The soft midsummer evening was just right for a romantic stroll around Malham Tarn. The place was quiet, the crowds had vanished, gone in their buses or settled in the bars. One couple walked back smiling hand-in- hand, another picnicked by the water's edge.

This was tranquillity base after all the drama and excitement of limestone days.

Skylarks sang over the wetlands, carnivorous butterworts were in violet flower and cotton grass fluffed up the land.

Solo trees are protected by their personal circles of stone walls. On the water ducks and coots patrolled the margins and further out a dinghy. On the Pennine Way there was no one to be seen. Pick up a good info sheet from a box by a gate.

George Wilkinson relishes the romantic setting of Malham Tarn.

We have been moving over open ground, with a backdrop of scar, then a gentle rise takes us into some woods with a carpet of dog's mercury, and also under the beeches wood avons with their shy nodding heads.

Yews and Welsh poppies announce the Field Centre, once a Georgian mansion, now there's laboratory glass on the windowsills and computers in the lounge. There's some more info on the Tarn, 'Britain's highest upland alkaline lake' at 1250ft, and also one of only three natural lakes in Yorkshire. And I read about Tarn Moss, the raised peat bog.

All this started 12,000 years ago, after the last glacial age. And it seemed an age since I was here as a student, poking around in the bogs and irritating my professor by misidentifying the rare plants by using a frowned-upon picture book flora. Old habits die hard.

The Field Studies Council runs lots of courses, for example 'Painting The Dales' or 'Slugs And Snails'. It's a lovely place.

Then come a few other houses, presumably the homes of scientists because all had wild gardens, and after these a nice track of overarching copper beech, laburnum and thorn that takes you right by the bog.

Duck boards snake out but the bog is of 'supreme' eco-importance, entry is by permit only.

Even if you can't penetrate you do get a good idea of its size and shape and curious colour and texture.

Finally it seemed a shame to do my last Malham mile on tarmac, but there was no traffic bar as sheep trailed self-shedding fleeces and a ram that gave me the evil eye.