Another local patch

When our children were tiny, we spent two years on the western edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Puddle-suited and welly-booted, they each climbed their first peak as soon as they could put one sturdy foot in front of another. We followed the fell walls, stumbling with them over the tussocky grass and scrambling onto the trig points. They learned about walkers' cairns and fell asleep to the sound of grazing sheep and crying lambs. They knew all the local tractors by colour, shape and name and would spend every Wednesday morning watching them queue at the livestock market opposite our house.

It is a place of wide views and wild weather; a place to get fit in and stay fit for. It feels a little like home and we visit often. At half term our boots were on the fells again. Up in the Howgills, we race up Cautley Spout and on to Calders before reaching the top at Bram Rigg (676m). Ring ouzel, a smart summer thrush, accompanies us, flipping from rock to rock. Like a slim Blackbird, the male has a broad white chest band and yellow bill. It makes its nest on the ground in high and wild places. We are surrounded by upland specialists and summer visitors: Wheatear bounce in the springy turf, Crag martin surf the breezes over the waterfall and there is the ragged cry of Curlew above the tumbling Skylark. Returning via Arant Haw (605m) and Winder (473m), it feels good to get mountain miles into new boots. Off the fell, the gate above the sheep farm clacks shut and sets the sheepdogs barking an alert as we pass. We follow the track into town and emerge onto the main road opposite the Lodge that was once our home. This wild place got under our skin decades ago and it is hard to let go.