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Pedestrians Come First

27/8/2022

At 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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A 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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Silver 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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From 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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Female 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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Pedestrians Come First

To Brigsteer Rise, pedestrians beware

Brigsteer Wood: how butterflies fare in extreme heat

Reprise of Watendlath

Brigsteer Wood with butterflies in early August

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