How long does a two and a half hour journey actually take? Well, three and a half if you go the back way and get a clear run. Four if you stop somewhere… Five if you find a good church or two… Yet I still seemed to have an hour or so left before our rendezvous… Granted, I had left in good time, but I had been to work first too. Even so, I dawdled along towards the crossroads above Baslow thinking I had plenty of time to wander over the top there and drink in the hills…

It had been a good run. There had been hawks, kestrels, kites and buzzards… I’d lost count somewhere back in Leicestershire… mostly perched watching, apart from the kites which like to swoop low over the road.

I nearly lost the car as I came round the bend, astonished at what I saw. I had seen deer close to this spot once before… a magical encounter at dawn last August, where I had been blessed to watch a small family in the bracken. But not a whole herd… not mid-afternoon on a January Thursday just outside Sheffield! I couldn’t believe my eyes. And I couldn’t stop either. They probably weren’t deer anyway. More likely a dark coloured flock of sheep. Far more likely.

Up the road… find a place to turn… come back. Yep. Definitely deer! Still nowhere to stop and watch. Find a side road… too narrow to turn or park… gnaw fingernails and turn anyway… bear in mind these are tiny country lanes…

I finally find a farm gate about half a field away, where I can hide behind a wall and just watch. I must have stood there for half an hour watching them play in the stream and graze. I lost count of how many and gave up trying… ‘lots’ of them… somewhere between thirty and fifty… They were just too far for really good pics… and just too many to get them all in!

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