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Pedestrians Come First

27/8/2022

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PictureAt the junction of Underwood and Brigsteer Road 26.8.2022
Pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users. Pedestrians come first. This message must be heard. The planning process  needs to  be  open and transparent.
At development-brief consultations in March 2014, residents studied plans for housing developments at what is now called Brigsteer Rise. Knowing the volume of traffic on the Brigsteer Road would be far greater  we focused on pedestrian safety along the route, the direct and traditional way residents and tourists use when heading for Scout Scar and the Lake District National Park. 


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To Brigsteer Rise, pedestrians beware

16/8/2022

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PictureA country road? Site entrance to Brigsteer Rise
When I was a child I had a recurrent nightmare.  I walked alone on a country road. A heavy wagon pursued  me, slowly gaining on me, terrifying. 
Today it happened, for real.  I walked alone down Brigsteer Road, on the right, facing oncoming traffic.  And I saw this wide load coming toward me,  looming across a narrow country road. How do I escape danger? 
​


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Brigsteer Wood: how butterflies  fare in extreme heat

11/8/2022

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PictureSilver Washed Fritillary
Soft mud along the water-mint and oregano way. Spiders' webs in grass still drenched in dew as sunlight pours down through the trees into woodland glades, pools of light amidst  shadows. A morning  sultry and still. not a cloud in the sky.  Green fruit on brambles.  The last few dewberry flowers  at our feet- dewberries, born of dew. A week ago umbellifers were alive with insects, now flowers are gone to seed.  ​Floating in the air,  a  spider sunlit gold with  strands of  silk strung between trees. A spider poised in an intricate web glimpsed and lost again as  sunlight plays upon it.


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Reprise of Watendlath

9/8/2022

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PictureFrom Brund Fell looking down into Borrowdale
​A millennium ago, my parents and I walked to Watendlath from our farmhouse at Seatoller.  A black and white photograph shows my father in a tweed jacket and me with his shepherd's crook walking stick.  I was twelve and, in today’s hot sun, I wished I had the resilience of my girlhood-self to slog up from Rosthwaite to Brund Fell and Joppelty How through high-summer bracken.  One summer there was a drought and our farmhouse garden looked scorched. Not the extreme heat of summer 2022 and we were innocent of the knowledge of Climate Change.  And when you're twelve it's fine. 


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Brigsteer Wood with butterflies in early August

1/8/2022

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PictureFemale holly blue

​Our hopes are  high.  The date is right and a warm and humid morning with blue sky and bright cloud should favour butterflies.   Days of unsettled weather and intermittent showers see flowers tall and fresh.  Here is a window of opportunity, with rain to return later in the day. There is rain all night and the next morning is wet and windy so  butterflies will be unable to fly and feed.   For a few fine hours they dance on the fringe of  sunlit woodland glades,  flickering against shadows.  And seeking nectar from drifts of hemp agrimony and knapweed. 


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    Jan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books)

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