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CO U N T R YS I D E
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VOICES Spring/ Summer 2020
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SPECIAL EDITION
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We love the countryside Local beauty | Landscapes of the heart | Community heroes | Soothing spaces
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NEWS VERSION
A local walk during lockdown captured by Sophie Spencer of CPRE Avonside. Below left: We need a plan for the recovery of rural communities such as Hawkshead, Cumbria
A plan for rural recovery
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Cover: Becca Nelson, Clark Warren, Sophie Spencer, Caroline Gent, Julie Davies, Kayleigh Duncan, Jeff Hutson, John and Helen Bloxsome
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A movement for change It feels that CPRE has been busier than ever despite coronavirus – carrying on with vital ongoing work while responding to ‘new realities’. I even spoke to the BBC from home (above) on how investing in cycling and walking can prevent a return to previous levels of pollution. Joining forces with the likes of Greenpeace on that action has been part of a united ‘green’ response to the crisis: Friends of the Earth were among the groups backing our planning campaign (right), and we have supported those of partners – including the Committee on Climate Change call for recovery funding to enhance landscapes and green spaces. CPRE is at the heart of a movement for change, and we’re working on behalf of the very thing that has been the main source of pleasure and relaxation for millions during ‘lockdown’. With your continued support, the countryside will be able to inspire and console long after this crisis and for generations to come.
Crispin Truman OBE Chief Executive
As part of our work to support the recovery of the post-coronavirus countryside, we are currently developing a set of recommendations that we hope will provide a blueprint for strengthening planning protections, expanding access to nature and revitalising rural communities.
Measuring a surge of appreciation Safeguarding the public voice in planning With temporary planning arrangements allowing decisions to be made in closed meetings for up to a year, we wrote to housing secretary Robert Jenrick to remind him that the scrutiny of local people is critical for the creation of better developments. We’re now calling on the government to ensure that democratic planning will allow our economy to recover and our environment to flourish.
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Our joint survey with the WI found that well over half (57%) of people now realise the importance of being near nature for their mental health and wellbeing, and almost two thirds (63%) want to see the protection of community green spaces given a higher priority – something we will insist the government delivers on in its planning reforms.
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News, 1
Local Voices HOW CPRE GROUPS HAVE BEEN RESPONDING TO THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Safer spaces LONDON Amid reports of speeding drivers on the capital’s empty streets, CPRE London called for boroughs to create more safe spaces for walking and cycling. Their idea of temporary cycle lanes was adopted by the government and London’s mayor, but they want to see more use of planters that filter traffic while adding greenery.
Improving access to green space While the government’s lockdown rules established the principle that outdoor exercise is ‘essential’, CPRE believes that everyone should be able to spend this time in quality green spaces. To that end, we welcomed ministerial advice to councils to keep parks open, but called on the government to invest in the enhancement and accessibility of Green Belts.
Driving change HEREFORDSHIRE A new community minibus will serve four villages in south Herefordshire thanks to a donor inspired by CPRE’s research on ‘transport deserts’. The minibus is being used by the local community hub to make deliveries to people in need, and in future will offer volunteer-run bus services.
Capturing the countryside Many CPRE groups have been raising people’s spirits with creative outlets to celebrate the landscapes we’re missing and the scenery on our doorsteps. CPRE Devon’s latest outdoor art and writing competitions (closing on 30 June) have helped to keep local children engaged with nature, while CPRE Somerset launched a ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ photo competition to remind us how wonderful even the smallest details of the great outdoors can be. CPRE Bedfordshire is thrilled with the response to its call for garden snaps, and CPRE North Yorkshire has been keeping people entertained – and puzzled – with a fun photo quiz on the county’s landmarks. Meanwhile, our Essex, Kent and Lancashire groups’ calls for rural scenery have attracted many beautiful shots. We’re proud to feature images from across our network on our special cover! Below: Eaker Hill, Somerset, by Ben Croxford Right: Essex’s smallest ‘book store’, in Toot Hill
Tranquil skies SUSSEX With those living under flight paths experiencing a welcome respite from aircraft noise this spring, CPRE Sussex carried out a landmark survey to assess the impact of aviation noise pollution on people’s health and wellbeing.
Activities and action STAFFORDSHIRE Our campaigners have been gifting activity packs of stationery to local schoolchildren to help keep them entertained during lockdown, and hosted an online quiz about the county to mark Staffordshire Day on 1 May. The group is also working with the NFU to press for action on recent fly-tipping.
