Cow Green Reservoir & Cauldron Snout

Cow Green sits high and remote in Upper Teesdale, a two-mile sheet of water ringed by some of England's bleakest, most beautiful moorland. Drive up the dead-end road from Langdon Beck, park at the Cow Green car park, and you have a tarmac service track leading to the dam and, beyond it, the thundering staircase of Cauldron Snout, the Tees crashing down dolerite of the Whin Sill. It is a spectacular subject, and the openness makes for easy, uncluttered flying with the reservoir, dam and fells all in frame. The catch is that this is a National Nature Reserve within the North Pennines National Landscape, famous for arctic-alpine flora and ground-nesting waders like golden plover and dunlin. Fly responsibly: keep to the track for take-off and landing, give the moor and any birds a wide berth, and steer clear of the nesting season (April-July) or fly high and brief. No FRZ troubles you up here, though the Warcop military ranges lie some way west. Weather is the real hazard: exposed, cold and changeable even in summer, with unreliable signal. Pick a still, bright day, fly the dam-and-waterfall line, and you come away with genuinely dramatic footage few pilots bother to get.