CPRE Countryside Voices Spring 2021

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VOICES Spring 2021

Access all areas

Why we need a right to roam that starts close to home ART

Bringing back beauty Restored, reclaimed and revived green spaces

Life on the river PRODUCTION

Nature lovers share their top spring wildlife sightings

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Woods that do us good Exploring some of England’s thriving community forests

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When pressure pays off

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Life beyond lockdown

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After over a year of unprecedented restrictions on our freedom, we are on the cusp of the great reopening of the countryside that so many of us have been longing for. For those who live in rural areas, it will be a huge boost when pubs, churches and halls can resume their role as the beating heart of village life. But, while some rural shops and services have adapted and innovated to survive and thrive, many others are desperate for help. So it was certainly heartening to read so many positive ideas for reviving rural areas (page 15) – a topic CPRE will be saying a lot more on this year.

Now is the time to support rural economies and enjoy the unique variety of our landscapes with fresh eyes and even greater appreciation.

It is fitting then that this issue features two people who are dedicating their

In this issue…

lives to helping people to do just that. I find Kate Ashbrook’s passion and uncompromising approach to campaigning utterly inspiring (page 10), while I was completely won over by Nick Hayes’ argument (page 12) that opening up more of rural England will encourage more people to love and take care of it.

As a keen cyclist myself, it was a treat to read Chris Boardman’s perspective on encouraging active travel (page 21) – something that should be central to a post-pandemic way of life that values wellbeing and nature ahead of speed and convenience. In a year when the UK is expected to show global leadership on the environment (ahead of hosting November’s UN Climate Change Conference), CPRE will press home the point that global ambitions must be built on local action, not least on transport. This is not a time for top-down dictats and empty rhetoric; only the strengthening of local democracy can ultimately save our environment and give meaning to the sacrifices of the past year.

Crispin Truman OBE Chief Executive @CrispinTruman

9 EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

2 NEWS

15 ASK THE EXPERTS Informed views on how to revive rural economies

Chair maker Jason Mosseri at work in the woods

All the latest on CPRE campaigns

21 MY ENGLAND Cycling champion Chris Boardman MBE opens up

16 INSPIRATION 10 RURAL LIFE

6 LOCAL VOICES

Meet lifelong countryside campaigner Kate Ashbrook

Updates from across our national network

Nick Hayes on why we need a right to roam more than ever

Reader letters and emails

CPRE The countryside charity 5-11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ 020 7981 2800 | cpre.org.uk Editorial enquiries: Oliver Hilliam, oliverh@cpre.org.uk Membership enquiries: 020 7981 2870

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Kate Blincoe celebrates restored and revitalised green places

22 DISCOVER Nature lovers share their top river wildlife sightings

18 PEOPLE AND PLACES 24 VIEW FROM HERE

12 BIG READ 8 YOUR VIEWS

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A huge thanks to those of you who’ve supported our campaign for a rethink of the government’s unnecessary dismantling of the planning system. More than 310,000 people signed the online petition we took to Westminster, urging the government not to silence the voice of local communities in favour of centralised decisions on what gets built and where.

And it wasn’t just the general public who were worried; when we polled 40 backbench Conservative MPs, 63% admitted they too believed the ill-conceived plans would threaten local green spaces. Our concerns were also echoed by more than 2,000 local councillors, who joined forces with CPRE and Friends of the Earth on an open letter to housing secretary Robert Jenrick, warning that the proposed planning upheaval would lead to an unacceptable loss of local democracy.

After massive pressure from CPRE, both in the press and parliament, Mr Jenrick announced that the government had updated its algorithm for creating housing targets,

Robin Walter explores three community woodlands

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Josie George on her favourite local green space

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which would have increased pressure to build on valued greenfield sites. Instead, he heeded CPRE’s advice in pledging to prioritise homes ‘on brownfield land first to protect the countryside’.

It was a welcome step in the right direction and a victory for our campaigning, but much work still needs to be done to convince the government to avoid other damaging changes. We made a start by joining forces with 17 like-minded organisations – including the RSPB, Woodland Trust and the Town and Country Planning Association – to publish our shared vision for planning.

Together, we believe that locally led planning is the best way to protect and enhance our environment while supporting the delivery of well-designed and genuinely affordable homes.

Our deputy chief executive, Tom Fyans, called on the government to ‘work with us to develop a system that puts people, and tackling the climate and ecological emergencies, at its heart. We all deserve a home we can genuinely afford to live in, and to have a say in shaping the communities around us.’

We want local people to have much more of a say in the future of their communities and countryside

CONNECTING PEOPLE AND COUNTRYSIDE How CPRE’s national network is linking the general public with the natural world

Shining stars Thanks to CPRE Avon and Bristol’s inspiring Starry Skies workshops, around 500 people learned about the wonders of the night and the impact of light pollution during our Star Count week (including Henry and Poppy, who were inspired to draw the phases of the moon, left). The online sessions helped make up for activities postponed in lockdown, and were boosted by director Sophie Spencer’s appearance on BBC Breakfast, where she shared stargazing tips alongside The Sky at Night presenter Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock.

Download our joint vision for planning in 2021 from cpre.org.uk/resources

ALAMY

Greening Sussex

In numbers: the state of the Green Belt

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increase, since 2013, in the number of homes earmarked for Green Belt

257,944 homes set to be built on Green Belts, despite the surging popularity of local green spaces

67%

the proportion of people who want their green spaces to be better protected after lockdown

CPRE’s annual State of the Green Belt report has revealed that over a quarter of a million homes are proposed for land removed from these vital buffers against urban sprawl – over four times as many as in 2013. And with only one in 10 of these homes defined as ‘affordable’, we risk losing ever more ‘countryside next door’ without addressing the affordability crisis. All this at a time of growing need for access to nature – as evidenced by new CPRE polling that found 67% of adults want the protection and enhancement of their local green spaces to be a higher priority after lockdown (up from 63% in our April 2020 poll). Meanwhile, nearly half (46%) of the 2,000 people we surveyed said they were visiting green spaces more during the pandemic – an increase of nearly a third in the past year.

‘The government can and must act to stop the loss of Green Belt and ensure greater access to nature and green space is at the heart of our planning system,’ argues CPRE’s chief executive, Crispin Truman. ‘This can be done by making best use of land that’s been built on previously, before even considering development on the Green Belt.’

Despite the challenges of lockdown, volunteers in Eastbourne managed to plant over 6,000 trees this winter, backed by CPRE Sussex and other members of the city’s ECO Action Network. The community treeplantings (right) were part of the network’s ‘Treebourne’ project to help fight climate change and regreen the borough for the benefit of residents.

And as part of their Brighton ‘Plant your Postcode’ scheme, CPRE Sussex advised and supported the planting of a hedgerow at Hove Junior School to attract wildlife and help screen out air pollution.

Zero-miles milk CPRE Dorset has been championing and promoting the county’s food producers in lockdown, including Castle Farm in Sherborne. The farm is now selling its ‘Zero Food Miles Milk’ direct to the community, with a vending machine that's open Wednesday to Sunday, 8am to 6pm. Bring your own (empty) bottle or pick up a glass one at the farm – find out more in the News section at dorset-cpre.org.uk

Download our latest Green Belt report from cpre.org.uk/resources

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Banning the burn REPRO OP SUBS

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There was some good news for England’s long-suffering peatlands before Christmas, when environment minister Rebecca Pow promised that an ‘imminent’ English peat strategy would ‘speed up progress in phasing out the use of horticultural peat’. CPRE will continue to push for an end to the sale of peat compost as a matter of urgency, and we eagerly await the published strategy.

In the meantime, there was further encouraging news in January, when the government announced it will bring forward legislation for a ban on the burning of peatland vegetation in protected blanket bog habitats.

Controlled burning of heather has long been used to manage peatlands such as moors and bogs, but CPRE and our allies have argued that the process is incredibly damaging to their plants and wildlife, as well as their carbon-storing properties. While a partial ban is a step in the right direction, we will continue to remind the government that it must hasten a ban on the burning of all our precious peatlands if it is serious about its climate commitments.

Discover a restored peat bog and other reclaimed green spaces on page 16.

WHAT TO DO THIS SPRING

Spot wood anemones

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The wood anemone is, for many, as lovely a sign of spring as the primrose or bluebell. Found in the sun-dappled shade of woodland glades, their delicate, star-like white flowers bloom between March and May. Wood anemones thrive particularly well in ancient woodland. Widespread across the country, they help mark out London’s surviving patches of ancient forest, such as Epping, and flourish in other venerable woodlands, such as Wayland Wood in Norfolk and Hobbyhorse Wood in Hertfordshire. In the Yorkshire Dales they can even be spotted clustered between limestone pavements, perhaps as a relic of lost forests.

