Skirr Cottage Diary.

The snow is showing little sign of disappearing; a slight thaw in the bright morning sunshine, but it is far too cold. I decided on a walk up the Old Road and onto the moor. I had in mind an encounter with a short-eared owl that had been spotted in the area although inwardly I doubted it would still be around now snow carpeted the landscape. The walk up the steep Old Road was like tramping up a stream in places, but it was all the churned up mud and deep ruts made by all the 4 X4’s that ‘play’ up here that was distressing. The sides of the track were fast eroding away. Reaching the summit there is a style that lets you enter the moor proper. It was at this point a wave of nostalgia swept over me, transporting me back to my school days. It was here on a weekend nature ramble led by our French teacher named Stan Blyth, a brilliant birder even though he was sight impaired (he could name any bird by its call or song) that I suddenly remembered him telling us that water on the left side of the summit flowed down into the River Dane and on the right the water flowed down to the River Wye. Today the melting snow was flowing freely and I watched the water find its way through the rutted gritstone, gauging a channel down to their chosen river. It’s strange the things that stay in your head. I might add that back at school the following week, instead of a French lesson, we plotted the course of the Dane and the Wye from their source until they merged with bigger rivers on their journey to the sea. I never did see the short-eared owl.