Countryman Diary - September 2010
Anyone who has lived in a country village for more than thirty years can’t fail to have noticed the tide of change that has swept over their way of life.
Fewer people work on the land; pubs, shops, post offices and primary schools have closed; public transport is non-existent or has been reduced to a trickle; cottages have been taken over by wealthy second-home owners; commuters have moved in, while youngsters with a long line of ancestors from the area have moved out.
Have we arrived at a crossroads? Do we take the route of preserving what we cherish from the past or do we accept that change has to happen and embrace a new countryside for the twenty-first century? Perhaps we are too late to choose or change direction?
There are many groups and organisations fighting their own corners in this debate and maybe it is time for better, joined-up thinking. This month the National Housing Federation (NHF) launched a new guide titled Affordable Housing Keeps Villages Alive. The cynic in me thinks “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is supporting the guide and its planning officer, Kate Houghton, tells me: “The people who are being priced out of the countryside are the people who make up the lifeblood of rural communities.
If the people who maintain our rural areas and their services cannot find housing locally, the heart of many communities will be lost. If rural areas are not to become the preserve of second home owners, the retired and younger people commuting to work in towns and cities, we urgently need more affordable rural housing.”
David Orr, NHF chief executive, adds:
“Unless we build more affordable homes for the local families who sustain and enrich village life, then we must accept that traditional community life will be wiped out within a generation in many areas.
“The cornerstones of village life — the shop, the school and the pub — are all closing down in alarming numbers because families and young people are being priced out of the local area.”
To attribute all those issues to a lack of affordable housing is perhaps over the top — in fact, many residents see the building of new houses as a problem in itself. There’s a hullabaloo in every village where plans are proposed, and each community has its own particular set of situations to take into account.
In my village where the national park is looking to place even more development, there are huge access problems and a lack of amenities for a growing community. Yet there are dozens of houses for sale and many other cottages empty for long periods of the year because they are holiday or second homes.
Young people leave the village because there are no jobs; few amenities for their age-range; buses are irregular and expensive; trains stop just a few times a day.
Building more new houses will not solve any of these problems.
Bat repellent needed
As windfarms make their way relentlessly across the country — there were around 2,400 at the last count and plans for another 400-plus — the threat to our bird and bat population becomes larger.
Although little work has been carried out in the UK, a six-week study on two American farms recorded more than 4,500 bat fatalities from collisions with the turbines.
As mentioned before in my diary, attempts at reducing bird collisions with wind turbines have typically involved making the turbine blades more conspicuous. However, this clearly wouldn’t work for bats, where hearing is their primary sense.
Anecdotal evidence, including that of bats foraging offshore in Sweden avoiding an area around Utgrunden lighthouse, where a powerful radar is in permanent operation, led Aberdeen University scientists Barry Nicholls and Paul Racey to investigate whether a small portable radar system would act as a repellent around windfarms.
Experiments over the last two years have shown that the portable system works, with bats moving some thirty yards away.
Further work now needs to be conducted by radar engineers, working in conjunction with bat biologists but in the end someone will need to pay for the implementation of the system…
Time for squirrel spotting
Autumn is the ideal opportunity to catch a glimpse of red squirrels, and five downloadable walks have been added to the National Trust website (www.nationaltrust.org.uk) to help wildlife lovers find some of the best sites.
Red squirrels have only a few remaining habitats, mostly the coniferous forests of Scotland, Wales and Northern England, and two island populations (Brownsea Island in Dorset, and the Isle of Wight).
David Bullock, head of nature conservation at the National Trust, says:
“We look after some of the most important red squirrel habitats in the country. These red squirrel walks not only offer the chance to see these beautiful and rare creatures, but also show how we are managing its land for the benefit of a wide range of wildlife.”
Photograph © Charlie Riddell.
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Walking on the edge
I enjoy walking and I love visiting great stretches of England’s coastline but I’m unlikely to walk the full 2,750 miles (4,400 km) around the seaward edges of the country in my lifetime.
There will be many who fancy the trek and more who would like to complete sections of the coast currently ‘out of bounds’.
But I wonder if it is really worth, in such cash-strapped times, ploughing vast amounts of money into creating a complete coastal path as laid out in the Marine and Coastal Access Act which is now law.
It’s not just the money — estimated by some as £50 million — it will need for Natural England to complete the job that’s the problem, but also the blight such a plan imposes on land owned by home-owners, farmers and businesses.
It is also thought that around thirteen per cent of the existing paths will drop into the sea over the next twenty years, so maintenance is going to carry further expense for future generations. I’m certainly no kill-joy but there are already lots of places for us to walk freely … do we really need a complete coastal path?
Erratum
My mention of a typographical error last month prompted Roy Jenkins of Weston-sub-Edge to send me this apology from a local newspaper:
“We very much regret that in our last issue we inadvertently referred to Lt-Col Gunshot-Wound MC TD as a ‘bottle-scarred’ warrior. This should, of course, have read ‘battle scarred’.”
Competition Winners
Winners of the May crossword are Jean Outhwaite, Aston-on-Trent; - Margaret Tyldesley, St Leonards; and Mrs J Ramsden, Cuddington, Cheshire.
Thank you to all those who entered.
Paul Jackson
Editor
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