Win a wild night out

Blanket bog moorland on Kinder Scout, Derbyshire

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No role for coal After widespread condemnation, plans for the first deep coal mine in Britain for 30 years were put on hold as Voices went to press. Cumbria County Council was reviewing its approval of the Whitehaven mine when secretary of state Robert Jenrick announced he would make the final decision, once all the evidence has been considered by a public inquiry – a key demand of CPRE and over 70 other organisations in a joint letter to the prime minister in February.

Since then, over 10,000 people have used CPRE’s online action to write to the secretary of state, highlighting the climate impact of returning to polluting coal and urging him to intervene. Mr Jenrick’s statement duly acknowledged the need to address both ‘increased controversy’ and new guidance from the government’s Climate Change Committee.

Having initially claimed the mine was a ‘local issue’, the government’s change of heart was welcomed by CPRE as ‘a victory for common sense’, and we continue to argue that the Whitehaven decision will be globally significant in terms of the climate emergency. With the UK due to host the UN Climate Change Conference in November, allowing a new coal mine would be an international embarrassment while undermining domestic carbon-reduction commitments.

Mindful of the acute need for secure and sustainable employment in Cumbria, we want to see the government deliver on its promised investment in green industries; done strategically, this could provide the area with significantly more than the 500 jobs promised by the new mine, and help revitalise rural economies across England.

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‘Our obsession with brightening our environment ensures that even the dusk is lit by streetlights that burn through till dawn,’ says outdoor educator Chris Salisbury. ‘There is no string to pull or switch to flick if you want a few hours off to bathe in the quiet enveloping dark.’ His upcoming book, Wild Nights Out (Chelsea WIN Green), out in June, shows how a bit of darkness is good for us, and aims to reconnect us with the mysteries and enchantments of the night.

Great for parents or grandparents looking to engage children with the outdoors, or anyone who’s been rediscovering their local wild places in lockdown, it’s packed with ideas for night-sky viewing parties, nature outings and discovering nocturnal wildlife.

For your chance to win one of three copies, worth £14.99, send your name and address on a postcard to CPRE/Wild Nights, Think, Capital House, 25 Chapel Street, London NW1 5DH, or email those details to cpre@thinkpublishing. co.uk with ‘Wild Nights’ as the subject heading, by 30 June.

Rediscover your countryside It has been the toughest year imaginable for rural visitor attractions, but many are hoping for a cautious recovery over this year, including many properties in your CPRE members’ guide. Do consider showing them your support, if and when it’s safe for you to do so. Be sure to check ahead to see which properties are open, for details of special booking arrangements, and to find out whether member entry discounts remain in force.

IN FOCUS

Starrier skies

Elspeth Dutch COUNTRYSIDE CHAMPION This issue, we celebrate the memory of someone whose connection to the countryside will forever be shared by her loving family. Elspeth Dutch was the daughter of David Leadbetter, an active CPRE Dorset member, whose smallholding helped give Elspeth an idyllic childhood, running through cornfields and playing with pigs.

A mother of three daughters, Elspeth forged their relationship with nature through walks and camping holidays.

The countryside became even more important in Elspeth’s last years, when her daughter Lizzie moved up to the Wirral to look after her. ‘We would go for walks together most days; when she was in the wheelchair she still wanted to get out in the fresh air and hear the blackbirds,’ says Lizzie, a CPRE member who, along with her sisters Belinda and Anna, has created a tribute fund for her mother.

We’re hugely grateful, and deeply honoured to be working to ensure that her love of the countryside can be passed on by the next generation – like granddaughter Rosie, who learned the names of the birds from Elspeth, and feels her presence whenever there’s a view to enjoy.

To learn more about donating in memory of a loved one, please email memorial@cpre.org.uk or visit cpre.org.uk/donate-in-memory

CAMPAIGNS AT A GLANCE A bus for every village As we went to press, our petition calling for buses for every community had reached a fantastic 35,000 names in just a few weeks. The petition is part of our work to follow up our 2020 Transport Deserts research, prompted by the loss of over 3,000 local bus routes in the previous decade. Our latest report shows how rural economies can be revitalised by the sort of comprehensive rural bus networks that work so well in Germany and Switzerland. We’ve done some in-depth modelling to show how their system of hourly services could work in England, providing that rural areas are given a fair share of funding – both from the new £3bn National Bus Strategy

While we crunch through data from the thousands of citizen scientists who took part in February’s Star Count, it’s a good time to celebrate the recent progress towards darker skies that we hope will be reflected in our 2021 results (due later this spring). Firstly, we were delighted to see the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks awarded official ‘dark sky reserve’ status by the International Dark-Sky Association. This has created the largest designated area of unpolluted night sky in the UK – and one of the biggest in Europe – at over 1,350 square miles, providing a great boost for rural tourism.

But with so much light pollution blighting our nightscapes and wildlife, we welcomed last year’s consultation on the subject by a new All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dark Skies. Our campaigner, Emma Marrington, spoke at the launch of their report, Ten Dark Sky policies for the government, alongside co-chairs Andrew Griffith MP and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. Assisted by CPRE’s evidence, the group aims to use its political clout to bring about urgent action to protect night skies, including strengthening regulations on exterior lighting; giving local authorities more powers to prevent light pollution; setting legal standards for (and limits on) lighting; and introducing a dedicated minister to champion dark skies across government.

The stunning skies of the Yorkshire Dales, as seen here at nightfall in Malham

and by diverting investment from unsustainable road-building.

New era for farming November’s Agriculture Act was a landmark for the British farming industry – and our lobbying helped ensure that farmers will now be more fairly supported to produce sustainable food, increase biodiversity and adapt to climate change. It was great to see the legislation adopt CPRE’s demand that farmers should be rewarded for protecting or improving our soil, which is so vital for absorbing floodwater and storing carbon. The act was followed by a new farming policy ‘roadmap’, incorporating many of our ideas, and confirming that future funding will prioritise nature restoration.

Green revolution Supporting green jobs and accelerating our path to net zero were the cornerstones of the prime minister’s recent Ten Point Plan for a ‘green industrial revolution’.

And the good news is, the plan seems to have taken on board our calls for more energy-efficient buildings, increased tree planting (left), and greater emphasis on cycling, walking and zero-emission public transport. We also welcomed the PM’s December decision to cut carbon emissions faster than other major economies – an important stepping stone that must be followed by practical action in the real world (see ‘No role for coal’ opposite).

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The protection for this view from Red Hill near Louth could be extended to equally outstanding landscapes in northern Lincolnshire

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Big on beauty

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Local Voices NEWS AND CAMPAIGNS FROM ACROSS THE COUNTRY

‘The Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a rich tapestry of farmland, valleys, chalk streams and rolling hills, currently covers around 560km2, but we’re backing North Lincolnshire Council’s bid to get its boundaries extended across a sizeable chunk of the county.

‘Our beautiful countryside often needs defending, and we welcomed the council’s recent decision to heed local views and refuse planning permission for a glamping resort near Wroot. Meanwhile, our Environmental Awards (now in their seventh year) recently celebrated some of the best local green groups and projects, including Wroot’s very own community orchard.’

David Rose, chair of CPRE Northern Lincolnshire

The beautiful River Wye near Symonds Yat

Rethinking roads WILTSHIRE ‘Our national and local governments have pledged to reduce carbon emissions, which should mean fewer cars on the road, not more. Yet all too often here in Wiltshire, we find ourselves battling undemocratic road-building schemes, such as current plans for a new link road near Chippenham that 4,000 locals have petitioned against. We’re calling for the county council to recognise that simply building more roads isn’t the answer to pollution and congestion, let alone the climate emergency. We owe it to future generations to be responsible for the environmental legacy we leave behind; and we believe the cash would be better spent on the improved public transport and cycle routes and safer pedestrian paths that so many local people called for in the local plan.’

