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Fly-tipping

 

TOP TIP: Don’t feel you need to read all of my rambling! Read till you’ve had enough / scroll through the pics!

[Here’s a link to other forays around my map.]



I decided to use a random number generating website to pick the grid square for each outing on this project. It will help to keep things surprising and avoid my conscious bias against boring fields of winter wheat, and miles of keep out fences and PRIVATE signs. So my heart sank a little upon arriving in Grid Square 2 to find a fenced-up, closed-down pub waiting for me.

A soggy planning permission notice informed me that Sue and Jeff Smith have submitted an application to demolish the pub and build three four-bedroom homes instead. Sad, isn’t it, that during the tribulations of 2020, when all of us could most do with a quiet couple of pints, a log fire, and a good moan with our mates, that the pubs have been shut. And many of them won’t be opening again. Pubs improve community engagement and are the third most popular tourist activity in Britain (which says a lot!). Yet they are in seemingly terminal decline, with dozens closing down every week. Causes include drink driving laws, anti-smoking laws, taxation, cheap supermarket booze, and massive numbers of young people not drinking alcohol.

The boarded up ‘Anchor and Hope’ was a sorry-looking start to my day’s exploration. Hundreds of years of history awaiting demolition. (Pub names give many clues as to the age of the establishment. For example, the amount of religious symbolism in pub names decreased after Henry VIII’s break from the church of Rome in 1534. But the ‘Anchor and Hope’ name derives from the Letter to the Hebrews (6:19): “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope.” I turned away and headed off in search of cheerier discoveries.

The first house I passed had a bold sign on its gate, “NO SALESMAN [sic] BEWARE DOGS” and a mailbox with a picture of a tractor on it. The next house’s mailbox was decorated with a posthorn, popular on the logos of postal services across eastern Europe (and Tajikistan). A posthorn  is a valveless cylindrical brass instrument with a cupped mouthpiece. The instrument was used to signal the arrival or departure of a post rider or mail coach. It was used especially by postilions of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Mozart composed his Serenade No. 9, the “Post horn Serenade”, in 1779. The post horn is included in Unicode (emoji language) as U+1F4EF: 📯. And, at some point, all of this was typed up onto Wikipedia by a kind and curious volunteer. The thought of which cheered me up enormously –the internet world we live in is truly marvellous– and I walked on eagerly in search of more treasure.

I headed down a narrow lane, shining from rain, lined tightly with hedges, Red Bull cans and McDonalds’ rubbish. I’m sure that well before the end of this project I’ll have passed the abandoned detritus of their entire menu. The motorway sounded like a distant rushing river. There were no other sounds except occasional passing cars. The hedgerows feel empty at this time of year, though a chirping cloud of long tailed tits liven things up, more tail than bird, undulating and noisy as they fly.

I saw an old football, deflated and tattered, in the hedge. More curious was that it was lying on top of an even older, flatter ball, almost buried now beneath ivy and twigs. Lying neatly on the rungs of a metal drain was an old wine bottle. The web address on the drain informed me that Clark-Drain is a family owned company, proud of our heritage (since 1963), which began setting new industry standards as pioneers of the first steel cover in the UK. Our core strength is our dedicated employees who embrace a clear set of values which drive everything we do. There [sic] aim is to not just deliver the best possible construction products but to help you to build a better everyday life for people, vehicle use and function of the built environment.” 

I learned that this was not a mere drain that I was contemplating. It was a ‘ductile iron kerb gully’, designed for pavement kerbs adjacent to carriageways. It can be accessed for rodding or cleaning purposes through a wide unobstructed clear opening area which facilitates maintenance access to the sewer system. Unfortunately, as I added one to my shopping basket on their website, I learned that I first needed to contact them for a price quote. To open the drain and begin exploring the sewer system requires a special ‘ductile iron heavy duty loop handle lifting key’: price also upon request. Watch this space. [Update: I got a phone call from the drain company. It was one of those awkward conversations where I felt massively emasculated, like when I take a car into a garage or have to talk about DIY. Upon disclosing that I was curious about the price for a single unit rather than, say, enough for 100 miles of highway, I was told, “Well obviously we don’t give prices out. We trade though builders’ merchants so you would have to enquire through them.”]

