This afternoon with the family , hooray the lads were with us, I had a lovely 2 hour walk around the Durham Woods and into the City Center . The weather was slow , low and sultry and in the River Wear fronds of lilies and rushes were growing sometimes in the middle of the river which shows the time the river is very low is increasing so much that aquatic plant seeds have time to settle and germinate and are rooted enough for the following flood which is a long time off to not sweep them away . The climatic times are a changing ! Interesting to observe as the years roll by . At the weir next to Framwellgate Bridge was the amazing sight of two Common Terns a long way inland stood on the weir and fending off mallards and seagulls trying to mob them neither of which were a match for these two toughies and those long sharp beaks that are useful for stabbing fish when they do there huge 30 meter plunges into the sea to get fish in any and all weathers. We noticed that one of the Terns was a fledgling . Biscuit break was on the newly refurbished Durham market Square and the Council has done a good job . Saw some Morris dancers today which was nice and even the lads were interested . Back home listening to Buffy St Marie in the car , then crash out with the wonder wife I have and listen to John Wuilliams and Juliam Bream . I a lucky man !

Yesterday with Fiona but not the lads because they were both ill with bad colds I went to visit Fiona's mother at Dalton but before then had a trip to the Dales. Going over the old tank road To Wensleydale I saw a huge flock of 20 to 30 curlews feeding away in a field and I knew we were going to have a good day from that point on. Wensleydale is a gorgeous Dale and as we approached Barningham a rabbit shot out in front of the car running in a absolutely straight line which was because there was a stoat pursuing it which shot out immediately after. As soon as I got alongside the animal it popped right back into the hedgerow! Always worth getting out early. Pulling in at Barningham we went to see the water powered Archimedes screw driving a small turbine to generate electricity for the village. Very interesting not least because the thing was not running because there was not enough water in the river. It is the river Bain that provides the power which I hope does not signify that the lack of water which can occur for over half of the year in Wensleydale is not a bane on the whole project .Food for thought for those making claims about so called renewable energy. Buy lots of candles folks! Next we went on to the National Nature Reserve on the plain beneath Ingleborough Hill near Ingleton. There are acres of limestone pavements all conveniently laid out by the last glaciation and before that by warm shallow seas 360 million years ago and from a distance they look very regular but when you actually walk on them they are very irregular eroded all over the place and the grikes the gaps between the clints have whole mini ecosytems of ferns, flowering plants and spiders . There are 12 varieties of fern living in these mini worlds which are very sheltered because of the depth of them . Today we never saw sheep skulls which is what I saw a lot of the last time I was near here in the '70s because the sheep fall into the grikes and can't get out , no one can see them and they starve to death. Always reminded of that Betjeman poem "Late flowering Lust" "The mouth that I kiss has no tongue inside" neither does a sheep's skull wedged in a grike. Ingleborough Hill loomed over us constantly and I was very tempted to go piling up its flanks to tread those Millstone Grit capped peaks but Fiona said a very and I mean very firm " No". We saw loads of Wheatears as well, mostly fledglings so the breeding season has gone well and they'll be off back to Africa soon. Also spotted the tiniest and cutest frog I've ever seen it was so small that it grabbed a thin piece of grass and just held on for dear life trying to blend in and not get eaten . Lucky I wasn't a heron! Onward to visit Fiona's Mun at Dalton and she was in good fettle and we took several family 'photo albums and she really enjoyed them particularly seeing herself over 20 years ago . It really got her thinking and talking . A beautiful experience not least because she is in a steadily declining phase at the moment but she is plucky , tries hard , gets the jokes and points things out . Its difficult for us sometimes but the enjoyment she gets from seeing us far outweighs any hassle . A road many of us will have to tread because its the price of living longer . I've told the lads I'm going over Whitby cliffs if I get fed up when I'm a lot older! They actually took that seriously when I first said it! Good! Coming back over the A66 I'm always struck by the geological diversity of our amazing UK. Driving over Carboniferous rocks under the road I get to look at the Jurassic under the North York Moors with the Silurian under the Howgills to the right . What was best about our Ingleborough walk in Chapel le Dale was standing next to a huge cairn with Carboniferous limestone all around us for miles and walking off after lunch only to find a small blackish boulder about the size of a football which was was so rough that you had to be careful you didn't graze your self stroking it and it was a Borrowdale volcanic rock a piece of tuff , flying ash from a volcano spewing it out around 400 million years ago when Scotland joined England in a final act of union. This rock had been dragged all the way to Ingleborough from the Lake District by a glacier 14000 years ago and deposited . It is truly amazing what you find and just as amazing looking at this process from the past still affecting my understanding and wonderment of the earth now . Get out there folks there is a lot to see and understand and its great fun .