Environment

To Protect? Or To Preserve? (Opinion Piece)

September 7, 2011

There are wild places, described by poets, painted by artists and loved by country walkers which must be protected for future generations to enjoy. I suspect that most readers of Around-England will have no difficulty in agreeing with that statement. I fear, however, that this post may lose me some friends as I consider the [...]

Read more →

UK Forest Sell-Off

January 27, 2011

Today the British government’s Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, unveiled her proposed plans for selling considerable amounts of state-owned forest land or, as it turns out, selling long-term leases.  In the run-up to this announcement there has been a considerable volume of speculation as to what would be involved, with wild guesses in all directions often [...]

Read more →

Hardcore over Herdwicks

October 22, 2009

I recently saw a website belonging to a road building company that bemoaned the usurping of the term hardcore by the porn industry when its traditional use was to describe the stone and other crushed aggregates that provide the base for roads and paths. I agree, and am going to avoid the modern sophisticated “aggregates” [...]

Read more →

75 Years of Befriending the Lakes

October 14, 2009

I think the first time I heard of the Friends of the Lake District, or at least the first time they really hit my consciousness to any significant degree, was during their campaign to preserve Ennerdale Water and Wastwater in the late-70s and early-80s. At that time I was visiting the area frequently as a [...]

Read more →