I almost did not give the muddy bottle a second thought, but then I noticed four more wine bottles dumped in the hedge. Intriguingly, each was a bottle of Pinot. This got me trying to imagine the litterer who stopped their car a couple of hundred metres along this lane to lob out the evidence of a very specific choice of grape. The word ‘pinot’ comes from the French for “pine cone”, which is just what the bunches look like on the vine: small, black-blue berries tightly packed together. Besides the three primary varieties (Noir, Blanc, and Gris), more than one thousand Pinot varieties are officially registered – all the same but for the tiniest of differences. Why does Pinot have so many – compared with other popular grapes, like Cabernet Sauvignon?

Don’t be hard on the poor Pinot grape for being such a mutant – it isn’t her fault. She’s thousands of years old, described in detail by the ancient Romans – and certainly predating them. Even our obsession with Pinot wines dates back to the 1300s! Next to her, Cab Sav looks like a toddler, born in the 17th Century.

The Pinot vine’s incredible diversity is a result of her long, long life. That incredible diversity produces such a range of bouquets that any palate can surely be satisfied. As we know, Pinot grapes produce some of the most wonderful wines in the world – it was not without reason that the master sommelier Madeline Triffon called Pinot “sex in a glass”.

I’m not quite sure whether such a moniker applies to the wine in these bottles originating in South Africa, northern Italy, Norfolk (“a classic pinot, sublime daffodil colour combined with aromas of apple and peach”), and a Romanian bottle called Sorcova. Sorcova is a popular Romanian custom, practiced on the night of 31 December. This custom is very old and is spread throughout the country, being practiced mainly by children. Sorcova consists of a twig decorated with artificial flowers of different colours, wherewith children slightly hit on back their parents or acquaintances in the morning of New Year, wishing them, in special verses, health and luck. In northern Transylvania, children go with sorcova from house to house, wishing health in exchange for local delicacies (sweet cozonac bread, apples, nuts). Girls are not allowed to go along, because they bring bad luck.”

Now as much as I was fascinated by muddy wine bottles and different drain types, I felt it was about time I got back to a world I knew more about: the natural world. Although it turns out I also know almost nothing about this, either. I didn’t know that the smooth red rosehips growing over the drain (linked in my mind to making itching powder as a boy and more-effort-than-it’s-worth jam) have been used for centuries in traditional and folk medicine for their anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties. Rosehip oil is a popular anti-aging substance in the beauty community, though research supporting its benefits is limited. (Like those absurd shampoo adverts where 52% of 43 people declare it ‘miraculous’.) More useful appears to be the evidence that supplementing your diet with rose hips may help relieve osteoarthritis symptoms by combating oxidative stress and inflammation in your joints.

I turned down a track towards an old gamekeeper’s cottage, where a sign cautioned me to go slow. I didn’t seem to be struggling with that this morning, I was pleased to realise. A channel of crushed grass caught my eye and I followed it up to a large badger sett, with five large holes dug into the earth by a fence. One of the holes might have been their latrine, for they are house-proud beasts. Badgers are big, beautiful, common, but incredibly rare to see. [In Lockdown 1 I almost trod on a badger whilst out night running. Scared the crap out of both of us! Later that week I ran over a fox at midnight on my bike (it fled, so hopefully was OK). And then the next night a large, scratchy stag beetle landed on my arm whilst out running and I leapt out of my skin for a third time!]

Our UK badger is not the same species as the American Badger (which lives in Canada and the USA) or the Honey Badger (which lives in Africa, and isn’t really a true badger anyway). Many people think that the reason it is called a “badger” because this is similar to the French word “beucher”, which means digger. Another option is that because it has a very obvious black and white face, this is like a mask or a badge; so it is called badger.

A simple sett is made up of a single tunnel, with a sleeping chamber at the end. However, most setts have several entrance holes, and lots of tunnels which link up with each other. The tunnels also link up with sleeping and nursery chambers. The tunnels may have several interlinking passages underground; and may also be arranged so as to provide a constant supply of clean fresh air through the sett in most weathers. Accordingly, entrances may sometimes be on different levels to help stale air rise through the sett and be dissipated into the surrounding woodland.

The tunnels may be excavated at different levels and at different depths under the surface of the soil. Some tunnels may be a dozen metres from an entrance and where natural air-flow is very low. In the same way that an underground train pushes a “plug” of air through the tunnels as it speeds through them; fresh air can come into these deep tunnels by the action of a badger rushing through the tunnels. The arched shape of the badgers back and the arched roof tends to make an adult badger force air into and out of the tunnels distant from an entrance hole.

