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 River Ure near Hawes Rain all day Saturday. Three days later and flood plains beside the River Ure were underwater. An atmospheric day below Abbotside Common, at High Clint and Low Pike. All around us the call of curlew and of lapwing, the song of skylark. A glimmer of sunlight through low cloud.
At Hawes, the Wensleydale Creamery was doing a brisk trade in its range of local cheeses.
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 Arctic skua, Shetland Through Atlantic fronts, through a week of wind and rain, I immerse myself in the Shetland experience. A reprise of three weeks spent exploring the Shetland Isles in June and July 2011. An interval of nine years brings change and that's a telling perspective- a history of natural history.
I focus on a selection of locations and themes, not including the coming of North Sea Oil to Shetland- its influence on the infrastructure, its impact on wildlife. Then I heard Shetland naturalist Bobby Tulloch, a recording from 1974 and I was in deep.  Sparrowhawk The hawk must have killed moments before. Clinging to the feeder, balanced by its long tail, poise and white splotches on a grey-brown mantle said sparrrowhawk. That long first claw skewered a bloody collop to the top-stone. Impossible to say what the sparrowhawk had for breakfast. The raptor had quickly plucked its prey, ripped it open. No trace of feathers on the patio, but heavy rain might have washed them away. Small birds feel sheltered by trees and shrubs but the sparrowhawk is swift, an agile hunter is confined spaces.
 Kendal Castle and mist over the river After overnight rain the birch glistens as the early sun shimmers through rain drops. The morning is still and bright. Sunlit mist highlights the course of the River Kent. We reckon there will be a temperature inversion over the Lyth Valley so we drive to Helsington Church in time to see Whitbarrow rising above the mist. South toward Morecambe Bay, a pall of sunlit mist. How beautiful it is, and transient. In the time it takes to put on our walking boots the white density of the mist is pierced by sunlight.
 Tarn at Loughrigg The sound of beck and cascade in a Lake District landscape is a joy. Especially on a day after rain, when the sun shines. Today we had to wait until the afternoon but then the light was glorious.
Rain all day yesterday so the tarns were brim-full and overflowing, the pastures flooded at Pelter Bridge, Rydal. A blustery wind, stony tracks awash, flowing like becks. Silver How to Loughrigg, and then the sun shone forth.
 Snipe well camouflaged at Leighton Moss, but a helpful birder and his telescope discovered them for us. Handsome as they come into breeding plumage. Teal and tufted duck, marsh harrier beyond the reed beds.
Close and confiding, begging for food, a robin. Fringing the reed beds were alder trees heavy with catkins and a rose bush with several bedraggled clots of something fibrous that had been drenched, frozen and thawed through winter weather. What were they?  Mist gathering to the right, beyond Kendal Race Course Setting out in bright sun, I was ready for an icy approach to Scout Scar. Snow on Kendal Race Course and mist hid the fells to the north east. Sheep tugged at haylage in the feeder and pawed the frozen ground where it spilled onto snow. The flock was lost in sunlit mist, then the sun gave up on the day and mist prevailed.
There had been rain, then snow, and we could feel the ice beneath a surface layer of snow. When we reached the escarpment only a colour transition marked the cliff edge where snow met mist.
 Rime-ice on hawthorn A clear blue sky and a still morning. Beneath the moon, freezing fog had touched down on Scout Scar escarpment and hawthorn were white with rime-ice. Rime-ice so thick the grass was white, the limestone stippled white and last summer's flower-stems rose tall and white, their seed-heads like ice flowers. And mist in the upper reaches of the Lyth Valley was different too. Discrete columns of freezing fog were drifting over the valley. Several years ago I puzzled to see fog advancing until it swirled all about me, my head clear above a sea of freezing fog as temperatures plummeted.
 Heather, Calluna vulgaris, with rime-ice Rime-ice highlights last summer's flowers, adorning them with ice-jewels that sparkle in the sun. The ice-coating forms to windward and renders flower-stems almost translucent. Heather looks lovely under rime-ice. Seed-heads of wood-sage endure and stand proud above snow so how will they fare in rime-ice? I know the wood-sage habitat so I go in search of the rafts of limestone clitter where I hope to find it.
