Can I introduce wildlife cameraman to introduce his river Dart diary, which will be on Winterwatch tonight.
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Being asked to make a film on the Dart was an absolute dream. It鈥檚 a river I love a great deal and practically runs past my house. 聽Over the period of a week my friend Glen and I explored its fifty-mile length, from source to where she meets the sea at Dartmouth. Clearly a week isn鈥檛 long enough to capture a fraction of its beauty, diversity, animals and people, so the best I could do was attempt to get across a flavour of this magical river. 聽Its different moods and ages.
We started high on Dartmoor pre-dawn. A deep Hoare frost coating the boulders and coarse grass. As the sky to the east coloured coral pink we started to pick out the hardy sheep, ponies and cattle that call this windswept wilderness home.聽 The frost was deep and the small pools and rivulets that feed into the source of the Dart were frozen solid. 聽The animals would have to drop lower off the moor to find liquid water. The sun rose giving us stunning views all the way from moor top to the coast, the whole of the Dart鈥檚 journey.
Lower and later the stream was crystal clear and gushing but still cold enough for icicles to hang from ferns and low branches. 聽A heron leap-frogged down the stream ahead of us, but like the elusive wren glimpsed darting about in the undergrowth I was unable to get a decent shot.聽
Over the few days we had to film we had frost, sun, cloud, drizzle, rain, hail, fog and wind鈥� But I guess that鈥檚 Dartmoor for you.聽 One morning I went to a lovely bridge I know and sat quietly with my camera and was eventually rewarded by a king fisher coming to perch a few metres away. 聽A real treat.
Day 3 saw us tackle our 鈥榗able dolly鈥�. A wonderful toy that runs a camera down a tort wire give lovely flowing shots 鈥� that鈥檚 the theory anyway! 聽The problem though was how to get the cable across river?
Solution. We had to wade across in our underpants. 聽It was colder than you鈥檇 think!聽 And frustratingly the light was really poor so even though we got our equipment working the shots didn鈥檛 capture the real beauty of the place.
As we got lower down the river its mood changed. We left the forests and the Dart broadened while her waters slowed. I borrowed a boat from a friend at Totnes and we drifted gloriously down river on the high tide. 聽We spotted swans, shags, herons, geese and ducks, and the sunshine joined us for an hour or so, which was beautiful.
As we reached Dartmouth the River Dart was really wide and full of yachts, river taxis and fishing boats. 聽The fresh water flows out past the castle and heads into the salty sea.
The Dart is a very special river and I was lucky to have the opportunity to explore its length. 聽I would dearly love, one day, to do it the justice it deserves.