A really big sett can have from 50 to 100 or more entrance holes. A sett this big will have been dug out by lots of badgers, over many years. There are some setts which are known to be over a hundred years old. Many generations of badgers have lived in these setts.

One study found a well-established sett in the Cotswolds with twelve entrances had tunnels totalling 310 metres. It was estimated that the badgers had excavated 25 tonnes of soil throughout the years to create this complex. Tunnels can be four metres deep, though most are less than one metre underground and often follow surface contours. This helps with air circulation, while ventilation holes sometimes connect a tunnel to the surface.

It was fortuitous timing for me to find these tunnels today for I have just finished reading The Wooden Horse, a fascinating escape story from World War 2 (movie trailer here). Two prisoners realised that the trouble with conventional escape tunnels, beginning from inside a hut –beneath a desk, in the showers, under a cooking stove– was that the sheer length of the project gave the German guards far too much time to discover their mischief. What if, they wondered… What if we could begin our tunnel right out near the perimeter fence? This was clearly a ludicrous idea, but many of life’s wonderful projects arise from asking ‘what if?’ and mulling over the madcap possibilities.

The idea that came to Eric Williams and Michael Codner was simple, ridiculous, audacious, and pleasingly echoed one of history’s great military tales: Odysseus and the Trojan horse. They would place a gymnastics ‘horse’ out by the fence and, while volunteers practiced their vaults, a tunneller concealed inside the horse would dig an escape tunnel, concealing it at the end of each day with a sand-covered trapdoor. A fellow prisoner declared that the plan was “crackers”, telling its inventors “I give it a couple of days!”

Looking at the entrance to the badger sett I tried to imagine myself down there, using bowls for shovels, digging by candlelight, struggling for breath in a 75cm diameter tunnel, for three months whilst the other camp inmates vaulted continuously over the wooden horse in order to mask the vibration from the tunnelling work… And then, once they broke out of the 30 metre tunnel (longer than a tennis court), all that remained was to cross 150 miles of enemy territory in homemade disguises, without being able to speak German, and then sneak onto a ship to Sweden… The convoluted artifice of modern adventures would surely seem risible to those insanely bold, courageous escapees.

Eric and Michael invited a third man to join them in the escape. After exiting the tunnel Oliver made his own way safely back home to Britain. After being demobbed in 1946, Philpot resumed his career in the food industry, eventually becoming chief executive of Findus, the frozen food company. That millions of men successfully found a way to return to normal life after the heightened experiences of a world war is one of the most intriguing aspects of that generation.

‘The best part of escaping was when we were in charge of things. Building the horse, digging, planning – the break itself, and travelling across Germany. The feeling that every minute was vital, that everything one did could sway the balance between success and failure … The part I didn’t enjoy was when we were in other people’s hands – not knowing the score and having no say.’

I read The Wooden Horse after reading The Colditz Story. (I find that now I read on a Kindle I often go down tunnels of similar books before breaking out and heading to a different genre.) I picked that book up because I was intrigued by the adventurous spirit and focused purpose of being a prisoner of war in Colditz, hell bent on the idea of escape and freedom. Take this quote from the introduction:

A. J. Evans said that escaping is the greatest sport in the world. In my early twenties I thought that to ride in the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree would be the epitome of sporting excitement – more so even than big-game hunting. I longed to do both. Since the war and my experiences as an escaper, my one-time ambitions have died a natural death. I feel I have quaffed deeply of the intoxicating cup of excitement and can retire to contemplate those ‘unforgettable moments’ of the past. I can think of no sport that is the peer of escape, where freedom, life, and loved ones are the prize of victory, and death the possible though by no means inevitable price of failure.

