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During our trips to and from Scotland, one location pops up in virtually all our routes – Wet Sleddale near Shap, on the eastern edge of the Lake District National Park.  It’s in just the right place to break the journey from Wales to Scotland, there are dog walking possibilities to suit Border Collie ‘Mist’, and almost always something of interest for the humans.

Chris and I have been coming here for years now.  There’s a cracking walk over the local hills that links the three valleys of Wet Sleddale, Swindale and Mosedale (see post #51).  This route was one of my early contributions to the Walking World website, and later recycled as a Trail Magazine route (see above).   A well known feature on the walk is Sleddale Hall, which provided the outdoor location shots for the cult 1987 film ‘Withnail and I’.

Sadly, the hall is deserted and unoccupied at present.  In recent years, a ‘pop up’ event ran themed weekends at the hall to view the ‘Withnail and I’ film, though the current covid problem has put an end to that for now.   Other than that, not a lot happens round here, though there is often ‘something in the air’.

I always carry a camera on the usual 5km dog-walk circuit, mostly in the hope of getting a photo of one of the red squirrels who live in a small stand of trees on the way out to Sleddale Hall, but they are shy and secretive and so far I’ve been out of luck.  Shy and secretive doesn’t describe the greylag geese who make their home on the Wet Sleddale reservoir – in May 2021 I was in the right place at the right time and managed to photograph a flight of three as they made their noisy progress up the valley. 

In August I had something far noisier than the geese to try to capture.

Low flying military aircraft are not uncommon in this part of Cumbria, though it isn’t every day I get the chance to get a close photograph.   The first McDonnell-Douglas F-15E was almost past before I managed to get the camera into action – I expected a second aircraft to pass and sure enough it came close behind, quite near to the trees and very near to several birds (circled in the photo above) startled by the first aircraft.

Instead of the usual flight of two aircraft, we were treated to a fly past of a second pair, still flying close to those trees!  The F15’s would have been USAF aircraft on a training flight, probably from the US base at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk – some might object to the peace being disturbed by noisy warplanes, but training flights help preserve the peace in the greater sense. The mini air show added a bit of drama to our dog walk, though I think ‘Mist’ was happier for Wet Sleddale to return to being a quiet, deserted valley again.

Text and images © Paul Shorrock

p.s. My aircraft recognition is probably better than my bird identification – I’m pretty sure those geese in the photos are greylags, but if I’m wrong I’m sure my old mate John Bamber will be along soon to put me right!