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Landscapes lost and found
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With many of us deeply missing our usual freedoms to access the countryside this spring, memories of happier times in treasured landscapes are a comfort. Some of CPRE’s greatest allies share the haunts they’re longing to revisit as lockdown eases, plus the green spaces The River Lea that have been sustaining them closer to home
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‘Experiencing openness has been invaluable’ ALI MIRAJ CPRE supporter and former trustee Ali Miraj is a social entrepreneur, financier and part-time DJ who lives in Bow, East London. I long to wake up to see sheep scattered on the hillside of the Otter Valley in East Devon and to enjoy a hearty breakfast in the rustic surroundings of my favourite hotel in Combe. But I live in ‘rural’ Bow in East London and have only properly explored the Olympic Park during lockdown. The walk from Fish Island across an undulating haven of greenery, flora and wildlife, above the winding River Lea below, to the spaceship-like grandeur of the Velodrome, is unique. Experiencing nature and openness juxtaposed against the skeletal structure of the stadium and Anish Kapoor’s Orbit has been invaluable for my wellbeing.
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Current and former CPRE presidents Emma Bridgewater and Bill Bryson are looking forward to revisiting Northumberland
‘I would be lost without the landscape around us’ BILL BRYSON Where does one of the world’s top travel writers look forward to revisiting? In fact, former CPRE president Bill Bryson is more than content to stay put. I would love to have the freedom to go to Devon and the Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland and many places more, but I am content that they will still be there when this lockdown nightmare ends. We are very lucky in where we are – in rural Hampshire, in the South Downs National Park – so we are not deprived of woods and fields and all the rest that is sublime in the English landscape. My wife and I walked a lot locally before the coronavirus, and we have diligently kept to our parish since lockdown began. I would be lost without the landscape around us, but I didn’t need a national crisis to realise that.
‘I’ve discovered Wiveton Downs’ EMMA BRIDGEWATER The pottery designer and CPRE president has been deepening her connection with local countryside. I’ve missed the dreamy water meadows in and around Oxford, and I sometimes feel waves of nostalgia for the moors above the North Tyne in Northumberland, but there is plenty of countryside to content me here in Norfolk. On my walks around Blakeney recently I’ve discovered Wiveton Downs – a part of the landscape that gives the lie to the notion that Norfolk is flat! All along the coast from here to Cromer and beyond, there are patches of hillocky, gorse-covered heathland. On the sunny days we’ve been having, these spiny bushes release a scent just like coconut, which makes clambering up to the highest point on Wiveton Downs, with its wonderful views north to the sea, a totally pleasurable outing.
Lundy Island off the coast of North Devon
Wiveton Downs
‘I feel glad – and lucky – to have a home so close to nature’
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DAME FIONA REYNOLDS Former CPRE and National Trust director Dame Fiona Reynolds is the author of The Fight for Beauty. You know where I’m missing? Lundy. We’d booked to be there a few days before Easter, and I’m really sad we couldn’t go. We’ve been going there most Easters since 2002, and over that time the puffins have returned, the invasive rhododendron has been obliterated and we’ve experienced the arrival of spring with particular intensity. The cliffs, the sea, the sun, the wind (sometimes even the snow!) bring a special joy. But lockdown Gloucestershire is beautiful too. I walk close to home every day, and as I watch the wildflowers bloom and the leaves unfurl I feel glad – and lucky – to have a home so close to nature.
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Inspiration, 1
LANDSCAPES INSPIRATION
PEOPLE AND PLACES COMMUNITIES VERSION
Local heroes
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Rural England has long shown resilience and adaptability in the face of crisis, from the foot-andmouth epidemic to flooding – and now coronavirus. Caz Graham reports on how communities are coming together to battle the illness
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It’s a story you hear time and time again from almost every corner of rural England since the government asked elderly and vulnerable people to stay at home back in mid-March; most communities have galvanised to ensure no one is left in need.
New rural networks
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In many places, whole village networks – often social media based – have been formed to support the vulnerable. In Foxton, Leicestershire (famous for its locks on the Grand Union Canal) it took just 24 hours after lockdown to get leaflets with the names and numbers of volunteer street wardens through every door in the village. The parish council and Neighbourhood Watch set up a Facebook group to share news and allow families who don’t live locally to ask about elderly parents who are self-isolating and make sure they’re coping. ‘The positivity has been amazing,’ says Rob McNeill from the parish council. ‘We’ve got a
Communities have galvanised to ensure no one is left in need
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hen we got to 90 new volunteers, I thought we must have reached the limit!’ Simon Braithwaite sounds surprised, but not hugely so, at the sheer number of people who picked up the phone this spring, without even being asked, to volunteer their services to the Northern Fells Group, a community charity he coordinates in Caldbeck, north Cumbria. ‘That’s just the kind of place this is,’ he says. At the last count, Simon had 149 newbies to add to his regular 35 volunteers at the group, which supports vulnerable people who live in a sparsely populated 200 square miles of fell, moor and farmland to the north of the Lake District A Northern Fells Group volunteer National Park. dog-walker There’s an ageing population in the villages, hamlets and solitary houses dotted across its fell-sides and valleys. It’s beautiful but remote; a lonely, difficult place to be stuck in lockdown if you can’t leave the house. Now, though, a small army of volunteers is making a real difference: collecting prescriptions, shopping, dog-walking, driving people to hospital and even just being there for a friendly chat.