Reading this book during lockdown, and with my own wildest adventures a receding memory, this paragraph caught my attention:

It was the first escape from this prison, probably the first escape of British officers from any organized prison in Germany. We were the guinea-pigs. We undertook the experiment with our eyes open, choosing between two alternatives: to attempt escape and risk the ultimate price, or face up to the sentence of indefinite imprisonment. There were many who resigned themselves from the beginning to the second of these alternatives. They were brave, but their natures differed from those of the men who escaped and failed, and escaped again; who having once made the choice between escape and resignation, could not give up, even if the war lasted the remainder of their lives. I am sure that the majority of the men who sought to escape did it for self-preservation. Instinctively, unconsciously, they felt that resignation meant not physical but mental death – maybe lunacy. My own case was not exceptional. One awful fit of depression sufficed to determine my future course as a prisoner. One dose of morbidity in which the vista of emptiness stretched beyond the horizon of my mind was quite enough.

But anyway, perhaps I was heeding the ‘Slow’ sign too carefully, for I had still barely made it down one flank of today’s grid square. I turned back at the Gatekeeper’s Cottage private sign, and walked through a coppice glowing with autumn sunshine back to the road. That the trees had been coppiced told me they were hornbeam not beech, for beech is rarely coppiced (due to its dense canopy). Ordinarily I often muddle up beech and hornbeam, though I ought not to because beech has smoother, rather glossy leaves, the margin with shallowly undulating teeth, while Hornbeam has rougher, more furrowed leaves, the margin with distinctive double serrations – larger teeth alternating with smaller teeth.

A brick wall interspersed with flint set me wondering again. Bricks are clearly easier to build with, though they must first be made, fired and transported. Flints look fiddly and need knapping into shape, but they have the advantage of being everywhere around here. Indeed many fields are so full of flint I marvel how anything can grow. Until bricks became cheap a century or so ago, most homes and churches in this area were built with flint. Yet after nearly 100 years, two world wars and a building industry changed almost beyond recognition, it is not surprising that flint craftsmen are not the easiest of skilled tradesmen to find. Which is not to say that flint has been forgotten, nor that it has fallen out of use. On the contrary, in some parts of the country there is a revival of sorts, with flint being cast as a facing to concrete slabs, and flint veneers raised as decorative panels over blockwork in conservation areas.

There is nothing wrong (and much to be said) for new uses for traditional materials; but sadly, rather than a ‘new use’, flint is now emerging from these production lines in an awful parody of traditional flint masonry. Small faces of flint peer out from heavy frames of grey or yellow mortar, scarred with brush marks. When seen juxtaposed against the fabric of older buildings the experience is particularly dismal. This work cannot be more offensive to anyone than to the few surviving craftsmen.

Flint occurs as nodules or in bands within the Chalk, and can be seen primarily in the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. Its origin is generally accepted as being the siliceous sponges once inhabiting the waters of Cretaceous seas. Flints which have been washed out of the chalk cliffs can also be found as rounded cobbles and pebbles and have been used extensively for building and paving.

Flint and chert are concretions, that is to say natural growths of mineral matter which form around a centre or core. Sometimes the core may be seen to be the sea urchin. Elaborate and sometimes sophisticated tools such as axes, adzes, spear points and arrowheads were made from flint by early man by hammering and flaking ‘green’ or freshly mined flint, anticipating the later production of knapped flints and gun flints, which were produced with similar techniques.

Nearby was a beautiful old malt house, a timber framed 17th Century thatched building. Grain was converted into malt here, to be used in brewing beer, by soaking it in water. Many villages had a malt house in the eighteenth century, supplying the needs of local publicans, estates and home brewers. Malt houses are typically long, low buildings, no more than two storeys high. The germination of barley is hindered by high temperatures, so many malt houses only operated in the winter. This provided employment for agricultural workers whose labour was not much in demand during the winter months.

I hesitated at a quiet junction where a scruffy tuft of grass made a small island at the joining of the lanes. Five small roads met here; I wonder how common that is? I knew that I recognised this junction, but could not picture why I had ever been before. I looked on my map and realised that it was on the way we drove home after our wedding. Two women cyclists zipped past, full lycra, chatting about Dubai. Two retired couples passed, out for purposeful walks in opposite directions. And that left just me standing there, wondering something but I was not sure what…

I stripped to my T-shirt, the November weather unseasonably mild. I wonder what month, what grid square I’ll next be out in one? And then, at last, I left the road, climbing a stile into a field. A clean, shiny blue Ford Fiesta was parked neatly in the corner of the field. The footpaths I used today were all permissive paths through farmland, rather than through any sort of wild land. Some were grazed fields of neat-looking grass. Others were scrubby, brown and thistle-strewn. But most were dazzling green crops of winter wheat seedlings, planted now either as a cash crop for next summer or as a cover crop. Cover crops are planted to cover the soil rather than for the purpose of being harvested. They help manage soil erosion, soil fertility, soil quality, water runoff, weeds, pests, diseases, biodiversity and wildlife. 