Anne Henshaw, chair of CPRE Wiltshire

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The jewel of the Wye HEREFORDSHIRE ‘There were around 500 intensive poultry farms across Herefordshire, Powys and Shropshire by 2019 – yet there is no strategic planning policy in our region to control their growth. At CPRE Herefordshire, we are not only concerned about concentrations of industrial-scale poultry units springing up in some areas, but also about the risk of associated pollution seeping into our waterways through manure spreading and agricultural run-off. We want to see

improved regulation of these units, and better protection of one of the county’s greatest jewels, the River Wye. Some 70% of all pollution in the river is agricultural, such as fertiliser and manure run-off. The balance is sewage discharge, which is being tackled by a multimillion-pound investment in reedbed technology, organised by Herefordshire Council. We want to see the Environment Agency act against polluters; visit us at cpreherefordshire.org.uk to find out how to add your voice to our campaign.’

Bob Widdowson, chair of CPRE Herefordshire

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NORTHERN LINCOLNSHIRE

Local Voices, 1

LOCAL VOICES

Cherished spaces

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NORTH YORKSHIRE

North Yorkshire has some fine churchyards, like this one at St Mary’s in Kettlewell

‘ We were delighted when local councillors voted against proposals to expand a Harrogate Spring Water bottling plant. We strongly opposed the scheme, which would have required the loss of parts of the Rotary Wood, which links mature sections of the woodland between the town centre and outskirts.

Much of the area was planted by the community, including children from local schools and the Scouts. ‘ We have also launched a competition to find North Yorkshire’s best churchyard, which aims to recognise and reward those well-managed spaces that provide a peaceful haven for people and wildlife. We welcome entries from churchyards of all denominations at cprenorthyorkshire.co.uk by the end of May.’ Jan Arger, chair of CPRE North Yorkshire

Ripe for regeneration

ST BARTHOLOMEW’S

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STAFFORDSHIRE ‘CPRE Staffordshire has been championing the redevelopment of disused brownfield land. We have commented in favour of planning applications on two ex-industrial sites, the Alstom factory in Stafford and Rugeley Power Station on the River Trent, as well as brownfield in Stafford town centre. Approved in January, the Rugeley redevelopment alone could provide more than 2,000 new homes. Meanwhile, in a very difficult year for schools, we were delighted to award St Bartholomew’s in Longnor our 2020-2021 Green School Trophy. The small rural primary school allows pupils to enjoy honey from its very own beehives.’

Sue Kneill-Boxley, secretary, CPRE Staffordshire

Beekeeping at St Bartholomew’s

Planting hedgerows LONDON ‘ We may associate hedgerows with the countryside, but they’re every bit as precious in our cities: enhancing the urban landscape, supporting wildlife and providing a natural screen from pollution and roads. CPRE London recently launched an initiative to support

community groups seeking to plant new hedges in their local green spaces. We are delighted to have been able to offer small grants to hedgerow schemes in Haringey, Merton, Islington and Lewisham, and hope to make it an annual programme, subject to future funding.’

Tony Burton, chair of CPRE London

From new local strategy to energetic volunteers, the latest from this corner of the East Midlands.

‘This year, CPRE Derbyshire developed a fresh “vision statement”: to value, and encourage others to value, the unique landscape character of the county; and to work to promote people’s love of the countryside, and ability to access it.

This comes off the back of dedicated work by recent joiner Jo Goddard to relaunch our website and Facebook page.

‘In our recent campaigns to defend Derbyshire’s threatened green spaces, we were baffled by the planning inspectorate’s decision to green-light intrusive development at Shirland on appeal, reversing North East Derbyshire District Council’s decision, and going against public opinion and the draft local plan. Historic Kirk Langley village is under pressure from applications ensuing from the approval of development on green fields three years ago, highlighting the importance of precedent.

‘In Amber Valley, particularly, we are active due to the lack of an adopted local plan. Our campaign to save green slopes in the buffer zone of Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site [pictured below] gave our newest planning volunteer the chance to work with the established team, helping formulate our strong opposition.

‘Our new evidence-based local policy on renewables allowed us to robustly evaluate three huge solar farm proposals near Alfreton. We’re supportive of a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions, but firmly believe this need not be at the expense of distinctive much-loved and well-used open countryside – as evidenced by a Derbyshire company recently producing the UK’s largest solar rooftop for the Port of Hull. These are, after all, industrial installations with potential to dramatically change the landscape, and we demand a thorough local consultation. Visit us at cprederbyshire.org.uk to find out more.’

Tim Silvester, chair of CPRE Derbyshire

BRETT HEATH

CROUCH END OPEN SPACE

Hedgerow planting gets under way at a school in Crouch End

Spotlight on DERBYSHIRE

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Litter pickers tackling a persistent, and ancient, problem Below: youngsters learning the value of the countryside

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Your views Letters, emails and tweets from our members, and how to get in touch

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of the autumn/winter magazine), the charity should be able to charge a sum of money to the Countryside connections manufacturer or seller. This would I was impelled to write by news help the charity, encourage more that the 12 owners of Red Bull – litter picking and make the ‘polluter one of the commonest forms of pay’ – creating an incentive to litter on my country lane – were encourage responsible disposal going to share €500m as a bonus. of their product, such as When charitable bodies collect deposit schemes. rubbish (as illustrated on page 18 Orest Mulka, by email

Star letter

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Orest wins some sustainability-themed goodies – an edition of the award-winning board game The Good Life, which sees players compete to fill their garden and allotment with fruit, veg and chickens (Voices readers can enjoy 10% off orders with order code ‘Puffin’ at thegoodlifegame.co.uk) plus a copy of Food for Thought (SRA Books), a celebration of sustainable food and nature by Phil Haughton, founder of the Better Food stores.

Evolving past littering ‘When did we start chucking things down and expecting somebody else to pick it up?’ asks Clare Balding rhetorically (Countryside Voices, autumn/ winter 2020).

The answer to the first point is, more than a million years ago, when our pre-Homo ancestors lived in trees, mainly on fruit, and let what they did not eat fall to the forest floor. Much later, various species of Homo, still not sapiens, dropped their waste in or outside their dwellings, to the delight of modern archaeologists.

The question is not so much when did we begin, but can we ever stop?

Professor John Radford, London

Valuing countryside Thank you for the excellent magazine. It contained a good mix of articles from all around the country from people with varying interests. Most importantly, from my point of view, it gave the

impression that CPRE’s general direction of travel is broad church and inclusive.

Well done to all who are striving to have the value of the countryside given more recognition among decision makers and the public at large.

Suzanne Walker, Radwinter, Essex

Countryside choices I think that CPRE does a brilliant job at defending what is left of our green and pleasant land.

It is one of the few pressure groups that are more committed to its core beliefs rather than playing at politics, but I need to ask a question: why do you think it necessary to have your national office in central London?

It must be significantly more expensive to manage and encourage people to commute.

I would suggest that it be moved

to Nottingham, Derby or Birmingham, thus making it cheaper to run and easier to reach.

Alan Ford, Leasingham, Lincolnshire

• Our finance and operations director, Mark Cornish, responds: CPRE has always benefited from being close to the decision makers and funders who tend to be in London. We’ve also found that the capital’s public transport links with the rest of England make it the most convenient location for most people – whether commuting staff, or volunteers attending training or events.

However, the successful use of remote working in the past year means we plan to reduce our accommodation costs when our current office lease expires in 2022. While we expect to stay in London, for the reasons given above, any savings will be invested in further increasing our regional presence. We already have a small regional office in Sheffield that is regularly used by national staff, with others permanently homeworking in the Midlands.

We envisage that by enhancing that flexibility we can better support local CPREs across England to help deliver our strategic aims.

Giving more Subject after subject in Countryside Voices show the achievements and drive of CPRE. Wonderful – you deserve all our support and success in defending our only world against exploitation. Only one thing is missing: a form or information on how to send donations towards the cause in addition to our membership. I think you would be pleasantly surprised at the potential.

Martin Chapman, via email

• Editor responds: Thank you for your staunch support, Martin!

All of our readers are making CPRE’s vital work possible through their membership, and the magazine is our thank you for their support. However, if you do feel able to give a little extra, please visit cpre.org.uk/donate or call our Supporter Care team on 0800 163 680.

We’d love to know what you think of the magazine and the issues we’ve covered. email us at cpre@thinkpublishing.co.uk Twitter via @CPRE write to us at Countryside Voices, Think, Capital House, 25 Chapel Street, London NW1 5DH We are unable to respond to all letters, and those published may be edited for length and clarity.

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Master of his craft A chairmaking course in the leafy surroundings of Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire proved to be a life-changing experience for former tattoo artist Jason Mosseri. He promptly fell in love with the craft, building a workshop in his garden where he could create wooden chairs using traditional techniques and tools. ‘I love working out there, close to nature and surrounded by trees,’ Jason says.

