An evening in celebration of the @righttoroam.bsky.social in Newcastle! Music and talk at Cobalt Studios with Johnny Campbell, Lucy and Hazel, and @amyjanebeer.bsky.social Who's in? www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebratin...

The moment has come again for me to leave socials for a while. Still a few events here and there and I’ll post the odd story when there’s work to share but otherwise I’m off here now to write, write, write for a few months, maybe more. Be well, see you in time x #OldNows

Freedom to roam? What's next? @andrewbibby-writer.bsky.social looks back - and ahead - here gritstonecoop.co.uk/gritblog/cam... Come and join us to hear more, Hebden Bridge Nov 29 @ramblers.org.uk @amyjanebeer.bsky.social

Our AGM on Saturday with an inspiring panel of speakers sharing their thoughts about how we could increase the reach and #inclusiveness of our charity's #campaigning work in the #YorkshireDalesNationalPark Thank you to our President @amyjanebeer.bsky.social, Derek Twine and #MollySimmons

Warm your cockles on this by @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social . A glimpse of something so reasonable and so possible, because this is how people really are when they give each other a chance: mutual respect and common interest for and with each other & the land. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A win that speaks volumes. Huge congratulations to the dear, brilliant and indefatigable Shrub, an absolute warrior for nature.

Swimmers and river lovers of Yorkshire! Rave On for the Avon is coming to York THIS THURSDAY 🏊🏻‍♀️💦💙 Please share… www.picturehouses.com/movie-detail... @righttoroam.bsky.social @yorkswildlife.bsky.social

This prize draw is generously supported by some of the cream of British nature writing. A fiver to enter might win you books, art and other goodies. That’s the ‘maybe’… the ‘definitely’ is that it will support our work to connect everyone in England and Wales with their nearby nature.

We had a brilliant time @deershed.bsky.social in the Buckendz tent! Huge thanks to all who joined us for inspiring author events - including the amazing @righttoroam.bsky.social team with @amyjanebeer.bsky.social - Wainwright Prize winner and wild writing wonder 🌿📚✨ #IndieBookshop #RightToRoam

Feeling a bit real now … lovely to have quotes like these from early readers … thank you @amyjanebeer.bsky.social #booksky

Brilliant investigation into the ways the water companies are outwitting government - bring water into public ownership now👇

Among yesterday's arrestees is Deborah Hinton, an 81-year old retired magistrate with an OBE. That's Yvette Cooper's idea of a terrorist. Language has been turned on its head. The law has been turned on its head. Murdering children is righteous. Trying to stop it is terrorism.

Delighted to have a part in bringing the brilliant #RaveOnForTheAvon to York City Screen & to be part of Q&A panel with director Charlotte Sawyer @yorkswildlife.bsky.social CEO @rachaelbice.bsky.social and swim guide Sarah Banks. Showing 4 Sept, book now! www.picturehouses.com/movie-detail...

Your annual reminder to reconsider ‘weeds’. The teasel, knapweed, ragwort, yarrow, vipers bugloss, wild marjoram burdock and valerian in my garden are all self-introduced and self-seeded and they are indisputably what make it hum.

Reminder that, 10 years ago, Sheffield Council signed a PFI contract which led to the felling of thousands of mature street trees - mainly to save the contractor a few quid. It then took out injunctions against local residents protesting the felling and used arcane anti-union laws to lock them up.

Ummm. Imagine such sentences for raptor persecution on a shooting estate, or for river pollution, habitat destruction or felling enacted by a farmer, large landowner, private company, council contractor or developer? What could POSSIBLY be the diffence I wonder? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Dear Derwent. Getting in here most days at the moment and it’s a balm. The heat, the horror, the hype, the helterskelter hassle of 2025 recede for just a few precious, slow minutes when it’s just me and the reflections, the martins and the water lilies.

Missed this yesterday, sharing so you don’t. The grotesque waste and ecological carnage of intensive pheasant stocking brilliantly described by @nicolawriting.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/... Like wrecked prizes, the body parts of pheasants litter the landscape | The Guardian

Absolutely superb from @georgemonbiot.bsky.social on the real threat to rural life (spoiler, it *really* isn’t Right to Roam). Sharing this with heartfelt sympathy for the residents Littlebredy. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Custodians of the land, right?

My Country Diary today: the absurd glamour of swallowtails. Thanks to @patrickbarkham.bsky.social for the tip, NWT for superb site management & Dee Maddams for the gorgeous photos www.theguardian.com/environment/...

And following @amyjanebeer.bsky.social's column in our June issue, we spoke to Roger Meade about the ongoing fight for peatland protection at Danes Moss, Macclesfield. Read our conversation here: www.britishwildlife.com/the-conserva...

