Tuesday 2 June 2015

Making the Most of the Outside While I Still Can

I've been out walking for another couple of hours this afternoon, across the Grange Road fields to Hawton village along the drainage ditch. I was hoping to see a kingfisher or egret here, but no joy. I did flush a woodcock however, which hurtled out of the barley and crashed through a hedge with a cry of alarm.

Having not seen any for what feels like an age, it was good to see a few butterflies on the wing today, a very faded small tortoiseshell and a relentlessly fluttering small white both struggling to deal with a fierce wind. But at last it was a warm wind, veering rather more to the south and when the sun was out it was quite pleasant.

What wasn't so good to see that some of the fly tips I reported a fair while back have still not been cleared, while more rubbish has been dropped. A supermarket carrier full of empty cans really ignored me, a driver had clearly dumped that out of their car when there were bins at a corner shop about a hundred metres away. Senseless!

Something else that is happening out and about is building. A new relief road to the A1 has been started, hopefully flying over the Sustrans 64, and so many bits of land are having houses crammed onto them. Some are hilarious, a row of three cramped cottages at the back of the old Wing Tavern have so little natural light, and seemingly no gardens either, it's going to be like living in a cave. Another house near the back entrance to Beacon Hill Reserve seems to be being built in a crater, and other large scale developments that have sprung up around Newark have all the charm and quality of 1970s apartment blocks in East Berlin.

Soon the new expansion of Newark south of the town will start colonising the fields like barnacles. I wonder how many of my running routes will be blocked off?

Si

Text and Images Copyright CreamCrackeredNature 01.06.15


Gardeners have been busy in the cemetery

Grange Road fields

Devon Pasture

Devon Meadow

Tainted blossom

Canada flotilla

Bee explores its own little sun

Another bee feeds off ragwort

Ooh look! Another ghost sign

This was at the library and I found it rather eerie

4 comments:

  1. Love those palm prints - yes, rather eerie but unusual and interesting.

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  2. Someone local to me told me they had come across them a couple of days ago and been rather freaked out!

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  3. Even more annoying considering how easy it is the recycle cans these days.
    New builds in the village here seem to have smaller plots of land each year.

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  4. We're just about to start losing lots of fields too, once the endless debate over the Edinburgh Local development Plan comes to an end

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