Fresh air and space

There is little better for a townie like me than getting out into the fresh air and enjoying all the wide open space of the Yorkshire Dales. Littondale feels particularly spacious. It's a broad-bottomed valley carved out by glaciers. It has a small river, the Skirfare, running through it but despite the fact that we have had a wet winter, there was no running water in much of the main riverbed. I can only think that the water runs underground, as the rock is limestone and very porous.  The stream you see here is a small tributary running off the valley sides through the meadows.

I saw plenty of sheep and spring lambs and a few cattle of an unusual type, black with a broad white band round their middle (Dutch Belted?). There were are also a good few birds about - lapwings tumbling through the air, a couple of oystercatchers in the meadows (not many oysters hereabouts for them!). I also saw a curlew, as well as the commoner species of country birds: crows, rooks, blackbirds, gulls, magpies, jackdaws, robins, great tits, blue tits and several magnificent pheasants, their plumage stunning at this time of year. I might have seen more, but I don't carry binoculars as well as my camera.