Spring comes slowly to the lonely uplands of the Yorkshire Dales and a curlew – one of the season’s earliest harbingers – is eyeing me with suspicion from his perch atop a drystone wall.
His chicks are yet to hatch, but he isn’t going to let me get any closer to the nest without kicking up a fuss. Launching himself into the cool air, he sounds the alarm – a shrill, bubbling ululation which is a constant refrain amid the upland soundscape. In the valley below, daffodils gild the edge of the village green and leafburst is just a few warm days away. Welcome to Crummackdale – nestling in the shadow of the recumbent lion of Ingleborough – one of the least known dales and a stronghold of that icon of the fells, the curlew.
This maze of interlacing valleys was carved by repeated periods of glacial activity over the last 500,000 years, when retreating ice sheets scoured deep fissures in the limestone, leaving upland plateaus of peat punctuated by terraced escarpments,
