THERE’S not a lot to do in Ambleside at four o’clock in the morning. I can vouch for this after laying there in my tent last weekend, needlessly wide awake At midnight, the persistent hooting of a nearby owl stopped me dropping off. I don’t get to hear owls too often, so it was quite a novelty.

Then it started showing off - hooting every 15 seconds (I counted). I had to reprimand myself. It’s humans encroaching on the owl’s turf - not the other way round.

It’s just getting its own back on the kids’ for probably waking it up during that game of cricket at sunset.

I must have dropped off, because I didn’t wake up again until first dewy light – which was 3.45am on Sunday.

The hooting had been replaced by an inquisitive crow cawing outside.

‘Get up, you’re missing it,’ it could have been calling.

I don’t mind the dawn chorus providing I can breathe and move.

Camping with young children means you deny these two basic human instincts for fear of waking them too early.

No campsite wants two excited children under six awake at 4am.

Then it hit me. Everything might be closed in Ambleside - but the fells are open.

Before you could say it’s too early, I was out and up nearby Todd Crag, where I watched the morning rays burn the dew off Rothay Park then illuminate the flanks of Fairfield.

I saw a pair of young deer on the fellside and a flat calm Windermere stretched out in all its blue, Sunday morning idleness.

At 6.30am, the hillsides erupted to baying fox hounds - hunting hounds, being led to their breakfast, no doubt.

Walking back down through the woods, seeing the bluebells cast in light between the trees and the woods thick with wild garlic.

It’s a magical time, but you have to make a special effort to see it.

The country got lazy, screen-centred and gadget fixated.

But it’s not too late to spare the children.

Get them off the buttons and show them the outside – and all in its stunning high definition.