In The Country

Herald of the Summer The bluebell is a bold harbinger of the Summer months, bursting into flower before the canopy of leaves shut out the sunlight. Their electric splash of deep violet shimmering across the woodland floor in Spring is an undeniably...

Blackthorn and Sloes This prickly bush has deep purple fruits in the Autumn, these Sloes are best used for making Sloe Gin as they are really tart and not what you want to be eating. Sloe Gin is really easy to make and even easier to drink, the...

Old Robin Redbreast, the gardeners pugnacious little friend hopping around us as we weed the garden is Britains favourite garden bird. A poll in 2015 revealed the Robin as our most loved bird, and it's easy to see why, they are ever present and...

Farmers Taking a Stand A new campaign launched by the pioneering organic veg box company Riverford is aimed at raising awareness and exposing the supermarkets monopolistic attitudes to farmers. What is Farmwashing? Supermarkets are decking their...

The blackbird (Turdus merula) is one of the best known garden visitors in the British Isles. With its glossy black plumage and bright yellow beak in males, and the more subdued brown tones of the females, the blackbird is a familiar sight in parks,...

Tits The material for endless schoolboy jokes, the family of birds called tits drive their name from the Old English term 'titmose' - 'tit' meaning small and 'mose' being derived from the Germanic word for a bird, 'mäse', over time it became...

I like birds and being able to have a stab at identifying them, but I'm no ornithologist, so I tend to just break them down into small, medium or large and then look in a book to identify. This has stood me in good stead, I can confidently...

Landscape Scale Conservation Rewilding is a brilliant idea, a step beyond the horizon of most conservation projects, why not allow mother nature to take control again? Create, in the words of Rewilding Europe, a situation where you were 'enabling...

A Pagan Landscape When we walk along the Welsh coastline and across its hills and mountains we are not only treading in the footsteps of history, but also across a mythic landscape populated by Pagan Gods, otherworldly heroes, Sorcerers and Druids...

Peaty Goodness You can't call yourself a true hillwalker until you have gone up to your knees in a bog on the moors and fells of England or Scotland. Whether its a bottomless muddy pool on Dartmoor, the mahogany perfection of a grough on Kinder or...

So a lot of us do stuff in the outdoors, dog walking, hiking, climbing, biking, riding etc. We spend days immersed in nature, but how many of us really take notice of what's around us? What the trees are, what plants are in flower, what species...

The mass Kinder trespass of 1932 kickstarted widened access to our hills and helped to establish the National Parks and the long distance path network in the UK. On the 24th April 1932 around 400 ramblers met on the Kinder plateau in a coordinated...

Peaky Blinders is back for a sixth season. Aunt Polly is no more, and the first episode was poignantly dedicated to Helen McRory who sadly died before the season was filmed. All of the Peaky Blinders traits that make the series so damn good were...

The gilet, a staple of many a wardrobe is a strange thing. Merely a fancy waistcoat or its own beast? The basic function is dead practical, keeping the core warm without being as cumbersome as a coat. Yet this deceptively simple piece of clothing...

Red and green together be seen In the time of dread and fear Green for the thorn of the holly leaf That shines in candlelight That holds the hope of evergreen That glimmers in the night Red for the berry round and full A drop of blood on snow That...

Farmers have been in the dark since Brexit as to where they will be headed after the demise of the Common Agricultural Policy. The CAP was reviled by virtually everyone, riddled with inconsistencies and fundamentally flawaed. Rather than...

The UK and Ireland was battered by storm Arwen at the end of December, lives were lost and property took a hammering. The gale force winds took a heavy toll on trees across the country, the National Trust have posted details of the damage their...

The soil beneath our feet is permeated by huge fungal networks that are sequestering a colossal 5bn tons of carbon dioxide every year (equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted annually by the United States). Mycorrhizal fungi  use carbon...

Harris Tweed is ‘dyed, spun and finished in the Outer Hebrides and woven by hand by the Islanders in their homes on the Islands of Lewis, Harris, Uist and Barra’. That’s it, no exceptions, there’s an Act of Parliament to back it up. And there’s a...