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SO, Teesdale is making a major attempt to show off.

Walkers are Welcome is a new idea to market the dale as a beautiful place to walk, for much of the year. Walkers benefit, the area benefits as the walkers need somewhere to sleep, eat, and buy food. Teesdale Marketing and the district council approve - the latter may give it official endorsement, whatever that means.

Sadly, the same page which reported this news last week carried another report from the dale: a debate by the district council on the selling of the public toilets in the centre of Barnard Castle.

If there's one thing visitors are going to need, it's public toilets.

Spectator invites Teesdale to try some joined-up thinking.

Not so grand IT is welcome news that an ancient legal right governing Richmond's old racecourse, which can be passed to the trust which looks after it, has been unearthed in the bowels of Richmondshire District Council.

The importance of this legal nicety is in the rights it gives the trust A tale about cats who take a walk on the wild side IN recent weeks, wild cats have featured in the news because they are now considered to be an endangered species. It is difficult to know precisely how many of them remain in our country but one wildlife consultant thinks there may be at least 400 and probably more.

Here, we need to make a distinction between domestic cats that have gone wild, and the genuine wild cat. It may help to know that this ferocious animal is sometimes called the British Tiger, and it is the only native member of the cat family to be living wild in this country.

It cannot be domesticated, and it is claimed that this shy but savage animal is totally impossible to tame.

Wild cats live in remote forested areas of Scotland, consequently it is highly unlikely - but not impossible - that one will be seen in this region. Because they move mainly at night, they are regarded as highly secretive and do not like open spaces.

When they are not confronted or cornered, they are very timid, preferring to hide whenever possible but if they are cornered, they will hiss and spit alarmingly, crouching with their backs hunched, teeth bared and ears flattened back to the neck. That is when they should not be approached.

The likeness to a tiger is evident because, although this cat is only slightly larger than its domestic A DRY MONTH: Perfect weather for the month is captured perfectly in this scene, of a sunny day in Weardale cousin, it does have dark grey or black stripes along its body, head and legs, with similarly coloured rings around its bushy tail. The tail has rather a blunt end with a black tip.

Its main colour is a light brown shade, sometimes with white underparts and when it walks, it has all the appearances of a miniature tiger, especially in the way it moves.

Although currently restricted to the highlands of Scotland, wild cats once roamed across the entire countryside of Britain. They were part of our plentiful wild life until the middle of the 18th century, but later, around the 1860s, they began to suffer persecution from landowners and farmers due to their undoubted skills in killing small animals and ground nesting birds, especially game. Their fur was also highly prized by the Victorians.

In addition to birds, they will take rabbits, hares and rodents, and they are extremely capable killers, sometimes working alone and sometimes in pairs. It was that persecution that drove wild cats from England and into the highlands.

Over the past 70 years or so, however, wild cats have been spreading slowly southwards, and it seems this is due to afforestation schemes that have provided it with new habitats.

Nonetheless, it does not seem to have colonised our forest areas, although conservationists are now planning to re-introduce the wild cat to England and Wales. Whether this would be popular or welcomed remains to be seen.

One problem is whether the wild cats still in existence are genuine felis sylvestris or whether they have interbred with domestic cats.

Even a former domestic cat that has lived in the wild for most of its life is not the same creature as a genuine wild cat. Those who wish to re-introduce the wild cat to England and Wales want to be sure they are dealing with the genuine species and not a crossbreed.

This is something that cannot be easily determined and I understand the only foolproof method is to test the DNA of captured wild cats and those kept in captivity for the purposes of breeding pure' wild cats. Already, there are wild cats in captivity for controlled breeding, and they are known to be free from blood tainted by their adventurous domestic cousins.

Scottish Natural Heritage is now trying to establish the number of wild cats living in the highlands.

This will be the first such survey for more than twenty years and SNH is asking assistance from motorists and hikers when they visit wild cat country.

It is pointed out that wild cats are most likely to be seen at dusk or dawn, when their eyes are caught in the lights of passing motor vehicles.

A person walking quietly in the woods might also notice the animal. The address of Scottish Natural Heritage is 12, Hope Terrace, Edinburgh, EH9 2AS (Tel: 0131-4474784).