‘For me, it all starts with the wood.’

He enjoys working with freshly felled ash, beech and oak, largely sourced from forests close to his home in East Sussex.

So what’s the charm of chairs? ‘They’re full of character!’ Jason says. ‘They have arms, legs, a back; they’re rather like creatures themselves.

And it’s very satisfying to craft something from raw logs to a finished piece.’

Today, Jason is one of around 30 people in the UK keeping alive a way of working that

has been practised since the 16th century. And one of his great pleasures is passing on those skills to others – each summer he heads to his nearest woods to teach chairmaking courses, electricity-free, out in the open air. ‘I love sharing my enthusiasm and connecting with people,’ he says. ‘I’m really looking forward to being about to do that again this summer.’

Find out more about Jason’s work at hopespringschairs.com

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The countryside champion CPRE life member Kate Ashbrook has spent her career standing up for rural Britain.

Here, the general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, and former chair of the Ramblers and the Campaign for National Parks, shares insights from a campaigner’s life

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How did your career get started?

The lady who owned the farm introduced me to the great campaigner Sylvia Sayer. I was 17 and she was 68, but we just hit it off. She was completely fearless, so I just did my best to copy her. I spent much of my time at university going to public inquiries and defending the countryside.

I got into it by doing it.

Which campaigns are you most proud to have been involved in?

I’m pleased about the hand I had in getting the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000 passed, although I’d be the first to say it’s not enough.

The other one was opening up Framfield footpath number nine in East Sussex. Everyone locally was afraid to deal with Nicholas van Hoogstraten, the landowner who had built over the right of way.

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Kate cutting the wire across a blocked footpath in Worcestershire in 1989

Anyone can be a good campaigner, if they care enough Even when the Ramblers took his company to court for footpath obstruction and won, it didn’t change anything. So when the CRoW Act passed, I decided to test the section saying that if a path is persistently blocked, those responsible can be charged a daily fine, and forced to remove the obstruction.

It took a very long time and I had to take the county council to court for failing to follow its policy, but I was determined that he wasn’t going to get away with it. And eventually, with the Ramblers’ help, we were able to clear the path.

What makes a good walk for you?

Lovely scenery, with some variety, and, for me, birdsong – which

means walking on my own a lot.

Good paths also help, although if we find a blocked footpath, it’s not going to put me off. I enjoy reporting them! I live in the Chilterns, in the heart of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), and I can walk out of my door up onto a hill to which we won partial access, under the CRoW Act. There are lovely flowers, gentians and orchids, on the chalk downland. I’m really lucky to be where I am.

Has the campaigning landscape changed since you started out?

We do see the same issues coming up: blocked paths, encroachments on common land, and all that. But I think the ramblers vs landowners division isn’t quite so stark as it used to be. And that’s partly because all the things landowners said would happen after the CRoW Act, such as people poking into their backyards and stealing from their garages, just didn’t happen.

What are your current campaigning priorities today?

One of them is getting proper recognition for green spaces.

That means a statutory duty on authorities to maintain and manage them, and getting funding put into them that reflects all the benefits they bring, such as the fact that they have saved the NHS lots of money.

Is it getting harder to defend the countryside, or is there more recognition now of its value?

Both, actually! I think there is more acknowledgement, but it’s not being translated into practical actions. The government commissioned the Glover Review on making National Parks and AONBs better, but more than a year on, no action. And how can the government have a whole road-building programme while also trying to reduce emissions?

What’s the best advice you’ve been given on campaigning?

Work out who’s the key decision maker you need to influence, and focus your energies on targeting everything at that person or body.

You can waste a lot of time doing things that aren’t really going to make a difference.

What qualities make a good countryside campaigner?

Anyone can be a good campaigner, if they care enough. It helps to be determined, self-confident, lucid, clear-thinking, able to inspire others. But the main thing is that you care deeply about changing something or saving something.

I think we have to say it as it is, and be bold, because we only get one chance at these things.

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What started you on the path to being a campaigner?

I was a pony-mad child. So when I was 10 and a friend of mine told me she was going on a riding holiday in Devon, I asked if I could come too. I’ve been going back to that same lovely farm near Peter Tavy ever since. In my teens, I realised just how special the wilderness of Dartmoor was. And with that discovery, I was also becoming interested in fighting for things.

I went on my first protest march – a battle over a gravel pit in my village in south Buckinghamshire – and got a taste for campaigning.

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Kate pictured at the access gate she paid for on the hillside near her Chilterns home, when the landowner’s estate refused to do so. The Latin inscription means ‘Freedom to roam, freedom to think’

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Why we need the right to roam further

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Access campaigner Nick Hayes on why extending the Countryside and Rights of Way Act will encourage more people to care for the countryside

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ust over 20 years ago, the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act was passed into law. It opened up about 8% of English land to a responsible ‘right to roam’, meaning we, the public, can ramble across it freely, without fear of trespass.

The CRoW Act was a major victory for over a century’s worth of campaigning; it has proven highly successful and highly popular; yet for most people in England, in terms of their mental and physical health, and in terms of social equity, it has been next to useless.

England is peculiar across Europe, and even across most of the world, for having especially stringent rules of exclusion to its open spaces.

Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Scotland and Finland are all famous for their various codified takes on ‘the right to roam’, where the public are encouraged not just to walk, but to swim,

Celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2021, the Peak District National Park was a victory for early countryside access champions and the CRoW Act opened up more of it than ever – but the majority of our countryside remains out of bounds

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camp, forage, ride, peddle and paddle in the natural beauty of their landscapes.

In these countries vast swathes of land are still owned by private individuals, by counts and dukes and private investment firms, yet the public right to access nature is seen as such a crucial element to public health, and a general concept of nationhood, that it overrides the private owners’ right to exclude. Even in Australia and America, whose rights of access are based on English common law, the public are legally licensed to access all navigable waterways – yet in England, we are allowed access to only 3% of rivers, each of those designated by specific Acts of Parliament.

History beneath our feet It was William the Conqueror who introduced the idea that vast tracts of land should exclude the

commoners from their traditional access rights.

His ‘forests’ were areas outside of common law (from the Latin word foris, meaning ‘out of’) that were designed to be breeding grounds for deer that he wanted to hunt. Prior to this, the land in England was held by lords, but commoners had codified localised rights to each resource, as long as they fulfilled their responsibilities to it; in other words, as long as they worked to manage its sustainability.

But from William onwards, this notion that common land could be privatised spread through England, and with the writings of John Locke and, later, William Blackstone, the notion of exclusive dominion became embedded into the framework of English law.

The period from the Middle Ages to

Tudor times saw feudal lords turn into landowners, whose ownership allowed them full access to the wealth of the land, with no responsibility to those who lived and worked on it. The Tudor and Stuart eras saw landowning become a job in itself, and sped up the process of enclosure leading to the Georgian era, which was the great gold rush of private land, and turning the power of nature into private profit.

The landowning class had broadened from inherited aristocratic power to the mercantile middle class, with new money made from slavery and colonialism being used to enclose more and more common ground, divesting the English commoners of their rights with money gleaned from barbaric exploitation of labour both at home and abroad.

The battle against enclosure has been as constant as it is unrecognised in English history.

From the Peasants’ Revolt to the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the Midland Revolt to the Chartists and Luddites, all protests included complaints against the unfair enclosure of land and its impacts upon the security and self-subsistence of the commoner. By the late 19th century, thanks largely to the founders of the Commons Preservation Society and National Trust, the focus turned to the right of the public to simply access open spaces. And CPRE has been pivotal in that movement since it began in 1926.

The fight for access In 1929, CPRE leaders gave evidence proposing that England’s natural beauty spots should be

protected, introducing the idea of National Parks. They called for a reintroduction of legitimised public paths along the coast of England, recruiting teams of Boy Scouts to discover the lost pathways that linked up the coast. They even introduced the idea that landowners should be given tax concessions for opening up their land, an idea that has remained just below the radar ever since.

Recently, there has been much discussion about introducing payment schemes to landowners as part of the new Environmental Land Management scheme legislation, an undeniably pragmatic approach that looks set to gain ground over the coming years. Paying landowners for this access might not satisfy the raging socialist, who claims that since all land was stolen it should be given back (with interest), but it might start to heal the contrived rift between farmers and ramblers; that sense that one is in opposition to the other. Allowing more people access to agricultural land might even serve to valorise the tireless and essential service of farmers, since the public would have a better understanding of the work that goes into land management and crop production. We might begin to understand how indebted we are to farmers.

