LAND 44 Yet another impenetrable blanket of grey cloud greeted me at dawn, but the forecast rain had thankfully failed to materialise. I walked from Hammersholm and soon arrived at Moseløkken granite quarry, just as a thick fog descended.
The fog slowly cleared, revealing the deep scar of concentric vertical terraces of dark granite with a deep green pool at the very bottom.
Moseløkken is still in operation, the last active granite quarry in North Bornholm – though in a vastly reduced state with little activity. The site is however still used, with a fantastic volunteer-run museum and regular rock-climbing activities. In the museum’s yard there were lots of fascinating granite objects and quarrying tools to explore.
I descended into the quarry, the savage walls of granite looming over me, while the metallic chuckling of jackdaws echoed overhead. It was an awe-inspiring place, a violent meeting point where nature and culture, bedrock and machinery, collide.
I could have spent the whole day at Moseløkken, but time and the LAND project set me on a path out of the quarry and into the surrounding woodland. The burnished golds and yellows of autumn were at their peak, made even more intense by the wet weather. The ever-present peeping of goldcrest and fluting calls of bullfinches carried clear through the still damp air.
I entered Ravnedal, a broad and shallow rift valley managed by the forestry commission and grazed by livestock. Here, the classic north Bornholmian landscape of granite, heather, and juniper was made even more scenic and picturesque by fiery birch, cherry, and oak trees, scattered amongst the heather. I had an appointment with the local TV station and we marveled at the delicious beauty of autumn at its finest.
I walked on through the valley and into a more open landscape, before diving back into the woods.
I walked up to Børrelyngen – an open heathland with exposed granite, heather and birch. There were no paths up here, and I felt completely alone. I tried to capture the intoxicating patchwork of colours – the emerald moss and limey lichen, the pink and bruise-grey granite, the purples, greens, ochres and golds of the vegetation.
From here I continued eastwards down into an area of untouched woodland, almost impenetrable, before skirting along the edge of some fields. A small group of goldcrest fed amongst the maize stubble, dwarfed by the stumps.
I arrived at the day’s destination – Østre Borregård farm, where Bornholm Museum’s vast collection of domestic and agricultural implements is housed in a series of buildings and storage sheds.
Outside, there was a bewildering array of vehicles and implements – some in open garages, some rusting away on the edge of the wood. As the day drew to a close I painted a pair of old steam rollers that seemed to be disintegrating back into the earth, just as the setting sun dipped below the layer of clouds for the first time, and lit fiery, luminously orange the tops of the larch trees, before quickly disappearing again below the horizon.
LAND 44
WEATHER REPORT – Overcast all day. Temperature 8 – 11 degrees. Wind 3 – 5 m/s, from the southwest. Hours of precipitation: 0 hours. Hours of sunshine: 0 hours.
STOPS with the BIVVY – 0
KILOMETRES WALKED – 9.03 km
DAY LASTED – 9h and 11 m
PEOPLE TALKED TO – 2
BIRDS SEEN and HEARD – 26 species (0 new) = 133 species in total.
LESSONS LEARNED – nothing springs to mind
IN MY HEAD – I was mostly in the moment again. Joni Mitchell. Battle.
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