I got back to camp this last week and there wasn't much damage, just a couple of guys off and a single peg pulled out. Next morning, however, there was a T-shaped cut in the store tent - I must have slept through the bang-bang charade after lugging a 90lb pack seven miles, and up a height, in the heat. A deep but not dreamless sleep. The keepers have been replacing gateposts and the Mad Max vehicle was trailered out on Friday morning.

I cut away the turf covering three stones of the Longpot Head stone circle and found a fourth but, by then, the cloud of midges was just too much. I'll look for more stones here - they've been buried by peat accumulation to one side of the wall that runs through the middle of the circle, and the peat has eroded - presumably by overburning the heather - on the other, exposing the stones completely. I'm hoping that the newly exposed stones will show on GoogleEarth et al. in a year or so. Their images have just been updated and I'm pretty sure I'm on there - setting off to the well with a yellow bucket, in late April 2005. David's Cairns show up well too.

Nature News: I was surprised to hear the call of a Black grouse, early one morning. I thought they'd been missing for about a decade. The unusual thing was that it was replying to the distant drone of a helicopter (probably the Redesdale Camp air taxi). I caught sight of it later that evening - from a distance. I've since found that thirty were captively reared and released to the south of here. That would explain its 'brand new' appearance. The Red grouse are starting to call again, after raising young, and the shooters are itching to start blasting them away.

No word from Tynedale Planning yet - I'll write an account for PE this week, if the forecast rain appears. The Microsoft aerial images, via FlashEarth, have also been updated and show the new road, so must be from early May this year ...