Camping Solo: Day Two.

My second night under canvas was slightly less comfortable than the first, if that's possible. After "fixing" the zip at home, I gleefully tugged on the tab and ripped the whole thing away from the canvas. Then there was the air-bed that wouldn't stay underneath me, and the noisy coot, and the distressed sandpiper, and the calf in the cowshed, and the honeymoon couple in the next tent. But that's all camping isn't it?

Sheep fold

Breakfast was sausages, bacon, eggs and fried bread.... at least, it was for the honeymoon couple. Mine was a pignut (dug up from outside my rapidly deteriorating 1950s tent) and a packet of crackers. The main thing I needed at 7 a.m. was coffee. As always, I had a tin of Colombian Drug-Mafia, Fair-Trade coffee along as well as my John Lewis cafetiere and my trusty Kelly kettle, which only took an hour to light.

Suitably refreshed, I set off over the high tops for Kirkby Stephen via Thwaite (the home of the pioneering Kearton brothers), Angram (site of a spectacular mole-catcher's gallows), Keld (waterfalls and yurts), and the county boundary with Cumbria. On leaving Yorkshire I felt a slight sense of betrayal, but red squirrels were waiting for me over the border and anyway I found a short-eared owl and photographed it.

Short eared owl

It was one of those encounters that caught both of us by surprise. I was stalking a skylark and he was looking for voles.  His wide eyed look of surprise as he topped the ridge and found me looking up at him was a photo to die for. I fumbled for my camera while he folded up like a carrier bag in a gale and fell out of the sky below the ridge, only in slow motion, so that I managed to fire off a few frames as he dropped away. The camera in my head captured his round yellow eyes and mascara brows as he clocked me below him.  I'll never forget that; it's burned onto my internal hard drive.

Shepherd's hut, Dales style.

From the watershed I could look west to the Lake District and north to what I perceived to be Scotland but, given the scale of the landscape and the fact that I was looking across the huge counties of both Durham and Northumberland, I'd settle for "The Borders". Certainly my destination was laid out below me on the the river Eden that flows into the Solway Firth beyond Carlisle.

Pendragon Castle.

Still full of caffeine and anticipation, I cruised down into Nateby and turned west along the Mallerstang valley, following the Eden upstream to Pendragon Castle. The name alone speaks volumes. This isolated ruin sits right in the middle of the most spectacular glaciated scenery and it is a good place to look for red squirrels. I wasn't disappointed. What I assumed to be a cat transformed itself into the very animal that I longed to see. Instead of the tatty, rope-like tail of a ginger Tom, this animal boasted a blonde feathery plume as it bobbed along through the meadows like a Disney skunk. This red squirrel was on a mission and it didn't hang about, but I did. I stayed for over an hour and didnt see it again. I still need that photo.

Having at least seen a red squirrel, my next goal was botanical and therefore, in theory at least, more reliable.

Bird's-eye primrose is a specialty in these parts. These tiny, pink Alpine primulas sit in bunches atop a single stem in the limestone flushes of the Cumbrian Fells. I had a site in mind and that was where I was heading. But I had forgotten the scale of the Cumbrian landscape and it was much further to my destination than I thought. I wove through single-track lanes between farms and nearly wrote my car off in an encounter with a Land Rover hauling a trailer full of sheep. Neither of us had anywhere to go so we both jammed on the brakes and nestled our mudguards against the drystone walls on either side of the road. We parted as friends who had both had a near encounter with death, the insurance man, or both.

Sunbiggin Tarn

Sunbiggin Tarn lies in the middle of an undulating limestone plateau below forbidding, but distant fells. It didnt' look like I remembered it. Years ago, it was a wild untamed place among rushes with a few duck-shooting screens. The lake seeped outwards to form marshes and bogs and it all looked brown and forgotten.  Now all is green and lush. The lake, now a fishery, is fenced off from grazing animals and so reeds have grown right up to the fence. The wildflowers I that I remembered used to be in the boggy edges where animals trampled and grazed. All the same I pulled the cat up by a cattle grid and looked about me using my binoculars. I didn't see much by way of birds at first, apart from a pair of stonechats. What caught my eye was the deep purple glow of early purple orchids, only yards from the car. It had to be worth a look around.

Birds' eye primrose.

I soon found a couple of springs that fed the lake, and in the flushes I found dozens of birds'-eyes as well as butterworts  and a pink-and-white plant that I couldn't name at first. This turned out to be marsh valerian, which I hadn't seen for many years. So I returned to the car a happy man with just one more species in mind and that was globe flower.

I remembered finding globe flowers 20 years ago on the back-road to Kirkby Stephen. We were driving between dry stone walls near Little Asby when I saw a male redstart. These birds are not common anywhere so I had stopped for a better look. It's not the rarity that matters; they just look so spectacular with their deep red tail, grey back and black mask, like feathered highwaymen. We had followed the bird over the wall, only to find a curlew sitting on eggs among the cowslips and a big clump of giant, globular buttercups beyond. I had marked the field on my map and was sure I could find it again, only I couldn't.

As I topped the rise, at the junction for Little Asby I found myself with an open pasture to my left, not a walled field. Surely, this should have been the place. I pulled over to take a look and found myself staring at a field absolutely full of birds' eye primroses; thousands of them.  I mean, almost the whole British population in an acre and a half.

I walked the lane looking for the missing field and then something caught my attention. I could see some pale yellow flowers in a clump; not in a roadside field as I had remembered, but one field away. All the same, this turned out to be the very field I had visited all those years ago. It is still a place of magic for me, worth more to me than many a hallowed national nature reserve because I found it myself.

That was the climax of my day in Cumbria, but I enjoyed the drive back to Usha Gap, my tent and the Farmers' Arms.

The next morning I packed up early and set off for Cambridgeshire and Paxton Pits where I was due to give a guided walk in the afternoon. I had plenty of time so, instead of heading straight for the A1, I turned up over the moors on a tiny road that climbs from Crow Trees in Swaledale and up onto Oxnop Moor. the road eventually f[drops you at Askrigg in Wensleydale but I had a yearning to track down another old friend.

At the summit of the road there is a moor-fence that divides Swaledale from Wensleydale and forms the boundary between two shooting estates. This is primarily grouse country but there are other birds here too. There is a spot here where I can always find, or at least hear, golden plovers. Sometimes there are ring ouzels and wheatears too. I pulled up and patrolled forward across the plateau where lapwings were planing about and calling incessantly, a sure sign that they had chicks somewhere nearby.  I heard golden plovers calling, but became aware that I too was being watched by a man in a Land Rover that sported several radio aerials.  I took him for a keeper and headed back to the road to explain what I was doing, but then I spotted something else.

Moorland intake.

About my feet in the close-cropped turf there were violets; tiny violets that hugged the ground as though they had no stem and no leaves. They were evenly spaced, maybe a meter apart and all coloured the same deep purple. Now, I know the Violas are a complicated bunch, comprising violets and pansies, but I knew these were not mountain pansies (which have a lot of variation in colour) and that they were violets, but what sort? I took a few photos and headed back to the car where I had a decent field guide and decided that I had stumbled upon an isolated population of Teesdale violets. These very rare flowers occur in County Durham and also in the Yorkshire Dales on limestone pavements near Ingleton.

Teesdale violet?

I drove home in an exalted state and sent off my photos for confirmation. Sadly, a local botanist plumped for them being boring old dog violets, but I'm still holding out for Teesdale violets. I will have to go back next May and get better evidence.