Country diary: Healing after the stress of winter storms

Settle and Gordale Scar, North Yorkshire: The winter has taken an astonishing toll on the most statuesque trees, with dieback-afflicted ash and shallow-rooted beech the worst affectedThere are new colours flying from the flagpole on Castleberg Crag in Settle: summer-sky blue and sunflower yellow. I see them everywhere now: hyacinths and daffodils outside the supermarket; black-faced sheep on Warrendale Knotts with blue and yellow smit marks, the combination no less powerful even where it is unintentional.The woodland adjacent to Castleberg is a scene of devastation, wreaked by a different kind of airstrike. It's the same all over the high dales - the winter has taken an astonishing toll on the most statuesque trees, with dieback-afflicted ash and shallow-rooted beech the worst affected. Many have been sectioned and stacked alongside roads and bridleways. Others lie where they fell, and I walk their lengths, paying respects. Continue reading...