The battle against enclosure has been as constant as it is unrecognised

Writer and illustrator Nick Hayes is the author of The Book of Trespass (Bloomsbury) and one of the champions of a new Right to Roam campaign (righttoroam.org.uk).

Connecting with the countryside Meanwhile, a raft of scientific research has proven decisively not just how desperately we need exposure to nature for our mental and physical health, but also that we need it regularly. The mass trespass at Kinder Scout in the early 1930s is perhaps the most famous protest for greater access to our countryside, but its fame has contributed to the idea that open access should be for the mountains and moors – and that with those landscapes being the focus of the CRoW Act, the battle is won.

For most people in England, however, these large areas of open access are remote, which makes access to the countryside only possible for those that can afford the travel, and in some cases, overnight accommodation. CPRE’s research highlights the inequality: currently, 93% of all visits to National Parks are made by

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With rights come responsibilities And before any step is taken to increase public access, our campaign recognises that it falls to us to solve, absolutely, the litter problem in the countryside. If we are advocating greater rights to the countryside, we must also be creating an architecture that encourages greater responsibility. Reports in the press of litter and vandalism during lockdown provided troubling reading, and images in the papers seemed to support the ancient, aristocratic notion that the public cannot be trusted with the land. But such conclusions, which seek to foreground an inherent lack of care in people, have to step over mountains of evidence of systemic failure.

Following a recent freedom of information request to the government, our campaign found that since 2010, only £2,000 a year had been spent on promoting the Countryside Code. Combined with the fact that we, a largely urban population, have been shut out of the countryside for so long, not all of us remember our responsibility to it. The lockdown litter was not a common feature of public access, but a

Accessible Green Belt at Farthing Downs, purchased by the City of London in 1883 to benefit people and landscape

We must also create an architecture that encourages greater responsibility unique response to lockdown. To study the evidence left by people – including nitrous oxide gas canisters, tents and tinnies – this was the pub, club and festival crowd looking for somewhere else to let loose. Yet this evidence is presented as indicative of the general public’s attitude to the countryside. The problem with those that visit and leave no trace is that there is precisely no evidence of this.

Putting the land first The articles that place people as the enemy of the countryside have also ignored the very solution to the problem: people. There are a vast amount of volunteer schemes running all across England who meet regularly not just to clear litter, but to restore landscapes and habitats. Perhaps we could look to groups such as Surfers Against Sewage that have been set up to protect our natural resources, and use their experience and networks to create a model that rolls out volunteer

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car – but less than half of all households in England have access to one.

The new Right to Roam campaign seeks simply to bring the CRoW Act to the doorstep.

By opening up rivers, woodland and Green Belt to public access, we would finally be a nation able to connect with our countryside.

And we need to be encouraged to do more than just walking. It is imperative that people should be allowed to explore whichever activities suit them best, whether it’s rock climbing or paddleboarding – because it’s only when exercise chimes with your enthusiasms that doing it no longer seems like a chore, but a pleasure.

The campaign recognises that, for many in England, there are barriers to entering the countryside that exist even before the brick walls and barbed wire of private estates. For BIPOC (black, indigenous and people of colour) communities, for a whole host of reasons – not least the media’s constant conflation of ‘black’ with ‘urban’ – the countryside is seen as an unwelcoming place. And for working-class communities, who, back in the 1930s, were at the vanguard of the rambling movement, bus services out of cities and towns have been cut and nature has now been branded with the consumer patina of the middle class. Equality of access is not enough; communities who have been marginalised to the fringes of countryside, both literally and figuratively, must be actively encouraged to connect with nature.

schemes across the country. Imploring people not to leave litter is less pragmatic than facilitating people to pick it up.

Studies by Trash Free Trails, another organisation that empowers groups of volunteers to empty their local countryside of plastic, provide interesting reading. First of all, there is the effect of a cleaner countryside: people are less inclined to trash a place with no trash in it to begin with. Second, the act of picking up litter doesn’t just benefit the environment, but also the community that comes together to do it – picking up litter has been shown to improve the mental health and sense of community cohesiveness among the volunteers. And third, on a much wider level, a regular connection to nature, a relationship with the countryside, has been shown to make people more concerned about the wider environment; to change their behaviour to combat climate change.

Rights in parallel with responsibilities. A sense of communal work towards putting the land first. Sustainability, interaction and connectivity. All of this is both radical and nothing new; in fact, it’s the oldest relation we humans have had with the land – that of the commons. On top of referring to land that commoners held rights to, ‘the commons’ was also a basic paradigm of community and resources, where everyone had access to the wealth of the land, if they gave it their work and care, if they exercised their responsibility.

In other words, as is the basis of every right to roam in Europe, our rights are contingent upon our responsibility to the land – and to each other. Extending the CRoW Act would be a positive move towards a country that is healthier, more cohesive and more inclusive; and a community that is far more implicated in the survival and protection of its countryside.

Like these paddleboarders on the River Avon, we could all benefit from wider access to England’s waterways

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Reviving rural communities REPRO OP

We asked three experts whether recent events have created a unique opportunity to unleash the potential of our villages and market towns by revitalising rural services

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James Alcock is the chief executive officer of the Plunkett Foundation

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Judicaelle Hammond is director of policy and advice at the CLA membership organisation

Graham Biggs MBE is chief executive of the Rural Services Network

‘Community-led services can be part of recovery’

‘Digital connectivity is becoming a keystone’

‘Improving rural transport choice is a win-win-win’

Covid has already led to the closure of many private and commercial services in rural England, yet we’ve also seen a real revival in community spirit, and in people of all ages getting more involved in village life. This presents us with a unique opportunity for more community-led and owned services to become part of the post-pandemic recovery.

For example, we’ve seen a 50% increase in enquiries and a 100% increase in allocations of support here at Plunkett to people wanting to save or set up a local service, or diversify an existing community business to meet new community needs as a result of the pandemic.

While closures of traditional village shops are accelerating, a new breed of community shops is faring better, by providing local people with the goods and services they really need. Many of these shops are now selling more locally sourced goods than ever, improving their own resilience, supporting local suppliers and giving people the chance to buy fresh, local food.

There’s a real opportunity for these kinds of local sales to help revive the rural economy.

And it would be great to see communities in our villages and market towns coming together to purchase or lease empty properties on the high street, and turning these into shops, bakeries, farmers’ co-ops, cafés or pubs, serving real local need. This would help revitalise those spaces, and bring back the sense of community that is lacking there at the moment. Meanwhile, online selling is helping rural community businesses reach more customers than ever.

Supporting local has never been more important, and will be key to rural recovery.

In 2007, the Nesta foundation published a report on rural innovation. One of the trends it identified was ‘counter-urbanisation’: the move by more affluent people from urban to rural areas. This, Nesta speculated, would lead to an influx of skilled entrepreneurs into the countryside, boosting productivity. Yet, as of 2018, rural productivity in England still lagged 16% behind the national average.

Fast forward to 2021, and coronavirus might just make that ‘counter-urbanisation’ a reality: estate agents have been reporting a significant rise in rural properties being purchased by people who want to leave cities. With remote working becoming mainstream, is the good life now within reach for more city dwellers? Only with access to decent broadband and a good mobile signal.

Recent Ofcom figures make depressing reading: only 70% of rural UK premises get voice coverage from all four mobile operators; it drops to 46% for 4G. Ten per cent of rural premises have very slow broadband (vs 1% in urban areas). The massive reduction in the 2021-2025 budget for fibre broadband from £5bn to £1.2bn is a real kick in the teeth for rural households and businesses.

With the rise in remote learning, medicine, commerce and entertainment, digital connectivity and digital skills are fast becoming a keystone of future sustainability for rural communities. The CLA will continue to press government to put its money where its mouth is, so that the urban/rural digital divide is closed, and the growth potential of rural economies can be unleashed.

Public transport provides rural communities with better access to services, employment and leisure opportunities. It’s particularly important in allowing rural young adults, who are unlikely to have their own transport, to follow their career or education dreams. And to tackle the climate emergency, we need to get people out of their cars – and that means providing them with a reasonable alternative.

Yet, often, our rural public transport networks are weak and unreliable. The fact that the government has published a National Bus Strategy is a positive sign. It must ensure that a fair share of the resources reach rural areas to improve existing routes, restore valued lost routes and create new ones where gaps exist.

