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It was probably not the day many of us had imagined when we signed up for the Celebrating Woodland Heritage survey at Hardcastle Crags, a small hardy group of us gathering in the car park amid light but persistent rain. Snow had been forecast but only touched the higher ground, and down here the slushy wetness lent the woods a sombre air. Alfie looked miserable and stood shivering while gazing wistfully at distant squirrels.

Dawn on December 21st is at 8.23am in West Yorkshire, late enough to allow even those out the night before to join in the winter solstice celebrations. I have been invited to join a large group of Calder Valley fellrunners “aiming to see if Chris Goddard is right about the sun rising out of the Miller’s Grave on the Winter Solstice”. There is not a little pressure here, but I feel confident enough that I won’t be lynched if it turns out to be an erroneous claim.

The West Yorkshire Woods had been out all of a week when my friend Mark looked at it and remarked ‘I see you haven’t found the cross in Tinker Bank Wood.’ I thought I had, but it turns out I was wrong. A few days later I explored the overgrown corner of the wood he’d specified and, sure enough, I found an obvious cross base covered in moss. I felt like saying, ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me earlier?’ – after all we’d been out exploring Tom Bell’s Cave together not long before – but of course there are hundreds of sites I still don’t know about in the woods and moors I claim to have mapped to the point of exhaustion.