‘News’ Archive

Gaining the Paddlesport Leader Award: my personal journey.

This year I have felt really empowered in a way I haven’t for quite a while. The reason? Because I have at last gained a formal qualification to lead others paddling. Not a top end elite qualification but a qualification none the less, and something I have wanted for about 40 years, and much longer […]

Latest News….we can now offer canoe trips!

Adrian has been paddling the Tidal River Dart fo at least 40 years, and for many years he was a steersman for Canoe Adventures on their huge 12 man canoes. Now he can offer canoe trips out of Stoke Gabriel on the Dart. Trips are limited to a maximum of 2 canoes (three clients plus […]

The Dartmoor Way

Recently I walked the Dartmoor Way as my route for the Long Distance Walkers Association Virtual 100 mile event. The Dartmoor Way is actually 108 miles long (and has 16,500 ft of ascent apparently), so I started at Bovey Tracey and walked anti-clockwise to just beyond Ashburton. Some stretches were already known to me, but […]

Communicating the rewilding message

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how we get the rewilding message across to the people who can act, the farmers, landowners and land managers who have the power to bring about change. Firstly lets look at where these people are likely to see Rewilding and other environmental messages currently; they may read or […]

The green shoots of regeneration.

During this past winter, with it’s Covid lockdown, and unusual weather, it would be easy to be despondent about rewilding and the regeneration of nature. Endless reports of dead raptors and poor soil quality, Amazon tree felling and peat burning. At times this winter I certainly felt the weight of impending environmental catastrophe upon me, […]

Preserving forests for the long term.

I was recently reading “The secret life of trees” by Peter Wohlleben, an excellent read, which I would recommend to anyone interested in developing or maintaining woodland. However as the book went on I started to get a sinking feeling, a feeling of almost hopelessness. The problem is not about identifying sites and planting trees, […]

Taking a look at local land use.

Recently I blogged about Rewilding and the amount of pasture used for horse grazing. Having focused my mind I decided to take things a stage further, so I printed off a OS1:25000 scale, which I had zoomed in on and selected to cover approximately 12 square Kilometres in an area close to my home.

Beavering away at Phytoremediation?

It is a strange  that, in my experience, many villagers, in most parts of the country, whilst liking to see a stream pass through their village, would struggle, to describe where that stream rises, which other villages it passes through and where it meets the sea, let alone what pollution risks there might be to […]

Horses in the Rewilding landscape

A case of horses for courses?

Choosing your outdoor gear……..think in terms of systems.

It never ceases to amaze me how quick we are nowadays to ask the public at large for advice on purchases. On every outdoor forum you will see “l need some new boots….looking for recommendations”. Really? Well apart from the obvious fact that everyones feet are different, the uses to which they will be put […]