A journey along Swindale Beck.

So many delights and points of interest were woven into today and I’ve written myself some notes so that I don’t forget them. 
We  [ D and I ] met up with our good friend Michele who we both met on our first day at Uni, all registering for the same course in Environmental Science, the year was 1977 and we have been close friends ever since sharing the ups and downs that come along. Neither of us have kept contact with friends from our childhood and so I guess that Michele is our oldest friend . 

We met for a day out in the Lakes , not far from Haweswater, walking in a valley that had previously been earmarked for a reservoir. The valley has been subject to a pilot project to put curves back into its straightened course as a way of reducing flooding downstream  and to encourage greater habitat and  species diversity. The land is now owned and managed by the RSPB and seems to be growing into quite an environmental success story. 
We were in geographical  and “anorak” heaven, lots of river and glacial features to comment on , birdcalls to identify [ we learnt the call of the green woodpecker] ancient woodland to investigate and then to top it all we found a trail of fox spraint which contained lots of tiny , undigested claws. We spent the day being nature detectives and it made us very happy .