CLIMATE CHANGE, TRANSPORT AND MODERN LIFE

Last Sunday afternoon, I took a cycle and walk around Kempsey Common, several miles south Worcester, with my camera: please see pictures in my photo-post of yesterday. Notwithstanding its "deep rural" appearance, this area is actually bisected by the M5 motorway, which is a mere stone's throw from the beautiful thatched cottage shown in the second photograph.

My first visit to Kempsey Common was in 2002, when I met an elderly man pushing his bicycle, on which he had travelled from Worcester for recreation. He also enjoyed allotment gardening. However, whilst there is some indication that during the past nine years the latter activity has grown in popularity and that demand for allotments exceeds supply, I do not detect much increase in cycling to nearby beauty spots amongst Worcester folk. Indeed I saw very few people at all on Sunday afternoon, although there seemed to be a lot of traffic on the motorway.

Also noteworthy was the heat of the day and the dryness of the ground, almost as if Winter had passed rapidly into Summer. Nevertheless, observable climate change and the underlying need to conserve energy for the environment and domestic economy do not appear to be reducing people's desire for motorised travel mobility.

One reason for this, I would suggest, is the modern psyche's need for distraction of the kind provided by the car journey together with England's main weekend leisure activity: shopping. Self-directed unstructured activity in natural surroundings is, increasingly, not just beyond the capacity of the young to enjoy, but also many of their elders, which is a great shame.

Kempsey Common and environs, near Worcester

From the Worcester Standard newspaper 1 April 2011 Archbishop dedicates eco-friendly church

The Archbishop of Canterbury paid a visit to the County to dedicate a new eco-friendly church at Mucknell Abbey. Dr Rowan Williams dedicated the church, which has been built from locally-sourced sustainable materials, on Friday (25 March) at the Abbey near Stoulton....

Abbot Stuart said: " We have a lovely new building. Now we are setting about developing the 40 acres of land in a way which will model that loving care for the world. Already we have planted an orchard and several thousand trees as part of the restoration of Feckenham Forest*, and we have begun work on our own large kitchen garden".

*Also known as the Forest of Worcester - please see my subsequent post @ http://woodwose.wordpress.com/