We have been in contact with Jan for ages, and it is with great pleasure that we welcome her aboard, not only as a guest blogger, but as a Co. Durham representative for the CFZ. With Davy Curtis already at the helm in the country, the two of them will make a dream team par excellence... The winter snows lay deep and untouched on the high moors of Weardale. It was dark – a thin crescent moon, shrouded in snow-laden clouds sailed high in the heavens, but other than my car’s headlights, this was the only light for miles.
I’d stopped several times on that single track road in the middle of nowhere, mostly to let the odd disgruntled rabbit hop out of the way of the car, and once to wonder at the pure white ghost which was a barn owl hunting along the verge.
It’s a road I know well. The wilderness it runs through is home to many species, but other than the occasional rabbit, people don’t notice just what’s “out there”.
If you sit quietly surrounded by the cotton grass at the height of summer, you’ll hear the silver song of the skylark, and if you follow the notes into the sky, you may be fortunate to see the tiny black dot which is the small brown bird singing his heart out.
There are brown hares, adders, short-eared owls, Merlins, Hobbys, buzzards a-plenty and, if you are really fortunate, red kites, eagle owls and once, a golden eagle.
One summer’s day I braked hard to avoid a fleeing rabbit... only to hit the stoat which was chasing it.
That night, however, nothing stirred but the rabbits, until I’d reached the little pine wood at the top of the moors. As I turned the corner, and started the long decent back into the valley, a strange creature ambled along in the car headlights. I’d seen it before, and I STILL didn’t know what it was.
It was the size of a large boar badger, but with longer legs. It’s tail was bushy and help almost straight out from its spine. It was various tones of brown and tan. And it ran like a weasel.
Now... it was too big to be a mink an otter or a pine martin, bigger too (and the wrong colour) for it to be a racoon (although I DID see a racoon in Cumbria) so, either this beast was a large odd-coloured badger, which carried its tail wrong... or it was a wolverine. I followed it in the car as it ran down the centre of the road. It was touching 25mph, and I got the feeling it wasn’t even trying. After 50 yards, it jumped over a dry stone wall and into a field, where it disappeared into the night.
Of course it left no discernable tracks on the road, and I couldn’t get into the field, so I left it to go its own way, and promised to return the next morning with a camera.
As so often happens, it was several days before the weather cleared enough to make driving on the moors a viable option. There was no sign of the beast. I asked a walker if he’d seen anything unusual, but he’d seen nothing all day... (typical!)
It’s been 2 years now since I saw it, and although I’d seen the creature several times previously to that beautiful night, I never did see it again.
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