Oh my goodness! I am exhausted by the abundance of everything! Googling winter wheat led me into the YouTube world of Farmer Vloggers, filming the planting of winter wheat (including drone shots) and I have to call out, enough! Stop! Begin looking more and more closely at the world in front of your eyes and you will disappear, like Alice, down a rabbit hole of infinite possibilities. So I drag myself away (for now) from investigating how you plant these seedlings in such straight line, and how they determine the optimum tread shape for tractor tyres.

Instead I will usher you hastily across the muddy fields, past the cross country horse jumps at the edge of a wood, past the two dog-walking mums in wellies and sunglasses sipping from thermos mugs and discussing their children’s teacher (I wish I had a friend to be out here with), a man in a greenhouse at the edge of a field sneezes and I call bless you (I wish I was alone out here). This is countryside for use, for work, for living, for strolling. I don’t like it much as the empty Marsh, even though it is more ‘beautiful’. Past a plastic lid in the mud with a handwritten ‘Strawberries and Cream (milk)’, past the yellow Canada Hawkweed I identified with the Seek app, past the newly planted holly saplings sheathed in plastic, past the wild bees buzzing from their nest in a hole in a birch tree. Past a little plump bird pecking a branch (I don’t know what it was), a few leaves falling, slower than rain. Half of my head saying hurry up. Half of my heart asking “why?” I know so little! I’m out roaming the fields, like I’m always jealous of people doing in books. But I’m also really tempted to check my email. Past the snail I rescued from its perilous road-crossing mission, and past the indignant notice from a farmer declaring that, “On Boxing Day a sheep was killed on this farm by a golden Labrador whose owner made no attempt to control it. Keep your dog on a lead or you risk it being shot.” Past all these things that distracted me, drew me in, and asked more questions than they answered.

I bring you then to the end of the day’s grid square, and a failed attempt to have a look at a small pond marked on my map. Like much else round here it was sealed off by a two-metre spiked fence. I conceded defeat easily enough, for I shall be back at the other side of the pond when I visit the neighbouring grid square sometime. I can try again then. Once again my belly was declaring that enough was enough, and it was time to go home for lunch. But a pile of roadside rubbish caught my eye (as it often seems to do). Not just a little bit of fly-tipping, but fly-tipping on an epic scale drew me along a lane. A smouldering mound of soggy rubbish, maybe 20 metres deep, including sofas and builders’ rubble bags. Two workmen were surveying the mess.

“The fire brigade have just put it out,” one of them told me. “Now we’ve got to get rid of it. Again.”

The council hires these guys, I learned, to manage various notorious tipping sites, and they’d driven an hour to assess the mess. Two men with two flat bed trucks, waiting for a third man to arrive with a digger to scoop up all the rubbish. It must cost the council a fortune. Indeed it does: Britain spends more than £67m a year to clean up public land and prosecute anyone they catch, according to official figures. From old mattresses and fridges to tyres and masonry – and even coffins and live turtles – almost a million incidents of rubbish dumped illegally are recorded each year. Councils have been given new powers to fine people up to £400 for “smaller” offences, but this depends on evidence. It has left local authorities having to consider new ways to clamp down on those who illegally dump their waste – or try to persuade them not to do it in the first place. Whether it is cutting-edge DNA profiling or covert surveillance, online naming and shaming or conscience-pricking children’s artwork, there are different ways to stop dumping and littering. But, joy of joys, if someone dumps their rubbish on your property, that’s your problem and your job to sort out.

“Yeah, this is the third time we’ve cleared this site in the last two weeks! It’s really popular at the moment.”

I’m always intrigued by fly-tipping – yet another world that I know nothing about. I began firing questions. One of the men couldn’t be bothered to speak to me, but the other was cheerful and quite happy to share his knowledge.

“Sometimes they dump a load even while we’re here clearing up! Nothing I can do about it.”

“At least it keeps you in a busy job?” I offered.

“Nah, but it’s not right.”

A Mini pulled up, with two young women from the Council. They had a weary, ‘not-this-again’ look on their face as they began to confer with the workmen. I wished them “good luck!” and left them to it.

