A NEAR-FORTNIGHT’S walking in the Lake District, in generally fine weather, without climbing any high fell.

What a waste, many lovers of Lakeland, of which there are countless millions, will say of my recent holiday.

They are mistaken.

I long ago scaled most of the fells which, based on notes I made from the Wainwright guides as they came out, took my fancy for whatever reason.

I have no interest in climbing others just because Wainwright was there. I’m certain he would be dismayed by, indeed pour scorn on, “Wainwright bagging”, now the chief preoccupation of thousands of fellwalkers.

Their ticking-off of many of the targeted 214 fells chiefly involves crossing their summits on ridge routes.

This is light years from the intimate discovery of fells through the numerous separate ascents made by the great man himself.

There is this to be said as well.

Except in savage winter conditions, above the tree line the fells remain pretty much the same in all seasons.

There is no spring on Scafell Pike. But down in the valleys, ah what glory. The height of spring, which we have now, sees lower Lakeland at its very best.

In varying stages of leafing, the trees still provide views through to lake or fellside.

The woodland floors are carpeted with bluebells and anemones. Violets peep modestly here and there.

Stitchwort brightens the lanes.

Gambolling lambs crown the new life.

“All this juice and all this joy”, as Gerard Manley Hopkins characterised spring.

But none of it blesses the Lake District of crag and scree. But my mission here is not to celebrate this wonderful richness.

Rather it is to deplore an absence. Or (since I confess no specialist knowledge) a perceived absence.

Where are Lakeland’s famed red squirrels?

In our fortnight’s wanderings, entirely below the tree line, my wife and I came across not a single squirrel – red or grey. And yet several of our outings were in places that specially boast the red squirrel’s presence.

Thus: “Dodd Wood is a fantastic place to view the very rare red squirrel.” Whinlatter Forest is “a National Red Squirrel Reserve”. But none showed up for us at either place.

It was the same at Mire House, Bassenthwaite, whose leaflet injunction to “look out for red squirrels” is encouraged by numerous feeding boxes.

There some years ago we observed red squirrels raiding a bird feeder at an estate house.

Even earlier, back in the 1980s, we rarely visited Holme Wood, lovely mixed woodland bordering Loweswater, without seeing red squirrels. But numerous visits in recent years have yielded only a single sighting, two Septembers ago.

No-one can blame the grey squirrel, which is subject to an extermination campaign in the Lake District. I blame people.

Unlike its grey cousin, which co-exists happily with humans (hence our great betrayal in persecuting it), the red squirrel is extremely shy.

I believe there are now simply too many visitors to the Lake District, and particularly too many with dogs, for the red squirrel to continue to thrive there.

Though amply deserved, the Lake District needed its recent, loudly trumpeted, designation as a World Heritage Site like a hole in the head.

The eagles have deserted the once little-visited Haweswater fells. The red squirrel is following them out.