Excited to say I’ve written and recorded three episodes of Tweet of the Day for Radio 4. The first to air will be reed warbler, that small but mighty holder of space, this coming Sunday. Listen live if you’re an early bird or come back later for a catch up. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Just finished The Possibility of Tenderness by @jallenpaisant.bsky.social and now cannot wait to interview him at @deershed.bsky.social next month. Enriching, enlightening, enraging, beauty on every page, absolutely magnificent. 🌺

I reviewed @drmjwarren.bsky.social's new book The Cuckoo's Lea for @theguardian.com. Safe to say, if there was a Desert Island Books and I was on it, this would be on my list. Utterly captivating. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Highly, highly recommend this for all lovers of nature, history, place, words… free and online!

This BNG bullshit is where the Planning & Infrastructure Bill pt3 will take us. Irreplaceable habitats lost, access to green spaces lost, while corners of faraway fields get rammed with plastic-wrapped money trees of which 1% survive, while developers & offset schemes cash in. Sickening.

Irreplaceable habitats are on the line. This is the reality if an unamended Part 3 of the Bill passes. It must not.

Reading this (out in Sept) leaves me with two convictions: 1) god we need more women in farming. 2) there is no better writer of English rural life than @nicolawriting.bsky.social. Her sensitivity, integrity, and artistry are quite simply unmatched. #GhostsOfTheFarm

This time it’s a faceless corporation but the pattern is the same. They’ll keep taking precious places from you until we get a right to roam. Please follow @righttoroam.bsky.social & help us fight another gross act of exclusion. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

To continue the watery theme, it was a real treat to have @amyjanebeer.bsky.social visit @anthropocenebio.bsky.social last week to share her wisdom 🔮 on writing well and on engaging with audiences beyond the specialist. Unsurprisingly this was very well received by our research group!

Just a couple of weeks until you can all immerse in this… an incredible work of scholarship but so beautifully written you’ll want to savour every page.

Labour ‘should lead a wild camping revival’ Excellent piece in the Times today with CEO of Dartmoor National Park calling on the government to change the law so wild camping can take place in other national parks - a call echoed by the unstoppable @campaignerkate.bsky.social of OSS:

Today we hear the decision of the Supreme Court on the long spiteful crusade waged by Alexander Darwall to rob the rest us of a simple, cherished right. I can’t be online much today, but I woke up here, knowing that where I sleep is where I really live. Win or lose, we need a Right to Roam Act.

Fabulous storytelling by @wildcard.land - never underestimate the power of acorns and picnics.

Compelling evidence that new Welsh Country Diarists hatch like dragons… in the wake of fire. Croeso mawr @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Eye-opening graph. The biggest wildfire incidents in the UK don't occur when it's hottest, in high summer: they take place in April - *when landowners set fire to their grouse moors & lose control of burns.* Time to ban moorland burning. Source: www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/sites/defaul...

If you’re sick of food and land being used as high value political bargaining chips you might love this article by @linesmartin.bsky.social as much as I do. www.farmersguardian.com/blog/4413107...

So many lovely comments here and on Instagram. I am collating them to pass on to Bea. Thank you all xxx

This is hard to do, because I know how hard it will hit. At the request of his wonderful wife Bea, I write this thread to let followers & admirers of Jamie Normington @movingslowly.bsky.social (formerly @TLWforCumbria on Twitter) who may not have heard the news know that he died last week.

Today some 400 merry roamers & dippers took to a part of the High Peak we’re barred from accessing for entirely spurious reasons… the water. #righttoroam #righttoswim #kindertrespass @righttoroam.bsky.social

British Broadcasting Corporatn stops presenter doing podcast about heat pumps over fears of political bias “As an impartial broadcaster, BBC shouldn’t be pandering to attempts by the right to turn the world’s most efficient home heating into a culture war issue” www.theguardian.com/media/2025/a...?

God I love a slow worm. Here's my Country Diary about the first sleepy beauty to appear on my patch this year. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘We’re severed from the land that has always sustained us, from our heritage, and from what natural life is left in this country.’ Superb new homegrown 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 essay by @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social on @caughtbytheriver.bsky.social www.caughtbytheriver.net/2025/04/tall...

Everyone is welcome to buy my books, or borrow from a friend a library. They are brain food & soul food. They are not machine food. I do not consent to #Meta or anyone using them to train AI. If you value books, please sign to protect authors rights. #dothewritething chng.it/ydYbRcdn7Y

Of all places to receive a text asking if I can be on Radio 4 first thing in the morning, this is the least convenient. This is home until tomorrow afternoon’s low tide lets me out. Just me and the choughs. Bliss.

Look at the state of these attacks on Natural England from Lady Victoria Vyvyan, president of the CLA - whose members own a third of the land of England & Wales In recent years, the CLA has become increasingly unhinged in its anti-green rhetoric 1/ www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03...

And in same pile of post, this ebay purchase… I ordered the book, but the seller added the Lion Man bag as a gift and I’m made up!

Symptomatic of full-blown Ice Age obsession I ordered these seeds. Dryas octopetala, signature of the last freezing episode of the last glacial. Reckon I should stick them in the freezer for a day or two before sowing… other advice also welcome! Next year maybe I’ll adopt a cave bear. #OldNow