We need a larger, more long-term funding pot to promote community transport schemes that serve outlying settlements and feed into bus or rail routes. And the government must recognise the potential to improve cycling and walking infrastructure connecting rural towns, villages and urban fringes. Improving rural transport choice is a win-win-win situation. It will allow young adults to access education and jobs, and enable more people to access market towns, increasing local spend. And it will help to counter some of the isolation that remote rural living can bring, which can save money on health spending.

In the short term, we must retain emergency support for public transport networks, so that rural bus and rail routes survive the pandemic.

In the long term, we’ll need to reassure people public transport is safe again, post-coronavirus, and convince them the offering is good enough to tempt them out of their cars.

The Derbyshire countryside, as viewed from the Tissington Trail cycle path and footpath

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Bringing back beauty

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Too often we hear about landscapes being lost or degraded – but here, nature writer Kate Blincoe shares some inspiring stories of restored and revitalised green spaces

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Westhay Moor supports a wealth of wildlife, like this emperor dragonfly

Marbury Country Park, part of Northwich Woodlands, has provided a popular green escape over the past year’s lockdowns

FLASHES OF HOPE

Northwich Woodlands, Cheshire This exciting, large-scale restoration project is made up of nine different areas of woods, parks and lakes, many connected by footpaths, and each with an astonishing human history. Much of the area was formerly used for mining salt and manufacturing chemicals. Salt extraction led to subsidence, resulting in the pools known as flashes. Some of the land (now Marbury Country Park) was used by the army as a prisoner-of-war camp in World War II. Carey Park, by contrast, was a landfill site and, after restoration, is now a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), packed with rare grasses and butterflies. The canal, once part of the region’s industrial network, has become an idyllic place to stroll, connecting town and countryside. It took many years of dedication to transform Northwich Woodlands into a much-cherished escape for runners, walkers, riders, cyclists and birdwatchers, and a home to over 2,000 species of animals and plants.

LIFE IN THE VOID

PEAT BOG PRESERVED

Avalon Marshes, Somerset At the heart of the Avalon Marshes, within Somerset’s Levels and Moors, is the largest surviving fragment of rare lowland acid mire in South West England. Westhay Moor National Nature Reserve, owned by Somerset Wildlife Trust, was reclaimed and protected after industrial-scale peat extraction. It’s a unique habitat, with wetland plants such as marsh pennywort, bog myrtle and sphagnum mosses, and many other species, such as otters, bitterns, and dragonflies galore.

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On Christmas Eve 1998, the last coal was extracted from Silverdale Colliery near Newcastle-under-Lyme. Today, thanks to The Land Trust, the site is a country park providing public access to valuable green spaces with names that sound as if they belong in a dystopian film. ‘The Void’ is a dramatic, steeply sloping bowl, with a pool at the base that attracts wildfowl, and lapwings and plover nesting nearby. The meadows of the ‘Waste Farm Plateau’ were formed with spoil from the colliery, and are now a carefully managed grassland, rich with wildflowers such as orchids, and great for skylarks.

THE LAND TRUST

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Silverdale Country Park, Staffordshire

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Kate Blincoe is a nature and sustainability author and writer who has contributed to The Guardian’s ‘Country Diary’, Resurgence & Ecologist and many more.

FROM DUMP TO DISCOVERY

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Thameside Nature Discovery Park, Essex

National Grid is creating more open vistas, like this one near Winterbourne Abbas

GOING UNDERGROUND

It’s hard to believe that hidden under a grassy hill overlooking the Thames Estuary there are tonnes and tonnes of detritus and rubbish. Here, the former Mucking landfill, once one of the largest in western Europe, has been transformed into Thameside Nature Discovery Park. The site offers stunning views across the Mucking Flats SSSI and estuary, providing much-needed green space for local communities to enjoy, as well as a brilliant spot for seeing wildfowl and waders. It’s vital for important species, such as the rare shrill carder bee, cuckoos, water voles and short-eared owls.

As Sir David Attenborough said at the opening ceremony in 2013, this ‘is a monument to what can be done to restore nature’.

Thameside Nature Discovery Park offers tranquil views across the Thames Estuary

THE LAND TRUST

Near Winterbourne Abbas, Dorset Back in the 1950s and 1960s, demand for electricity soared, and priority was given to building the power network as quickly and cheaply as possible. As a result, we live with the legacy of pylons scarring some of our most beautiful landscapes. CPRE has been working with National Grid on how to put this right. The first project is to bury 22 pylons and nearly 9km of overhead lines in the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty from near Winterbourne Abbas to Friar Waddon. The work will take three years to complete, and return the rolling hills and chalk downs to their more natural state, bringing the gift of an unspoilt horizon.

Tell us about the restored and recovered habitats on your doorstep at cpre@thinkpublishing.co.uk

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Volunteers planting mixed hardwood trees in Lower Vert Woods, East Sussex

Into the woods Our forests and woods are special places – and community woodlands offer us unique opportunities to gather for companionship, solace and meaningful work, says Robin Walter

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et in the very centre of Leamington Spa, Foundry Wood used to be railway sidings next to the Ford motor factory. Since the 1960s, the land had been left undisturbed (some might say derelict) and it returned to its natural state as woodland – mostly self-sown hawthorn and sycamore, with a few mature trees on the edges. For 60 years this triangle of land, barely two acres, had been quietly rewilding; reclothing itself in a green mantle of trees and shrubs, and gathering wild creatures into its fold.

Then in 2011, the community organisation ARC (Achieving Results in Communities) engaged with the owner and local people

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to open up this neglected space to promote wildlife and environmental education. They removed rubbish, made paths, dug a pond and constructed an outdoor classroom.

Now this little triangle of scrubby woodland is a magnet for community activities, from toddler groups to mental health drop-ins and Forest Schools to choirs.

In the distant, carefree days before coronavirus, the eco-therapy group for mental health would attract 30-plus people over the course of the day, peaking around lunchtime.

Anyone was welcome to drop in, to take part in gentle activities and a chat.

Why woodland? What is it that makes woods so appealing for these activities? Kath

Robin Walter is a forester and writer based in Dorset. His work seeks to restore the web of life, and our place in it, starting with trees – as described in his book Living With Trees (Little Toller Books).

Find out more about Foundry Wood at foundrywood.co.uk

Socially distanced activities have continued when possible in Foundry Wood, Warwickshire

Cheshire’s Friends of Spud Wood in action in pre-pandemic times, thinning out trees

The wood that does takeaways You can really get down to some hands-on work at Spud Wood in Lymm, Cheshire.

Planted on a former potato field around 1998, this green space was part of the Woodland Trust’s ‘Woods on Your Doorstep’ project to mark the millennium. The local community was involved from the outset, as Nick Storer, who was also there at the beginning, explains: ‘The village got together to raise matched funds for the project, and there was a village design conference,’ he recalls. ‘We also had to choose a name and the kids came up with “Spud Wood”. Not everyone liked it, but the name stuck!’

KATH PASTEUR

Pasteur, one of the organisers, thinks woods offer a more permeable setting for groups: ‘It is easier to drop into an informal group in the wood than it is to walk through the doors of a village hall,’ she says. ‘There is less of a barrier and people feel more relaxed.’

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted organised activities in the wood, and it has been a constant challenge to keep up with the regulations on what is permitted for groups, bubbles, exercise, support and the like. The wood was closed during the first lockdown in spring 2020, and with many activities taking a break over the summer anyway, it was not until the autumn that groups could get back into their beloved woodland setting.

Kath has found the toddler group ‘a lifeline’ when restrictions allowed for meet-ups, since many of the other local facilities for kids have been closed: ‘I have been able to meet other parents, at a distance, and our kids can go on walks, toast marshmallows and even hunt round the woods for ingredients for a witch’s cauldron!’

The eco-therapy sessions now run online, turning participants’ attention to the beauty of nature in their own surroundings – sunrises, bird-spotting, sharing photos, nature writing – but the absence of actually meeting in the woods has been keenly felt.

Kath hopes the wood will gradually be able to return to normal this spring: ‘The pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health and we expect to be busier than ever as we come out of lockdown,’ she says. ‘There has been financial hardship, unemployment, social isolation; and people will need support more than ever.’ Foundry Wood is one wild oasis where people can gather to work it all out.

NEIL OXLEY

There are many such woods across the country, but what makes Spud Wood rather special is its ‘woodland allotment’ scheme, by which the Friends of Spud Wood (FoSW) can cut and remove their own firewood.

‘The wood was originally planted in quite close rows, over 18 hectares,’ explains Nick.

‘Now there is an opportunity to thin out the trees, to give the better stems more space.’

