The highlights of Waitby Greenriggs include bird's eye primrose which is also found on nearby Smardale Fell, and at Tarn Sike.   It's a lovely primrose.   The site is also remarkable for marsh helleborine and for several species of orchid, and rare hybrids.  We were whizzed around Waitby Greenriggs by a guide who did not come with us to Tarn Sike, the second location of our field trip.
Under the aegis of Liz and Col Hotchkiss we became a mutually supportive group, sharing our finds, puzzling over a marsh speedwell which was new to me and I think to my botanist friend Fional Holman.  With curiosity and enthusiasm we did well at Tarn Sike.

East Baugh Fell might seem rather bleak moorland but for naturalists it’s a treasure trove.  Golden plover are calling  as we change into our boots and I’m eager to see them. Merlin possibly.  You never know.  
A young bird flies up from the heather and its panic brings a  family of red grouse clamouring and tumbling  into view. Birdsong accompanies us all along our walk, skylark and pipit always, and curlew  fall silent as we climb higher and pick up the call of golden plover.
All day, we meet only a couple of  walkers who wonder why we are down on our knees amongst hummocks of heathers.  There are tiny flowers  to delve and discover.  No crowberry flowers but I like the contrast of glossy green leaves and red stems- sap rising. 

A red damselfly comes to rest on a patch of green lichen,  flies off, returns to the sunlit  rock. Above the sheepfold by Flour Gill  a network of water-tracks drains off Greenup Edge through a zone of moss that must have been a glacial scour. A frog vanishes amongst pondweed and breeding dragonflies dart along the water. As we climb out of the dale the heat is overpowering.
To three tarns.  Beware hydrosere, a summer tarn lush with aquatic flora asking to be photographed, where bog and open water are hidden by flowers.

Rising steeply above the deep corrie tarn of Blea Water are scree slopes and rock ledges where purple saxifrage is said to grow. It’s a zone of montane flora where sheep cannot graze. I love these solitudes, these mountain redoubts. Paths on High Street and Mardale Ill Bell  follow the ridges, giving vistas. But life begins at the spring-head, where the first trickle of water sustains mosses and flowers at the headwaters of the River Kent.   In such a habitat I always hope I might find ring ouzel, the mountain bird.