 Snow on the Lake District Fells The mist was stubborn. But sun gleamed off snow on the distant fells as I crested the Scout Scar escarpment. Mist lingered in the Lyth Valley, volatile mist which gathered and dispersed all morning. The fells were hidden until a sliver of dark summit rose above the mist. After mid-day the sun began to shrug off cloud and the snow-capped fells floated above the mist and clouds hugged the tops. We could not tell cloud from mountain. Cloud, that wondrous fusion of the elements that played before our eyes on this January day. Cloud is mountain, mountain is cloud.
 Bolton Caste, Wensleydale Mary Queen of Scots , unbowed by age and years of captivity, walks regally toward the block and her execution at Fotheringhay Castle. The camera focuses on the back of her neck! 'In my end is my beginning': the scene frames the tragedy of Mary Stuart at the beginning and end of the film. The queen takes off her outer black to reveal a gown of blood red. ' She wants to be a martyr,' whispers a male voice- in case we miss the symbolism.
 Birch trees in January Finsthwaite and woodlands rising from the south-west shore of Windermere were under the aegis of Furness Abbey, vital to its wealth and economy. With coppicing, pit-steads for charcoal burning, and iron mines, quarrying, corn-mills and granges. And a bark-peeler's hut.
Great Knott Wood is now managed by the Woodland Trust who tell the story of woodland management, history and natural history.  In the east the sky flushed with the approach of sunrise. Over the course of some half-hour I watched its coming. Rooks flew cawing across my open skylight window as I photographed the dawn. In the distance a plane soared to altitude, its con-trail almost vertical- a question of perspective and the curvature of the earth. The images look angrier than the coming of sunrise which was simply stunning.
 Swans and cygnets at Moss Eccles Tarn Swans and their cygnets at Moss Eccles Tarn. Trees reflected dark in the water, in the stillness. The swans came gliding toward us, elegant and beautiful, until they reached the shore where in gruff snorts they asked to share anything we might be eating.
 Dow Crag, The Old Man of Coniston. Slate spoil heaps centre Our path follows the course of Torver Beck, up-stream to its headwaters at Goat’s Water. Dow Crag and The Old Man of Coniston rise up above the hidden tarn.
A low winter sun illuminates the landscape in a distinctive way, with a different emphasis. Dow Crag and the Old Man are etched in sunlight and shadow, the architecture of the fells revealed.  Double-deck vehicle off-loads Cheviots The way of sheep is written into Lake District landscape. In-bye pastures where lambs are nurtured close to the farm, out-gangs- lanes bordered by drystone walls that lead maturing lambs to independence, outlying barns, sheep-folds, then out onto common grazing and the open fell. The thrill of watching a gathering when they're brought home again! The character of hill farming is written by the way of sheep, a heritage landscape.
Today, we are in for a surprise.  Scout Scar, New Year's Day 2019 A yelping of distant hounds. But where are they? Somewhere, down in the Lyth Valley, the hounds sing out. They ran amuk about Barrowfield, so rumour tells.
New Year's Day and once again I'm back in the year 1400, immersed in the tale of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. Sir Gawain destined to meet the green knight at the green chapel and to receive a blow from his axe, always on this day.  Scots Pine, Helsington Barrows To the west, the Lake District fells show clear. The Langdale Pikes, the ridge of The Band running down from Bowfell, Crinkle Crags- a dark grey mountain massif. Vistas to the south, toward Morecambe Bay and the sea, are more mysterious, and transient. Scanning south across the Lyth Valley, green pastures grow pale in the grip of frost over saturated ground, once wetland. Toward the coast, mist flows over the mosses and over the sea. Bright sunlight is quick to melt the frost, but not where shadows fall and by early afternoon the white rime lingers.
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AuthorJan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books.) 
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