Two Traveller children from the community living up the lane [a future grid square to explore] approached me, aged about 12. The girl was thumbing through her phone and the boy was twirling a catapult round his finger.

“Did you make that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, hesitantly, though with a hint of pride.

As luck would have it I had a pocket full of catapult pellets (I have a catapult in my shed as a handy procrastination toy) and offered them to him. He was chuffed and let me have a shot. I took aim at a handy fly-tipped fridge. Then the boy took a pot at some dumped flower pots.

“What you doing with that big camera?” the girl asked.

I explained that I had been trying to take pictures of the nearby pond but it was fenced in.

“That’s private,” she said. “£20,000 fine if you go in there.”

“But that’s only for us kids who go in there messing around,” said the boy.

“That sounds a bit expensive for a photograph of a pond,” I replied. “I’m not that bothered.”

They were warming to me now, and offered to show me a way to sneak in. When I demurred they offered to take me to a graveyard or to show me a field of their ponies. When they said, “Don’t go in by yourself though – they’ll get you!” I wasn’t sure if the kids were referring to the horses or the owners.

“Can I have a go with your camera?” asked the boy. I showed him how to use the viewfinder and posed for a couple of shots.

“If they run off with your camera, I’m not chasing them!” shouted one of the workmen, laughing.

“Don’t worry, I back myself,” I replied, smiling at the boy. They were nice kids.

Nonetheless I was aware that I felt cautious, that I’d better not take photos of these children, and that lingering too long round here with my fancy, nosey-parker camera might invite some brusque questions. I know nothing first-hand about the Traveller community; I’ve never even had a conversation with a Traveller. Yet I realised this lack of knowledge was making me uneasy, exactly as I felt years ago before visiting the Middle East. I don’t like feeling this way –swayed by media and prejudice– and I hope that I can have some conversations as I move around my map that shines some light on all I do not know.

The women from the council called me over and checked what I was taking photos for. “Be careful,” she said, with concern in her voice. “The people who live here are not very nice. They won’t like your camera. The kids won’t ever speak to me; they just tell me to ‘fuck off’!”

It was time to go. I shouldered my camera and turned to leave. “Bye guys,” I said to the kids.

“See you,” they replied with a smile. “Thank you for the catapult pellets!”

[EDIT: this post caused a bit of a furore with some Gypsy readers on Twitter. The upshot was that I received this book recommendation to learn more about the British Gypsy way of life. I enjoyed it very much.]

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Comments

  1. Hallam Murray Posted

    Lovely blog Alastair!!Time we met up again. A Corelli lunch perhaps once LockUP is over ha ha.
    You write so beautifully but I rarely get a chance to read what you write. Cheers!!

    Reply
  2. Hi, I flew over your text (not to say it was too much, but not all the same of interest to me- loved the badger story and the combi with the prison break!) and stopped at every pic. I love the idea to explore the world around my home by squares! Will do so the next weeks as lockdown anyway gave me much time-not bad at all. Good luck on your next corner!

    Reply
  3. Andy Bleaden Posted

    I took the time to read this and glad I did.
    Thanks
    Sounds like we are not alone
    Details paint pictures
    Depth
    So thanks

    Reply
  4. Nice article! It’s a wonderful idea to really explore an area without the inherent bias that one would experience if they had more ‘control’ over where they went! Thanks for posting!

    Reply
  5. Karl Gwilliam Posted

    I use a great app – ClearWaste – to report fly tipping when I see it (regularly, sadly). You photograph it, it GPS’s it and then it reports it to the relevant council. It doesn’t stop or explain fly-tipping but it’s a simple action that individuals can take rather than tut and move on.

    Reply
    • Alastair Posted

      Do you know if it’s ever acted on?
      I do the same but suspect I’m shouting into the dark.

      Reply
  6. Keith Fey Posted

    Terrific. I began Nordic Walking Couple of months ago, firstly on tarred roads, next pavements soon became side roads and foot paths. Lately tracks and cross country in my local surrounds fills my dawn with delight. As summer settles in first light becomes first steps at 3.30. it’s wonderful what you have done by giving back so much in prose, and exciting in boot to follow my nose to where I would normally hesitate . A brand new world, in lockdown, right where I live, a new way of living.

    Reply

 
 

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