Have you had your summer holiday yet? Did you stay local or did you fly away somewhere exotic?
How do you fancy this three thousand mile trip:First stop off in France to soak up the culture then on to Mont Blanc and the Swiss alps for a few weeks rest and recuperation in the beautiful mountain scenery. It can be cool in the mountains, even in the summer so head south into Italy, perhaps Tuscany or further south again to Sicily. If that isn’t warm enough, take a short hop over the Mediterranean Sea to Libya then across the Sahara to Lake Chad.
It’s not an itinerary that you’ll find in many travel brochures but it is quite popular in certain circles. Mungo, a bird from near Loch Katrine made that very trip and met up with Chance who travelled by a different route from Loch Katrine, via Belgium and Austria, and Chris from the Norfolk Broads. They are all Cuckoo’s that have been tagged by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in order to track their annual migrations to Africa. Chris is a veteran who was tagged last year so this is his second recorded journey. His route to Lake Chad this year is similar to the route last year but one of the other tagged birds from Norfolk, Lyster, has travelled by quite different routes last year and this year.
They’re trip isn’t over yet. It is likely that they will continue south, perhaps to the Congo basin before returning to the UK.
Read more »
Sometimes nothing beats a cool refreshing glass of the milk.
But the White Stuff is not as innocent as it looks. In fact, its cool clean exterior masks a multitude of sins.
Milk has hit the headlines recently in a battle between farmers and the processors which are imposing cuts to the price paid to farmers for milk. This is leading to farm gate prices which are less than the cost of producing the milk. This is not a new fight. For several years the large powerful dairies, such as Robert Wiseman (now owned by Müller), have put downward pressure on the farm gate price of milk. This in turn has driven “efficiency” measures in the farming sector, i.e. industrialisation of the process. About ten years ago I spoke with a farmer planning to build a huge shed so that his cattle could be kept indoors all year round. This was, he said, due to pressure to cut costs. It was necessary of his farm was to remain sustainable. The surrounding pasture that the cattle had grazed for generations would be used to produce their feed which would be supplemented with commercial cattle fodder. I’m sure he wasn’t alone in this change but to me it seemed crazy – taking the cattle away from the grass so that someone can cut the grass and feed it to the cattle and at the other end, the muck would be cleared from the shed and, presumably spread on the field as fertiliser.
What are the issues with milk?
Read more »
