I’m getting very attached to the Peak District National Park. The more time I spend there, the more I’d like to spend there. Last week I drove through the western side of the park, past signposts to Wildboarclough and then past the Goyt Valley, through Buxton (the Bath of the North? Or is Bath the…
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What they say 3:
Office of National Statistics, 29 May 2014: ‘The inclusion of illegal drugs and prostitution is likely to increase the level of GDP in 2009 by around £10 billion, around £5.3 billion attributable to prostitution and £4.4 billion attributable to illegal drugs. In all years between 1997 and 2009 the impact ranges from £7 billion to…
It’s the salty one
James Cross is the new Chief Exec of Natural England – he is the salty one. This represents a victory of the politicians and Andrew Sells, the NE Chair, over the Defra civil servants. Quite right too. But rumour has it that NE might have chosen a proper nature conservationist or two for their Board…
Four butterfly moments
Number 1: I spent five minutes in the garden, looking at my ‘meadow’ and ended up looking at a Meadow Brown (so it must be a meadow, mustn’t it?). Aren’t butterflies lovely? But wouldn’t they look quite ugly if they didn’t have such amazing wings? Have you ever looked at a butterfly’s face and body? …
BB
As a boy, I loved the books of Denys Watkins-Pitchford (who signed off his writing as ‘BB’ after the size of shot used for shooting geese) so when I saw that there was a small exhibition of his ‘Life and Works’ at Lamport Hall, across the road from where he had lived as a boy…
A Swift lunch
I met up with local(-ish) artist Carry Akroyd today to give her a copy of Martha – her artwork is the most striking aspect of the book, after all! On my way there I saw an amazing number of Swifts over one single field of oilseed rape. There must have been c500 of them –…
Heroes and no villains
Last week I attended the World Land Trust summer do and was elected as a council member. I try to avoid getting roped in to too many wildlife NGOs just because I don’t really have the time to devote to them and it is invidious to choose one over any others. But I made an…
Who doodles?
Who doodles through meetings like this? Answer tomorrow.
Another meadow
I thought you might be interested to see how the uncut strip of grass in my garden is getting on. It’s a meadow! It must be a meadow because a Meadow Brown was flying over it. It’s not quite in the Seaton Meadows class yet, but there were some attractive damselflies in it yesterday –…
Butterflies are so easy
On Saturday I had another visit to Duncan Farrington’s excellent farm. I was on the look-out for Turtle Doves as they used to be here but I haven’t seen, or heard, one for years in this spot. Duncan’s farm looks good for Turtle Doves to me – plenty of thick nesting cover on the old…