The GWCT is headquartered just outside the charming Georgian town of Fordingbridge, untouched by Starbucks or Costa. Once this backwater might have been appropriate for the GWCT but today the…
Features
The GWCT Partridge Count Scheme
My father remembers wild grey partridges regularly bursting from cover and spooking his horse as he hacked home from days with the Hampshire hunt in the early 1960s. I’m sure…
Tea and its origins
The English are not the world’s greatest tea drinkers. This came as something of a surprise to me, having grown up in a house where tea was mainlined from morning…
Sashes (and how to correctly wear them)
When it comes to dressing for a special occasion, few things are more princely, impressive – or mystifying — than sashes. Whether worn at a Royal (or Disney) wedding, a…
The folly of follies
What is a folly? At times it seems as though there are as many definitions as there are follies themselves. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as: ‘A costly ornamental…
The garron – the workhorse of the Highlands
The garron pony is as much a symbol of Scotland’s sporting heritage as it is a modern working animal, doughtily getting to places that the Argo can’t reach, and a…
Blackcock leks – a spectacular spectacle
My visit to the northern Pennines begins with a magical mystery tour of a grouse moor in Upper Teesdale that is home to a staggering variety of birdlife including the…
Why moorland is a matter for us all
Beneath a cloudless azure sky on the Lancashire moorland, not far from an abandoned stone barn, a diurnal short-eared or ‘bog’ owl is clapping its wings 50 feet above the…
A Highland Odyssey
Scotland, 1773. In the sparsely roaded northern ‘Highlands’ the countryside is wild and romantic but devoid of many of the luxuries of life. Extensive felling of the native Scots pine…
Field Interview: Feargal Sharkey
A punk rocker is nothing without his anger, and Feargal Sharkey, former lead singer of The Undertones, is furious. Sitting beside the sparkling River Lea at Amwell Magna Fishery, with…