Willances leap just outside Richmond North Yorkshire was the place for the family walk today . The lads went on the low to high path and Fo and I did the low to middle path . Not a bird in sight and the cloud was low and foreboding but no rain fell. What was interesting was seeing Himalayan balsam in huge swathes all over the place , around the base of oak trees and a lot on the edge of the forest underneath Willances Leap . It wasn't there last year and has just arrived and is definitely crowding out the native plants . Its gonna be a problem folks! Anyone know how to cook it ! Miles and Clifford doing the high path were wading through a nice native species problem of the path being overgrown with thistles and nettles . Fo and I walked up there about three years ago and found the path getting pretty overgrown but now its virtually impassable . The path is on land between the mile long cliff edge and the pastoral fields so I don't know who is going to clear it . We bumped into the lads coming off the high path which was nice although we had been spying on them through the binoculars . Sneaky parents . Well back home to a crash out with Fiona to listen to Miles Davis " A kind of Blue" and then meatballs and tomato sauce with spag followed by "the Lord of the Rings " directors cut which is absolutely brilliant . Books are good too . A nice day with my lovely family . Did a maths session this morning and listened to the sound track from the film "Koyaanisqatsi" and that was amazing . Our lads have watched the film loads of times since Miles was 5 and I recommend it to any parents with young children because its easy to understand , musics great and it visually , there are no words, indicates that life needs to change Koyaanisqatsi a Hopi Indian word meaning "crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living". Amen !

Well with the family I had a gorgeous walk around the riverside path in Durham last night . The River Wear was high and a deep chocolate brown color showing a lot of deep brown peat washed down from Upper Weardale because the rain up there over the past few days was of the deluge type and that just eats into the peat bogs and erodes them . It is a process similar to what the lead miners used to do when they, in order to clear the topsoil because they thought there was a lead vein underneath, built up a huge dam at the top of the side of a valley and then let the water out to scour the soil off and then dig out the lead ore. Swaledale and Wear Dale were major centers for lead mining and both bear the scars to this day in fact one reason the moors in lead mining areas do not absorb as much rain as they did before lead mining is that the lead miners smelted the ore in the hills and used millions of tons of peat from peat bogs to fuel the smelt mills. Peat bogs aren't just great carbon sinks they are great soakers up of rain as well. Just as we got to Prebend bridge in Durham the river shallows because it is silting up and we could see the peat in the water tumbling over and over in quickly moving silt clouds . Brilliant! It got better : as we waited for the Inshanghai Restaurant to open we looked over the weirs at Framwellgate Bridge and there was a loud pop and then a splash because Atlantic Salmon were leaping the weirs to get to their spawning rivers , well they are small gills actually , high up in the Pennines , quite often above the 1500 feet contour line . Totally brilliant and some Salmon were nearly a meter in length although the highest leap , around 5 feet went to a pint sized one that seemed to have something to prove . Super , super, good particularly in a river that was dead 30 years ago. The re wilding of Durham and the UK continues apace and it remains true that if you clean it up they will come ! Food at the restaurant was super and we had a window seat and I was happily munching away , to much , whilst looking out at the Cathedral and the River Wear which I've come to know and love . York or Durham when Fiona retires : it could be a tough call!