I was lucky to return to camp before the rain started. There was a nasty gash in my main tent which I was able to patch before the wind started to blow. The next day the keeper rode up and down the next pasture - three hundred yards away - and when I went to look he started to gesticulate wildly and to shout stuff that was lost in the heavy rain. His vehicle, a tracked machine, wouldn't have looked out of place in a Mad Max film or as part of the Archaos circus. The RSPB warden ( http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2007/10/29/birdlife-reclaims-an-ancient-landscape-61634-20023031/ ) has confirmed that the harrier was without radio tag and went missing in early May.

I phoned Tynedale Planning and had to be persuasive to be able to speak to a nice person, who took down the details of the complaints. (I'm not holding my breath). If there's a domestic complaint then they 'come down like a tonne of bricks', of course. There's been a red Zetor tractor and trailer whizzing up and down the track through the week. It's been churning over Relton's Cleugh Cist so who knows what condition that'll be in now - I've got the 'before' photographs, at least.

Megalithic news - bought a roll of expired Kodachrome and discovered another stone of the Longpot Head Stone Circle. Minilithic news - the wall continues, albeit slowly - and I've re-found a portable rock with a single deep cupmark. The cupmark - not quite an inch across - is in the exact centre of the flat face of the rock. What's the betting the arch. community will say it is 'natural' ? Gits ...