Limited visibility

Recently asked about my favourite day, my answer was either a May morning on the RSPB’s Ynys-Hir reserve in North Wales, or else winter midday on the northern moor. The latter is not a day for birding, but often bright and cold: an opportunity for long views and with the ground frozen less chance of wet feet. The picture that heads all these Dartmoor Letters posts is of the Belstone Ridge one New Year’s Day.

But as most of its visitors have found, Dartmoor weather is unpredictable. This is part of its charm, if that is the right word; and with the right clothing, and a map and compass, the weather is part and parcel of the experience. This is not to say that it doesn’t present its own challenges. We left the house two Sundays ago in sun, but looking towards the top of Cosdon as we drove north, all we could see was low cloud. Okehampton was gloomy, and by the time were at the camp, it was grey and spitting with rain. We walked away, up the military road towards Yes Tor, and as we climbed we entered the cloud. On the top visibility was down to little more than 50 metres as we turned south, first for High Willhays and then Dinger Tor.

Walking and birdwatching do not really go together, but at High Willhays a solitary Raven slowly lifted off the tor into the cloud no more than 20 metres ahead of us, lost in nothingness almost before we had had time to see him; and ten minutes later we heard first, and then saw, a small flock (about 20) Golden Plover.

The track down to Dinger from High Willhays is well trodden and usually easy to follow, but with no real visibility, and the ground spongy and waterlogged, we strayed off course. Stopping, retracing our steps and taking more care than often, we eventually reached Dinger with a certain measure of relief. To the right of the track, running down into the West Okement, the ground is always boggy and finding yourself in that, with poor light and a short day would have been little fun. At Dinger there was a small group of Royal Engineers, most wrapped up and sleeping in bivvy bags, with a solitary, wet and miserable looking picket, cradling a light machine gun. He told us they had been out on exercise for two days and had another five to go: he didn’t look happy.

From Dinger we walked the easy route back, with the weather worsening.

Early summer birdwatching

After the heat of the week before last, we have had four days or so of rain. Driving home late Friday afternoon, after two days in the centre of Bristol, the countryside south of Exeter was green and wet, and the roadside verges lost in cow parsley. The early purple orchids have replaced the primroses, and the steep slopes of the Teign Valley are blurred by trees in full leaf.

I am never quite sure when spring ends and summer begins in this part of Devon, but this weekend it feels that we are on the cusp. As I write this post, Caroline is sitting listening to bird calls on the RSBP website (if you haven’t tried it you should), to fix the sounds in her mind. With the start of summer, it is increasingly hard to watch birds in the tree canopy, but you can still hear them. Walking through Yarner Wood a fortnight ago, the pied flycatchers were easy to spot, but tomorrow when we hope to get out again, it will be harder: deeper shadow and thickening leaf cover. This year we are determined to raise our bird watching game, and learn to identify them by song.

Late April we were in Wales, staying outside Brecon and mixing walking and birdwatching, and since then, and much closer to home, we have been in Yarner Wood (pied flycatchers and ravens), by the Hennock reservoirs (blackcaps and great crested grebes) and out on the northern moor (red grouse and ravens).

The highlight in Wales was climbing Pen y Fan, highest of the Beacons. We started from the Upper Neuadd Reservoir and climbed easily in hazy sun along the old Roman road.

At the gate at Bwlch ar y Fan, we turned left to Cribyn, the tops lost in low cloud. We heard, before we saw, a group of a dozen or so young men, loud and raucous, first on the path down from Fan y Big, and then coming up fast behind us. By this time they were quieter. Each had a pack, though not a Bergen, so we weren’t sure whether they were squaddies or a college trip.

They passed us easily (the speed of the young) and as they did, their two instructors (we met them on Cribyn, and learnt they were junior leaders) were not even puffing. It was somewhat different for us, but we finally reached the top of Pen y Fan, the final stage up the steep stone pitched path reminding us of Snowdon last year. Sunlight, and ravens in the sky.

We were back in Wales, walking with ravens.

Walking with Ravens

Bwlch Main, the Thin Path, is the first part of the final section of the Rhyd-Ddu Path up Snowdon. Rightly named, it is a narrow exposed ridge, the path barely a couple of feet wide. On the North West side the land drops away to Cwm Clogwyn, and on the other side there is an equally precipitous, if less rocky, drop into Cwm Tregalan. We had chosen the Rhyd-Ddu Path as it is one of the easiest routes to the top, and certainly not as difficult as the route over Crib Goch (where one of the children just short of her 16th birthday and on Adventure Training, burst into tears, unable to go on until she realised that to go back was simply impossible as no one would go with her). We had, however, looked long and hard at the map, at the tight contour lines and both of us had started the walk with some apprehension, compounded by our failure three days earlier to get beyond Craig Cau on Cadair Idris. We had excused this on the basis that the wind on the tops had been vicious, snatching at our legs and making walking difficult. One of my headmasters would have had a different explanation: funk.

Age is very much in the mind but what I was able to do thirty years ago, with hardly a hair turned, is now no longer easy. As we looked at the path along the southern ridge, we nearly turned back. That we did not was in large part a matter of pride: we had been shadowing a group of walkers from Ross on Wye all morning: they were all in their 60s or early 70s, and most, like us, had not climbed Snowdon before. If they could do it, and they were determined they would, then so too would we. We were also determined not to let each other down.

It was more a slow shuffle along the ridge than anything else, but as we started, a pair of Ravens slipped effortlessly past, soaring in the wind above us, and our spirits lifted. Once across, the rest of the climb was easy. We reached the summit in bright sun, with a blue sky and our Ravens wheeling and tumbling along the top, folding their wings as each called to the other: a deep, resonant “gronk”. The descent along the Snowdon Ranger Path was long, the zig-zags rough and steep, but however weary we were when we finally arrived back at the Rhyd-Ddu car park, we were still with those Ravens.