If you do come across one, please don't treat it like a domestic tabby cat - this is one of our most powerful predators, a true miniature tiger.

MARCH is often called the Month of Many Weathers, due to its wide ranging moods. Quite literally, every kind of British weather can appear, varying from snow and frost to gales and rain via sunshine and mild winds. Some fog and floods might be thrown in for good measure.

In Anglo-Saxon times it was known as the rough month - Hrethmonath - due to its powerful gales and propensity for wind-driven storms. It was later called Lenctmonath due to the lengthening days and another legend is that March borrowed the last three days of February because its own first three days can often produce snow and wintry conditions.

What does occur in March is that the winds and strengthening sunshine tend to dry the land. Roads, fields and gardens become noticeably drier as the power of the wind takes effect and this is generally thought to be a welcome and valuable development after the winter.

An old saying tells us that "A peck of March dust is worth a King's Nothing to do with woodpeckers or war THE tranquil village of Finghall, to the east of Leyburn, has a name that takes us back into the depths of the Dark Ages.

It was probably first pronounced as the Fining-halh: in the seventh or eighth century when it originated.

Now, working backwards, halh was an early English word meaning a small valley, which describes the land about well. The fining has been explained in many different ways over the years with reference even to woodpeckers and warriors, but as so often with placenames the most credible explanation is the most boring, namely that fining meant the Wood-pile.

This might seem like a particularly inauspicious name to give an early Anglo-Saxon village - we should probably imagine a couple of shacks that were built there next to the stacked logs and from there a church and so on down to the Wensleydale Railway in modern times.

But if cowboys won the west, then wood-piles won the north, the north of England that is. After all, in the period when the name was given the north, as far as the Cheviots, was heavily-wooded: unlike southern and eastern England that had been cleared in pre- Roman times.

But in the Anglo-Saxons centuries, the northern forests became woods and the hills and, yes, the small valleys were settled and farmed intensively. We might have a spasm of regret for those vast, green wilderness in which beavers, wolves and perhaps still at that date bears ran.

But it is also true that, for better or worse, the north of England as we know it was created in settlements like the Wood-Pile in the Small Valley with axe and saw.

Simon Young is a historian and author of AD500.

ransom."

The ideal conditions for growing, according to another old saying, is "A dry March, a wet April and a cool May - fills barns, cellars and bring in much hay." A similar saying from the West Riding of Yorkshire reminds us that a dry March with some wind will result in a full barn.

Perhaps the best known and most oft quoted of the March sayings is "If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb, but if it comes in like a lamb, then it will go out like a lion."

References to lambs and lions represent the two extremes of our variable weather patterns, perhaps more apt in modern times than in the past.

As we enter yet another March, we can only wait to see what interesting contrasts the month will bring.

WE are having work done in our garden at the moment and it involves the construction of a pond along with new paths, steps and other features.

What impressed me, as the digging machines got to work, was the number of stones that lurked beneath the surface of the soil.

This reminded me of an old belief that stones actually grew in the ground or that they rose to the surface from deep beneath. These were common suppositions in the past, because farmers and gardeners could not explain how small stones persistently appeared in a patch of earth that had only recently been cleared of them. What had they come from? In ancient times it was thought that Mother Stones produced little ones.

It used to be said that it was quite impossible to totally clear a garden full of pebbles or a stony field, because once it appeared to be empty, the stones mysteriously returned within a short time.

A simple experiment might provide a solution. Put some small pebbles in a container of some kind, and then cover them with sand. Leave them alone and eventually you'll find the sand has sunk to the bottom, making it appear the stones have risen to the surface.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: The train station at Finghall, near Leyburn in North Yorkshire What's in a Name?

by Simon Young placenamesuk@yahoo.co.uk and its efforts to raise money to restore the Georgian grandstand ,which has deteriorated rapidly in the last 50 years. Its relative isolation may have led some to forget about it. In fact, if it had been in a more prominent spot, there would have been a public outcry about its appalling state.

Let's hope we will see something done to restore this little gem.

1:42pm Friday 7th March 2008

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