Country diary: Money spiders, everywhere, more than I have ever seen before

The Roaches, Staffordshire: In my hair, on my cheek, on fence tops and bushes, the air almost liquid with snaking lengths of silkA moist airstream surging through the cold massif of the Peak District deposited ground fog over mid-Derbyshire. Just to the west, however, at the county boundary with Staffordshire, and before the world fell away to mist-enshrouded flatlands about Leek, there was a band of high country held in piercing sunlight. What little warmth fired down at this place then rebounded off the bare gritstone ridges, so that the air around the Roaches actually felt hot.Perhaps it was these conditions, in a context of otherwise absolute winter stillness, that gave rise to the day's wildlife drama. For in the fields, and in an eddy of slow-rising warmth drifting toward the hill known as Hen Cloud, there unfolded a remarkable abundance of spiders. Continue reading...