Category: Geography & Environment

The Isle of Wight (IoW) is a diamond-shaped island two miles off England’s south coast and is much favoured by holidaymakers from the mainland. Its population is around 142,000 but it happily accommodates 15 times that number each year in tourists, with the trend veering towards short breaks of 4 or 5 days. Queen Victoria (1819-1901) so loved visiting the IoW that Prince Albert (1819-61) had Osborne House built in East Cowes as their private retreat and that is where she died.

The IoW’s position forms a strait atop the English Channel called The Solent, thereby shielding the harbours of Portsmouth, Southampton and Lyminton, these being the departure/return points for 200 IoW ferries daily. There are remains of a WW2 radar station, historic forts and castles, as well as many shipwrecks in its waters. All but one of the island’s towns are seaward, with Ryde being the largest.

Farming accounts for 80% of the interior, some of which lies in the IoW’s Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The island’s 63-mile east-west chalk ridge is most conspicuous at The Needles on the westernmost tip. There was once a 120ft. tall chalk stack in the gap, but this eventually collapsed. Sand of 21 different colours can be found in the bay.

(Top image: Alwyn Ladell at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Two types of oak tree are native to the UK ~ the English and the sessile. Others have been introduced but it is the English oak, in particular, which dominates our tree population overall and has been here since the end of the last glacial period. These trees can live as long as 1,000 years, although there is one twice that age at Glastonbury, called Magog, still hanging onto life.

Other illustrious oaks include the King’s Oak at Rugby School, planted in 1909 by King Edward VII (1841-1910) and The Royal Oak in Shropshire, in which King Charles II (1630-85) hid before his escape to France in 1651. Therefrom hundreds of pubs take their name.

The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest is the UK’s largest. It is 800-1,100 years old and its canopy spreads to over 90ft. across. To hug it would need 4 men and 2 women with outstretched fingertips touching.

One reason there are so many oaks in Britain is that the 17th and 18th century Navy needed the timber for its formidable ships. HMS Victory, for instance, was constructed from 100 acres of oak plantation. The oak’s strength was key to creating England’s “wooden walls”, not only of its ships but in Westminster’s oak-panelled chambers of power.

(Top image of a protected ancient oak in Lincolnshire: Bob Harvey at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

There are two schools of thought about our estimated 41,400,000 moles and their underground activities. One is that they are a nuisance for disturbing the roots of crops and the smooth vista of golf courses, sports pitches and manicured lawns. The other is that they aerate the soil, provide drainage channels and eat the grubs that would otherwise attack crops and horticultural specimens.

Our one species of mole, a fossorial mammal, is present in England, Wales, mainland Scotland and a few of the small islands. It lives 3-4 years. It measures around 6″ long and is a master digger, making a tunnel network over a large territory which it patrols alone (apart from when mating), scurrying to pick up worms and insects that fall in and put them in its food store. Its dark, velvety fur can lie both ways to aid reverse speed.

It was thought that moles have two thumbs on each of  their broad front paws, but recent research has found that the ‘extra’ one is actually an elongated growth from their wristbone and has no joints. However, it does have a special type of haemoglobin to cope with low oxygen and high carbon dioxide levels in its underground home.

(Image: Beeki at pixabay.com)

The city of Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital, has endured its fair share of bombings, both during WW2 and throughout ‘The Troubles’ (1968-98), which accounted for around 45,000 detonations. It has also seen the growth and decline of its manufacturing industries and had its Irish counterpart, Dublin, overtake it massively in size in recent decades.

Belfast became established thanks to its import/export trades in the period of the ‘Ulster planters‘ in the early 1600s. Its industries included linen-making, introduced by the Huguenots, and at one time Belfast was nicknamed ‘Linenopolis’. It was also known for whiskey distilling and heavy engineering.

Despite its ups and downs, Belfast has a knack for regenerating itself and making the best of its resources. In the 18th century this included cutting new channels bypassing the loops of the River Lagan in order to improve access to the docks. Tourists today flock to Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, as of course the shipyards are famous for launching the RMS threesome named Olympic, Britannic and Titanic. The Harland & Wolff shipbuilding company turned out numerous liners and tankers and their huge yellow cranes, ‘Samson’ (348ft. high) and ‘Goliath’ (315ft.) remain today as iconic landmarks.

(Image showing Samson & Goliath: Rossographer at geograph.ie / CC BY-SA 2.0)

‘Port of Departure (or Arrival):Liverpool‘ appears in many a search for records of family ancestors, since Liverpool’s west-coast location made it so convenient for those migrating by ship to or from Ireland and North America. Nestling just above the North Wales coastline, this Lancashire city has grown from a population of 5,000 in 1700 to almost 500,000 today.

It is famously the home of The Beatles and two Premier League football clubs, but its history lies in trade links with, primarily, the U.S.A. and the West Indies. King John (1166-1216) founded the port of Liverpool in 1207 to serve the estates he held as Lord of Ireland. The tiny fishing village subsequently received a gradual influx of craftsmen and merchants.

