At last, the sun shone after weeks of rain. While the distant Welsh hills were draped in snow, here on the Wirral it was dry and bright. Storeton Wood is a secondary woodland of oak, beech and silver birch, and formerly a quarry. Below, a cuprous layer of leaf has protected the soil from the recent assault of raindrops. Fallen limbs were a feast of fungi; in places, creamy white Storeton sandstone peeked through like discarded vertebrae. Great spotted woodpeckers drummed.
Standing by the remnant of George Stephenson’s quarry track, I envisaged the 1838 scene: workmen busy extracting sandstone, sudden shouts of discovery and confusion, handprints in the rock. They thought they were the signs of people perished in Noah’s flood. Victorian scientists later confirmed that they were footprints of a crocodile-like creature named Chirotherium storetonense (Chirotherium meaning “hand beast”) dating from Triassic times, 240m summers ago.