This removal is carefully controlled by the Woodland Trust site manager, who either marks whole rows for removal, paints spots on individual trees, or designates small areas for ‘coup felling’.

Rather more hands-on than the average volunteer group, FoSW is also very well organised. After starting out working through The Conservation Volunteers, the group became a community interest company in 2014. ‘We now have a three-year licence and contract with the Woodland Trust, who have been very supportive,’ explains FoSW director Jo Yellen. ‘We have our own insurance, write our own risk assessments, and have a membership of about 40 “allotmenteers”, sharing some 25 allotments.’

All allotmenteers undergo felling and first-aid training, and their work is carried out with hand tools. A small amount of chainsaw work is also done by arrangement with the Woodland Trust.

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Jo tells me about this year’s work: ‘Because the ash trees are dying, a “coup fell” has been marked to remove all of them in one area – but we are leaving any oaks we find in among them. So we had to do some training for members on identifying tree species in winter.’

Like other social groups, FoSW has been hit by coronavirus restrictions. ‘Our volunteer work was stopped completely last March as the lockdown was announced, leaving the hedge half cut, and a lot of cut wood lying around where we’d been coppicing and hedge-laying,’ says Nick. ‘The cut branches were promptly turned into dens by the kids!

‘The wood became incredibly popular during the lockdown and has been ever since, especially with dog walkers, and people discovering the wood and travelling from Altrincham and further to visit.’ In autumn, volunteer activities resumed under the ‘rule of six’, only to be restricted to basic maintenance in the winter.

Both Jo and Nick have done volunteer leader training, and their skills have been put to good use in many other activities in the wood. There have been tree-planting days for local children, to fill some of the gaps left by felling. This is also a chance to widen the species mix to make the wood more diverse and resilient.

Find out more about Friends of Spud Wood at lowcarbonlymm.org.uk/fosw

Restoring ancient woodland Community woodlands are not all small pockets tucked away, or newly planted projects. Near Lewes in East Sussex, one community group has taken on the management of a 171-acre wood dating from medieval times. Vert Woods and its adjoining woods form one of the largest tracts of ancient woodland in the Low Weald of Sussex, and

They only work as community woodlands because people have made them happen was owned by the Pelham family for nearly 700 years, according to archaeological volunteer Hilary Hinks’s research, until it was divided up for sale in the 1960s. Then the largest remaining piece of the woods came onto the market again in 2016. ‘Rather than let the wood become still further fragmented, we wondered how we could secure it for community use,’ says Marina Robb, co-chair of the community benefit society caring for the woodland. ‘To our joy, a local benefactor stepped up, bought the wood, and now leases it to us for a peppercorn rent.’ Vert Woods is now part of the newly coined ‘Laughton Greenwood’, under the management of the society, which in better times ran all kinds of events to connect people with nature, from work days and tree planting to bird walks and storytelling.

Ancient woodland is special because it retains undisturbed forest soils that support unique ground flora and wildlife. Here at Vert Learning about birch tapping in Vert Woods

Visit laughtongreenwood.co.uk to learn more about Laughton Greenwood

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Members of the Laughton Greenwood community group on a work day in the woods before lockdown restrictions

Woods you can find wild service trees and a host of other ancient woodland indicator species such as bluebell, anemone, butcher’s broom and yellow archangel.

Unfortunately, a lot of this native woodland was planted over in the 1960s with commercial Scots pine and Corsican pine. Much of the original wildlife value still remains, however, and these woods can be restored to native broadleaf. One of the main tasks for the Laughton Greenwood society is to thin out the conifers and restock with native broadleaf trees appropriate to the area – namely oak, birch, hazel and hornbeam.

Tom Ottaway is the group’s community forester: ‘The wood was under-thinned when we started, so we have been catching up with that and opening out the rides to benefit invertebrates,’ he says. ‘We have a 20-year management plan and we received grants for some of this work, and for 200m of track and a loading bay for timber.’

Works continued last year, with some 20 lorry-loads of timber being extracted and sold as logs and biomass, some to local users.

When setting up the project, the Laughton Greenwood group asked itself, ‘What is our community?’ The wood is close to a few small villages, and well used by locals and dog walkers, but the group is also reaching out beyond this, to nearby Hailsham, Uckfield and Lewes. Co-chair Marina, an experienced health and education practitioner who also runs an outdoor learning organisation, Circle of Life Rediscovery, believes Laughton Greenwood has much to offer the wider community: ‘We have run John Muir Trust awards for the community college with Year 9 students facing exclusion; we offer chainsaw training facilities to Plumpton College; we welcome groups from CAMHS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services], and dementia clients,’ she says. ‘We also run community events like the popular new year walk, bird-spotting and a project building “leaky dams” to slow the flow of floodwaters.’

Marina is keen to stress that none of this happens on its own: ‘We need support and funding, and most of all we need people to get involved, join the committee and help to make this wood work for the community.’

The same could be said for all these woods – they only work as community woodlands because people have stepped up to make them happen.

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‘The bicycle is one of the most important things we have invented’ A cycling champion in every sense, Chris Boardman shares his vision for a better travel network – and explains why his other bike is a tractor

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Chris Boardman MBE is a former racing cyclist who won an Olympic gold medal in 1992. He is now the cycling and walking commissioner for Greater Manchester.

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TFGM; ALAMY

CLIENT

The bicycle is right up there with the printing press as one of the most important things we have ever invented. That might sound melodramatic – but consider that climate change, health, pollution and congestion can all be tackled by using this cheap and easy machine to move around for short journeys.

Cycling could have a hugely positive impact on the biggest problems we’ve got. You halve your chance of serious illnesses just by using a bike regularly.

Being a professional bike rider was a wonderful chapter of my life; pretty turbulent at times, but ultimately wonderful.

But it’s always what happens next that’s most important to me. And what I’m doing now – trying to change the way we move around in this country – is the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever done.

I don’t want to encourage people to cycle; I want to enable them. Enabling means providing the space and opportunity to not have to use a car. If you put it in those terms, people understand what you’re talking about.

They realise they haven’t really got that choice right now. They don’t ride a bike to the shop

because they don’t feel safe. We have a finite amount of public space, and we’ve allocated too much of it to people driving cars.

Just putting in a few crossings, or adding a bit of bike path, isn’t enough. Then all people thinking about is the cost and the hassle. But if you show them this bike path is part of a regional plan, which is good news for health, pollution and the climate, then everybody feels part of something bigger. That’s what we’ve tried to do with the Bee Network for walking and cycling in the Manchester region; create a plan people can be proud of.

I used to do at least 25,000 miles a year in my car. My workplace in Greater Manchester is 40 miles from my home on the Wirral Peninsula. Before the pandemic, I decided to try public transport instead of driving. I’m lucky to live close to the Wirral Way, one of the old Beeching rail lines that have been converted into a cycle path. That puts me within a 30-minute ride of two stations. And unlike driving, being on the train wasn’t just ‘dead time’: I could send emails, listen to an audiobook or catch up on sleep. After two months, I decided to give up my car for good.

If I ever do need one, I’ll just hire it for the day, which will leave me better off in the long run.

Plus, that 30 minutes on the bike each way is a bit of exercise that I barely notice I’m doing.

It’s been fantastic to see the popularity of the Wirral Way over the past year: young people, old people, all out walking and cycling. I saw a survey saying that 94% of people who have ridden a bike during lockdown intend to cycle more as a result.

Now we need to give people a real option not to have to use a car, by making space for them to walk and cycle.

If I want wilderness, I head north. Probably because in normal times, it’s easily accessible to me. Sometimes the Lakes, but Scotland has become my go-to place over the years.

The beauty of Scotland is its right to roam. As long as it’s on the map, and you’re not doing any damage, and you’re not in someone’s backyard, it’s not begrudged.

I’m fascinated by how things work, and by making things. That goes right back to being a joiner in my youth, through to riding a bike and seeing what I can get out of it, and, more recently, woodcraft. When we bought our bungalow, it came with six acres of overgrown woodland. So I spent two years renovating it: thinning out trees, keeping wild habitat areas, planting seeds. I’ve learned to use a tractor – and a chainsaw!

I also enjoy photography – it makes you look at the landscape in a considered way.

You see something with the eyes that you want to capture – but often, when you take a photograph, it just doesn’t feel the same.

Trying to bridge the gap between the two is a lovely challenge.

I like doing physical things that take me outside and out of myself. When I’m taking photos, or working in the woods, or diving, I’m not thinking about anything else. That gives me a mental break from my day job.