By the mid-1800s Liverpool had the second busiest docks after London. Shipbuilding, iron foundries, glass, soap, sugar and rope manufacturing made some very wealthy, others poor, with living conditions to match. WW2 bombing destroyed much of the slum areas and re-building saw the expansion of adjacent towns into what is now called Merseyside after the River Mersey at Liverpool’s edge. ‘Scousers’, or Liverpudlians, are known for their brand of dry humour cultivated from the mix of nationalities that arrived there in the shipping heyday.

(Top image: PaulDaley1977 at pixabay.com)

Designated a National Park in 1952, the North York Moors comprise 355,000 acres of rural land with an Australia-shaped outline in the north-east of England. Middlesbrough lies to the north, Scarborough to the south-east, Thirsk out west and Pickering to the south. Its eastern side skirts around the seaside town and fishing port of Whitby, but otherwise takes in a 26-mile stretch of sandy beaches and fossil-rich cliffs facing the North Sea.

The central plateau rises up from its hilly edges, the cause of some difficulty for transport in past centuries and even today, with road-signs warning of steep climbs and ‘dangerous’ descents. Nevertheless, the area attracts many tourists to its extensive heather moorland, woods and green meadows, with sheep, deer, birds and otters to be spotted near the many lakes, pools and streams. The highest point is Urra Moor at 1,490ft..

The North York Moors Historical Railway Trust has operated a steam railway service from Pickering to Whitby since 1972. Assisted by hundreds of volunteers, it aims to preserve a cherished piece of history by offering weddings, dining, photography and filming opportunities. Television series such as ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘Downton Abbey’, and the ‘Harry Potter’ films have used their stations as authentic backdrops.

(Image: Russel Wills at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Northumbrian Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-83) entered landscape gardening with an enthusiasm and vision that propelled him to the top of his profession. Although he dismissed the formal designs which sought to mould plants into rigid shapes and patterns, he was not averse to moving tons of soil to fulfil his own idea of perfection. On surveying a new project he would exclaim that it had “capabilities”, hence his nickname, portending a remodelling on a grand scale.

Brown’s career began in 1741 at Stowe House in Buckinghamshire, where he became Head Gardener, then Clerk of Works. Going freelance in 1751, he spent the rest of his life designing the grounds of aristocratic estates all over the country ~ 170 of them all told, of which 18 are now maintained by the National Trust, including Stowe itself.

Characteristically, Brown would install a lake with curving, grassy banks and an ornate bridge. He would plant trees with naturally architectural shapes and group them carefully in small clumps or woods. He would build neo-classical temples and follies, and he devised the ‘ha-ha’ wall, hidden from sight of the house, but keeping livestock in the distant parkland. A long, sweeping driveway would be engineered to give approaching visitors an impressive view.

(Top image [cropped]: Gresham College at Flickr.com / Public domain)

Dr David Bellamy, OBE (1933-2019) grew up in London but moved to Durham in 1960, where he lectured in the University’s Botany Department until 1980. He discovered his vocation on a field trip to Scotland after abandoning his dream of becoming a ballet dancer! The best teachers convey their enthusiasm for the subject and he certainly fell into that category and inspired not just his undergraduates but his large television audience too.

In 1967, the supertanker SS Torrey Canyon was grounded near the Scilly Isles and around 30 million gallons of oil were spilled. Bellamy had recently surveyed the Cornish coast so was interviewed by TV news, thus beginning his TV and radio career. His ebullient personality endeared him to the public and he went on to make documentaries and schools programmes, as well as many other appearances in which he waxed lyrical over the plantlife around us, including medicinal herbs.

He upset the globalists by calling their ‘climate change’ story “poppycock” in 2004, pointing out that the climate has always changed, sometimes drastically, without any assistance from humanity. He travelled the planet and was not averse to campaigning for actual environmental issues. The David Bellamy Conservation Award Scheme encourages well-managed holiday parks with wildlife areas.

(Top image: Ray Bird at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Any UK, Isle of Man or Channel Island address can be found in the Royal Mail database simply by using its postcode and house number/name. Such is the usefulness of postcodes that since 1996 it has not even been necessary to include the county in an address, though many still do. Postcodes were introduced nationwide from 1971 to 1974 and it seems remarkable today that we ever managed without them.

London was the first city to be divided into areas denoted by letters. Sir Roland Hill (1795-1879) devised a system in 1856 which used the points of the compass; hence, EC and WC for the City of London, and N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW for the rest, although NE (now Newcastle) and S (now Sheffield) were removed shortly afterwards. This was a boon to mail sorting offices and in 1917 Albert Illingworth (1865-1942) added numbers too.

Several other cities tried their own postcode schemes and with the advent of mechanised letter sorting in the 1960s it was decided to roll one out to the whole country. The most common format is AB12 3YZ, where AB is one of the 124 postal areas, the numbers narrow it down further and YZ is the precise neighbourhood.

(Image of the Tonbridge postcode area [cropped]: Richardguk at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)