We knew we were going to get wet, probably very wet, but it was the kind of morning that turns landscape into dramatic theatre; dark clouds unleashing torrential showers, then sunshine breaking through gaps in the clouds, sweeping across fields and fell side.
The first downpour arrived just as we made our way along the footpath that skirts the edge of the dene, a steep-sided cleft in the hillside cut by Stanhope burn, clothed with ash, Scots pine, oak and beech. The impact of heavy raindrops loosened leaves from the canopy above, sending them spinning down to join a carpet of wet beech autumn foliage, as shiny as polished copper, under our feet.
We waited for the shower to pass. Standing under the shelter of a beech with our gaze confined to our immediate surroundings, turned out to be a revelation. If we had not been forced to stop we would have walked past the glossy white toadstools of porcelain fungus (Oudemansiella mucida), jutting from the trunk high above us. Nor would we have seen the buzzard, hunched in the topmost branches of a dead sycamore in the field beside the dene.
Water trickling down the tree trunk pooled at its roots then became a rivulet, uniting with others as it flowed past our boots and down the sides of the dene, towards the burn below. We could not see it but the sound, of fast-flowing water over rocks, told of a torrent swollen by a week of days like this.
Then the clouds parted and for a few moments the falling rain became a silver sunlit curtain as it swept across the tree canopy above. Then it stopped, as suddenly as it had begun.
In the field there was an aura around the buzzard as, dog-like, it shook water from its feathers. Then it stretched its wings and lifted from the branch, struggling to find a thermal that would turn slow, ponderous, wing beats into an effortless glide.
Within minutes the sun had warmed the dry stone wall across the field enough for wisps of steam to rise from it into the cold air, on their way towards the clouds, to become rain again, repeating the endless cycle.
Follow Country diary on Twitter: @gdncountrydiary
