coccinea Scarlet waxcap

Stropharia caeruleum (I think - possibly) 

Gliophorus  psittacinus 

View down to Settle. I am walking up parallel to the road on the right

Clavaria straminea

   Straw 

The Ballerina - with flash

The Ballerina - without  flash

  (Rugby Club belwo)

The Ballerina / Pink Waxcap

Settle Community Christmas Day Meal 2025

The Settle Community Christmas Day Meal will take place again this year 2025 at St John's Methodist Church, Settle BD24 9JH !!!

Please tell your neighbours an friends, and especially people who might be lonely, sad or bored this Christmas and who live in Settle or at a village nearby. We have a great time at this occasion.

1. Download and print a larger version of this poster to print and give to a friend.

2. Download a booking form or get a printed one from AgeUK or The Place or Settle Hub (see below).

Programme: - 

All parts are optional -  you can sit and chat in the "Garden Room" or rest or play board games there if you prefer.  Attend the whole day or just part.

If you need transport we can arrange it.

(We can also deliver take-aways, either lunch or tea for a limited number of people who are housebound)

11.45:Arrive, coffee, soft drinks nibbles,- The Garden Room 

12:00 Carols, - The Carol room (/worship room)

12.30 Dinner - The Hall

2.30 A few gentle party games, pass the parcel, party pieces: (Hall or Carol Room) (Bring your poem, song, reading, but must be less than 2 min long) 

4:00 Tea. (Coffee Lounge)

5:00 Depart

This is made possible - through the help of 

Local volunteers (who generally take part in the meal too too)

The people of St John's Methodist Church who enable us to use their facilities

Age UK, The Place (For being a base for holding forms) and Settle Hub

The guests who come and take part, 

The price has been kept to £10 (£5-00 for children) because of support from local traders and others. Last year these included  Drake and Macefield Butchers, The Naked Man Café, Booths, Trevors, and the Coop - sorry if I have missed someone. 

If people can't manage £10, then please see me Judith Allinson who attends the church and does the much of the organising - there is a bursary fund for this.

If you would like to come - please book by filling in the form obtainable from Age UK, Settle Hub or The Place or downloadable here.  Please leave money and completed forms at either at Settle Hub office or The Place both with the address Commercial Courtyard,  BD24 9RH, or the Age UK shop in the Market Square. If you would rather pay by BACS and  send emailed versions of this form contact Jo Rhodes on hub@settlecommunityandbusinesshub.org.uk and she will send BACS information

The form has a section for dietary needs.  We plan to make vegetarian and vegan options available.  It may not be possible to cater for all allergies so please check first. 

Meanwhile here are links to reports of three of the events that were held over the ten years before Covid. 

Settle Community Christmas Day meal 2014 - Pictures and videos

Many enjoy Settle Christmas Day Meal 2015 - Pictures

Settle Community Christmas Day Meal 2017

Volunteers in 2018:

Pictures from 2019 - the last time we held such a meal when we had 70 people.

(Our meal in 2025 will be a more select gathering, with 40 to 50 people.

Tea

Volunteers

Volunteers are participants in the day and pay/donate the same as guests.

Volunteers are needed to help in many ways

- with publicity before the day

- with planning, and collecting donations

- with food and present and table preparations on the morning of Christmas Eve (Wed) (peeling potatoes etc) 10-12

- with chatting to new people as they come and have coffee before the meal.

-with taking part in the activities.

-with transport

-with serving food

with collecting dishes and tidying up.

We will have a volunteers' meeting on Thursday 18 November at 6pm in the church coffee lounge. 

If you are interested in helping, please contact Judith

BLS visit to Hebden Bridge 6-10 October 2025 Lichens at IOU Hostel Mon, Tue

 Hebden Bridge lies in the Pennines, "the backbone of England" a band of hills running down from the Scottish border down to Derbyshire and dividing the north west from the north east. The Pennine Way footpath zigzags its way from south to north.. The millstone grit dome is a moorland plateau and in the Hebden Bridge area it is dissected by steep sided valleys, of the Calder and its tributaries. 

Photo by Josef of us on the first day
having ascended from Crag Vale up
through Bradhead Clough Wood

With a catchment stretching from Blacktone Edge reservoir at.. m with views down to Rochdale and the Lancashire cities to the West Manchester and Liverpool ,the Calder drains travels twice the distance to the east, joining the River Aire east of Leeds to form the Ouse and then Humber..

The geology is all gritstone/sandstone which support acid loving lichens; Oak trees grow well on the acid soils of steep valley sides

I arrive on the  Monday evening having driven across the moorland from Keighley.: along roads with with dry stone walls and sometimes footpaths, and and villages with 20mph speed limits, finally down to Hebden Bridge and up the VERY steep streets to the IOU hostel. This is next to the Birchcliffe Centre  The Birchclffe centre I later discover was a Baptist chapel opened about 1900 (the third on that site)  but is now modernised and housesvarious offices and the digital records centre.  Our hostel next to it used to be the Baptist Schoolroom (As big as a big chapel itself) and now converted into a well lit bright vegetarian Hostel by an Art-Theatre foundation (IOU). We have hired sole use of the place for four nights.

I enter to discover Graham the Field Meeting leader and the group  holding an welcoming session. We all introduce ourselves.  Then we have a fantastic supper with food brought by Eluned, Pete and Ann. 

Roast homegrown squash by Ann

On the Tuesday morning I decide  to record five lichens before breakfast - Can you guess what they are?

If you are a lichenologist have a guess before reading further.

...

...

I actually find 8 species  and Pete who is collecting records for the group for the whole week to add to the BLS data base correctly guessed the first four.

On Hawthorn:  

On Hawthorn there is Physcia tenella and Xanthoria parietina Nearby on other deciduous trees Ash - is Lecidella eleochroma and Lecanora "chalarotera sens lat"  But I do not find Arthonia radiata

I find two species of Lepraria. - Lepraria incana and Leparaia? ....then on the sandstone walls there is Porpidia tuberculosa - and Rhizocarpon reductum.

Must get one of the others to help me identify this fluffy soft Lepraria

Lepraria sens lat

View of Hostel

To remind me that I need to go back to this Caloplaca type species

Breakfast. Then we set off for Cragg Vale.  

Cragg Vale was the location of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a group of people who chipped the edges of gold coins then released the coins into circulation again.

We park our cars just south of Myrthylmroyd and set of on a walk up to YWT reserve Broadhead Clough

Acorns Acorns everywhere. It has been a fantastic year for acorsn (as for many other fruit.  A farmer in Bal, North Wales has recently lost 35 sheep due to acorn poisoning, so farmers here have been warned  to take care.

Sedge - will write more later.

Looking at Baeomyces rufus

Baeomyces rufus

Lunch

Fly agaric

Looking at the fly agaric at the exit to the reserve at the top.

View down to Cragg Vale - wall across moorland

Lichens on the wooden sign on the exposed moor.

. I expect over time more lichens will get established on it.

-------------------------------------------

In the late afternoon we went to Blackstone Edge

I

View from the shelter of my car.

On the way home my phone battery runs out. I cannot find the way back to the hostel - I pass a long, long long queue of people waiting at the cinema. It is for the launch of a TV show Riot Women. I go one way  and realise it is wrong and come back again - past the same queue - and another way and back again past this queue - then two more times - but in the centre of town the street is narrow there is no-where to stop and so no-one to ask. Eventually I get off the main street, find myself in George Square where there is a public map board.. and from there I can see just across the street the correct way home  . Up Commercial Street and first left along Birchcliffe Road 

We come home, have supper sort our specimens (and in my case "Do emails" )

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