I can’t really settle unless I’ve been outdoors.

That very much came from my parents – we were always outside in a river, or riding a bike, so it was imprinted early on.

One of the joining points for the Wirral Way linking Cheshire and Merseyside

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My England, 1

CHRIS BOARDMAN MY ENGLAND

VERSION REPRO OP SUBS ART PRODUCTION CLIENT

Life on the river Mayflies

Spring is in the air, and with it, an abundance of new life.

Here, five nature champions reveal the springtime wildlife sightings that always lift their spirits on a waterside stroll

AMY-JANE BEER

Mayflies start life underwater before emerging in their short-lived adult form

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‘Elegant and quick’, great crested grebes are among our most striking waterbirds

The UK’s 50 species of mayfly spend the majority of their lives as aquatic larvae known as nymphs, and emerge in spring or summer as short-lived flying forms, whose sole purpose is reproduction. Watching from water level, you can see individual insects struggle free of the surface tension and rise like tiny angels – an exquisite sight. Not all mayflies appear in May, but within a given species and area, emergence tends to be closely coordinated. This increases their chances of finding a mate and gives a measure of safety in numbers, as they are weak fliers and targeted by all manner of predators. In 2017 we were drawn to our local river by an astonishing feeding frenzy, in which a column of birds hundreds of metres high was stacked by species, all gorging on a bumper hatching of mayflies. Unforgettable!

Dr Amy-Jane Beer is a biologist and nature writer whose next book, The Flow (Bloomsbury), on rivers, is due out in 2022.

Discover, 1

RIVER LIFE DISCOVER

Great crested grebes

A L HARRINGTON PHOTOGRAPHY; ALAMY

TOM MOORHOUSE Great crested grebe: the words encapsulate the bird. There's a crispness in the ‘crested’ that catches their staccato movements and no-nonsense stares. The ‘grebe’ suggests an almost comic cuddliness, but the ‘great’ forces you to step back and admire their ‘don’t mess with me’ attitude. They are elegant and quick, exotic and familiar – just uncommon enough to be a rare treat.

Spotting these guys is simple if they’re around – you need no equipment (but binoculars can help) and they will happily perform in the open water as you watch from the bank. You can find them all year round, but the low reeds in spring present a great opportunity for an unobscured view of their elaborate courtship dances. Head out to a lowland river, lake or canal, and you might just get lucky…

Dr Tom Moorhouse is an ecologist and author, whose latest book, Elegy for a River (Doubleday), is out this month.

A reintroduced beaver on Devon’s River Otter with her young kits

Beavers DEREK GOW

CHRISROBBINS.CO.UK; ALAMY

Beavers are the most amazing engineers, whose construction activities offer living space and life opportunities to a whole host of other creatures.

Their field signs are relatively easy to observe: felled trees with distinctive chiselled tooth marks in their ‘pencil-sharpened’ stumps; gigantic sticknest lodges cemented with mud and the root systems of aquatic plants; and, of course, their dam systems, of all sorts of shapes and ingenious designs. Beavers are being reintroduced to Britain after an absence of perhaps 200 years. It’s been great to play a role in returning these wonderful creatures to their natural space.

Farmer-turned-ecologist Derek Gow charts his quest to restore beavers to British waters in Bringing Back the Beaver (Chelsea Green).

Kingfishers A pike captured up close by Jack Perks

MYA-ROSE CRAIG

Pike Pike are a bit like freshwater sharks – they have this reputation as toothy, cold-blooded predators. Put it this way: if you were to put a load of pike in a tank, you’d eventually end up with just one, very fat, pike. It’s a dangerous business being a male pike, because females are much bigger, and if they don’t like the look of potential suitors, they might just eat them.

You get some pretty big pike – the British record is 46lb, and they can easily reach around three foot, maybe even four. It’s always a thrill to be in the water with them.

Gruesome as it sounds, I’d love to see one taking a ducking!

Pike are found in rivers and lakes all over the country, and in springtime they come into the shallows to breed and spawn, so they’re a relatively easy fish to spot. If it’s sunny, they’ll come to the surface and sun themselves a bit. You might confuse them with a log at first – but once you’ve spotted that slender shape, there’s nothing else quite like it.

‘Naturalist with a camera’ Jack Perks regularly films wildlife for the likes of Countryfile and Springwatch.

HELENA CRAIG

JACK PERKS

JACK PERKS

I live in a small village in the Chew Valley, south of Bristol, and we’re lucky enough to have a pond. Each day during lockdown I have walked past and it has been there, sitting in a tree above the water: the kingfisher that brings so much joy to my day.

I love kingfishers [pictured right] for their beautiful bright colours, their ability to dive for fish, and their personalities. The best places to see these iconic birds are near ponds, streams, rivers and lakes that have branches that overhang the water.

These are where kingfishers will perch, waiting to attack. If you are lucky enough to spot one on a branch, you’ll see its bright-blue feathers with an orange front; but it may be that you only see an exciting flash of blue as it takes its plunge.

Dr Mya-Rose Craig is a keen birder, founder of the Black2Nature charity and blogger (@BirdgirlUK).

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VIEW FROM HERE JOSIE GEORGE VERSION REPRO OP SUBS ART

’m trying to remember the last time I went to the old, green graveyard. If I could rise out of my bed and hover above the roof of my squashed terrace, I could see it: two main roads, two pedestrian crossings, and there it is. It’s been a few weeks since I managed to get myself onto my mobility scooter and make the trip, but that is not unusual, even before the pandemic. I am only 39, but my body can’t be upright for long – a consequence of a broken autonomic nervous system.

I

PRODUCTION CLIENT

Big gulps of sky

pine trees drop their cones and pigeons drop their soft, grey feathers. The evergreens provide shelter in the rain and a green view all year round. Sometimes all I’ll manage is 10 minutes there, to take in big gulps of the sky as a reminder that there is more to life than my house, but sometimes I’ll be able to stay a while longer. I’ll take a blanket and lie down on the grass. I’ll challenge myself to bring back a treasure: a leaf, a feather, a sliver of bark; and then I’ll go home and back to bed, holding it in my hand.

The old, green graveyard

The graveyard is the only green space I can get to independently.

It holds all the trees I know: a veritable arboretum. Wild cherry and hawthorn, yews and holly, grand pines and firs and larch, oak, beech, sycamore, field maple, all in their right and proper places, telling a story of what is old and wild, what is new and managed.

It stretches, long and quiet, away from the road.

A long, high fence marks one shortest edge and its outer edge ends at the big, reeded pond.

A kissing gate there leads to marshland, to rough paths alongside beautiful waterways, lakes and bird hides, inaccessible and so forbidden to me, but more alluring to everyone else. And so mostly my graveyard is a passing-through place, not a place you stop in – ironic, given its residents.

During the first lockdown, signs were tacked to the trees, reminding us to keep our distance, and I looked at the orderly, obediently spaced rows of graves and smiled. I am safe and in good company here.

It is a generous place. The paths are wide and there are benches to sit on. ‘Rest a while’ the plaque on one invites. The

Locked out

One day I went, and the gate in was locked. It stayed that way for weeks until the council could arrange for maintenance. It didn’t stop the walkers – they could still gain access up the scrubby bank by the pond – it only stopped me. It felt personal. It was personal. I wanted to shout at the gate-lockers that they didn’t understand.

You see, when I’m there, I can watch kestrels, frozen in the air. Buzzards call in sharp, wide circles, like a finger drawn round and round on your palm. From the grass, I can hear the geese in the marshland. Occasionally I will see the grey, hunched sentinel of the little old man heron at the edge of the lake; the bend of a white swan. Squirrels run and chase and make me laugh. It may not seem like a lot, but it is everything to me.

I want to tell the world that the one thing we need from green spaces is a promise that they’ll be waiting for us, when we’re ready, when we’re able. We need the gate held open.

ALAMY

Writer Josie George on a precious patch of greenery close to her home

WIN! A STILL LIFE Writer and visual artist Josie George lives with her son in the urban West Midlands and has dealt with disabling chronic illness since childhood. Her first book, A Still Life: A Memoir (Bloomsbury, £16.99),

documents her quiet days and admires what is often overlooked, from neighbourhood birds in flight to light reflecting off frozen puddles. We have five copies to give away. For a chance to win one, send your name

and address on a postcard to CPRE/ Still Life, Think, Capital House, 25 Chapel Street, London NW1 5DH, or email them to cpre@thinkpublishing. co.uk with ‘Still Life’ as the subject heading, by 30 June 2021.

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