RUMBLINGS…

Just for fun this one, seeing as how I’m stuck indoors writing about gear, when I should be out there using it.

Not sure what Brock’s doing in the clip… fortunately there’s strategically placed foliage in the way!

Courtesy of BBC’s Breathing Spaces newsletter (cheers Angie). It’s not terribly clear in the final frame of the video but the fox is urging you to go to the BBC’s Breathing Spaces site and pick up some tips about how to help wildlife over the Christmas period.

By the way, if you fancy some graft and a bit of a physical workout this weekend, villagers in Stainforth are going to be “excavating” the old pinfold by the vicarage. Folk who are strong i’ th’ arm are welcome to come along and help chuck boulders out of the pinfold and into a skip.

Pinfolds were pens in which stray animals (sheep mainly, round here I’d guess) were placed until they were claimed by the shepherd or farmer who’d misplaced them.

The pinfold in Stainforth appears to have been filled with boulders, soil and all sorts over the years, so the village’s environment group is going to have a weekend clearing it out and eventually hopes to restore it.

No doubt it will find fresh purpose as somewhere to pen-in those folks who insist on walking around the village with the trouser legs tucked into their red rambling socks and asking for directions to Catrigg Force!

Work starts at 10am tomorrow and Sunday, whatever the weather! You’ll need gloves and wellies, preferably with toecaps, and a bit of muscle.

Saturday turned into one of the best Dales days I’ve ever enjoyed. 

The plan had been to tackle the Three Peaks walk but reasonably heavy snows late in the week put paid to that and instead, with great friend Dave, his colleague Paul and neighbour Ken, I walked out of Stainforth and over the moors to Pen y Ghent. 

The conditions were stunning. The snow made the little scramble to the summit easier than usual and from the top of the hill the landscape was white from horizon to horizon and the clarity was mind-blowing. 

The Howgills looked almost close enough to reach out and touch, and west of them the eastern and central Lakeland fells were better defined than I’ve ever seen them from any Dales peak. 

(more…)

Yesterday’s walk finished well after dark - though admittedly that’s not hard at the moment; it wasn’t really much after 5.30pm and though the snow was still falling much of it was then coming as sleet and the stuff on the road was as slushy as a not-very-slushy Slush Puppy. 

A nice walk, though, primarily for the birdlife. Flocks of goldfinch were feeding on frozen seedheads up at Winskills and just beyond the quarry cliff face a couple of ravens – an uncommon sight still round here – were delighting in the cold air, barrel-rolling above the whitened fields. 

Nearer Langcliffe fieldfare, the winter-visiting thrush, were flitting from tree-to-tree ahead of me. 

Best “spot” though was a kestrel, flying low and fast across fields with a weighty little lump in its talons.

Its flight was being paralleled across the fields by a magpie and as they reached a clump of leafless sycamore the magpie swerved closer, harrying the kestrel which cried out in distress.

Just before it flew up into the branches the kestrel dropped its burden and flapped around mewing terribly for a minute or two; another magpie hopped across the ground but didn’t find what the kestrel had dropped, then all the birds withdrew – I think they’d sensed me watching. 

It didn’t take me long to find the kestrel’s loss – a headless starling flopped on the snow just beyond the cover of the tree’s canopy. 

Just as entertaining, and far more amusing, was bumping into “Pet Shop” Bob, “Elbow” John and Benji hours later, as they slipped and slid their way back to Giggleswick from the Helwith Bridge Inn. I don’t know whether the slipperying and sliddering was due to the thickening snow on the road or the Celebration ale they’d been sampling; Benji appeared lucid so we’ll put it down to the snow. 

I’d covered some similar ground the previous day, also finishing in the evening after dark.

I encountered two characters that day too though I didn’t see them – I just heard one of them call, an awful, alarming, heart-tearing bark that sounds like someone’s soul is being violated.

 Yesterday morning I found their tracks marked down in the snow register: roe deer.

The register also recorded many foxes, where they’d trotted through the fields, and where they’d scraped away at the ground, presumably looking for shrews or voles to snack on.  

I didn’t get my beer at the Craven Heifer in the end but spending a day observing wildlife in this wonderful part of the Dales should be refreshing enough for anyone. 

Woke this morning - as many folk all over the country will have - to several inches of the white stuff.

All the kids in the village were bursting with excitement - though I think that was more to do with the school bus not being able to get through than the prospect of sledging. Steph too was thrilled as the trains aren’t running so she can have a day at home working in the warmth of the new central heating.