From the village of Caldbeck, Cumbria, volunteers are coming together to support vulnerable locals
Caz Graham is a reporter and presenter for BBC Radio 4, with an interest in the outdoors, farming and Cumbria.
sort of ecosystem of volunteers and villagers connected.’ Pubs are often at the heart of village life, and that’s truer than ever for some during the coronavirus crisis – even if they are not able to open their doors. Marie Smith, the landlady at the Sweffling White Horse near Aldeburgh in Suffolk, felt devastated when lockdown began, but swung into action to reinvent the pub website as a local information hub, with pointers on everything from local egg suppliers to how to get kids playing ‘phone hide-and-seek’ with distant grandparents. Marie thought some of her older regulars who are selfisolating could do with cheering up. With the pub shut, she has been
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People and Places, 1
Marie Smith dresses up
offering off-licence sales of local ales. She just happened to own a beerbottle costume, and thought it might raise a smile or two if she wore it to deliver the beer by bike. Since then, there’s been no stopping her: she has made deliveries dressed as a pirate (with a foot-high metal parrot strapped to her handlebars), a pixie, Robin Hood and many more. If you spot the devil on a bicycle, hurtling down a Suffolk back road, you’ll know who it is.
Growing need Pubs, hotels and tourist attractions are big employers in rural areas, and because most simply shut down overnight, many people lost their income; add to that the many small businesses that can’t operate because of the lockdown, and suddenly rural poverty is becoming a reality for people who never expected it. The pretty village of Goudhurst in the Weald of Kent, with its 14th-century
The village of Goudhurst, Kent, whose food bank (top right) is busier than ever
church tower and duck pond, doesn’t scream rural deprivation at you. But Goudhurst’s Community Kitchen food bank has seen a sharp rise in the number of people using its services. Ali Williams, a churchwarden at St Mary’s Church, runs the food bank, and reports that it has expanded fivefold, and now has 25 ongoing clients on its books: ‘It used to be literally tins in a cupboard in the choir vestry, but now we’ve grown so much we’ve taken over the children’s chapel. It’s really snowballed,’ she says. Luckily, donations are pouring in, and there are now 10 volunteers instead of two, collecting food and packing and delivering boxes. One positive note in the otherwise grim news of coronavirus is the speed and extent to which many rural communities have rallied; new friendships made, new networks established and even stronger foundations laid for future community support.
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View From Here, 1
VIEW FROM HERE LUCY JONES VERSION REPRO OP SUBS
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feel-good brainwaves. No wonder we are often drawn to e all know that spending time in our beautiful these hypnotic shapes. I start to notice more and more countryside can be restorative, but what does fractals in the simple weeds on my urban street and feel that actually mean, and how does it work? instantly soothed. When I started researching the science behind the relationship between spending time in the natural world and our mental health, Sights and sounds I imagined there might be one In early May, life at the canal is ‘silver bullet’ piece of evidence that crescendoing. Fat queen explained the mechanism. Instead, bumblebees drone around the I discovered that connecting with ground ivy and lungwort. The the living world affects us from ducklings peep. A thrush lets our heads to our toes, in myriad rip at the top of an oak tree. ways, from the scent of the These natural sounds are earth after rain and its calming worth pausing to truly listen Connecting with the outdoors effect on the brain to how our to. Yes, they are beautiful, on our doorstep has been a nervous systems are balanced and, yes, they might stir comfort for many this spring – memories, but there is also through walking through woods. Lucy Jones explains robust evidence that listening its positive effect to natural sounds can decrease Spring in lockdown stress and enhance mood. In one of the most beautiful springs in on her I am lucky to have a three-year-old as my living memory, I have been awed by my companion naturalist. By dint of her height, the dawn chorus, the purple haze of bluebells, she often spots things I wouldn’t see, such as beetles, by that acid fresh green of new leaves. The science caterpillars and butterfly eggs. The other day she paused of awe has been studied seriously by scientists in to take in a dandelion, a flower I often overlook. She called California over the past decade. Experiencing awe in me over and I knelt down to her level. The yellow petals nature isn’t just ‘nice’; it can reduce biomarkers associated were crawling with an abundance of syrup-coloured with unwelcome inflammation, and even make us more beetles. ‘A family’, as she put it. ethical and generous. As we walk daily now, we are Walking by an abandoned canal both slurping up as much of just outside Basingstoke, where I nature as we can find. The other live, I pause to really look at cow Lucy Jones is an acclaimed day – joy! – we heard a cuckoo for parsley, instead of just walking past journalist and the first time. Perhaps the more the puffs of snow. I see that the author, based we all find we rely on the rest of flowers are fractal in shape, meaning in Hampshire. Her new book nature during this pandemic, and that the pattern of the five-petal Losing Eden: receive joy, delight and comfort flower is repeated in increasing size. Why Our Minds from connecting with it, the more Research suggests that looking at Need the Wild (Allen Lane, £20) we might feel galvanised to care fractal shapes – which are found all is out now. for it afterwards. over the place in nature – produces
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