1
@RobGMacfarlane
20 years ago OTD, Scotland's Land Reform Act was given Royal Assent.
It's an inspiring piece of legalisation, which transformed access to land in Scotland & aligned it w/ Allemansrätten (Every Person's Right) of Scandinavia.
Details here: outdooraccess-scotland.scot
Now for England.
2
@RobGMacfarlane
If you’re under a clear sky in the UK right now, step outside & look westwards — Jupiter & Venus are glimmering in near-perfect alignment with the centre-point of the outer curve of a crescent moon.
Bright & wondrous & rare.
3
@RobGMacfarlane
Jaw-dropping discovery:
Iraqi & British archaeologists find 4500yo Sumerian palace in Girsu, one of the oldest known cities.
Palace thought to contain shrine to Gilgamesh & cuneiform tablets which cd fill gaps in the Epic itself.
Thrilling work.
Details: theguardian.com/science/2023/f…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Nan Shepherd was born OTD 130 yrs ago.
In case of interest, The Living Mountain—a 30-min radio love-letter to the Cairngorms & Nan’s writing I made in 2013––is back up on @BBCSounds.
Some extraordinary things happened up in the hills as we recorded this…
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0…
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@RobGMacfarlane
New research out today from @DaveGoulson is clear & shocking.
If you use glyphosate pesticides (Roundup/Gallup) or slug pellets, you reduce songbird numbers, esp. house sparrows.
Numbers down *25-40%*
"Stop spraying your garden with poisons."
pls share on
theguardian.com/environment/20…
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@RobGMacfarlane
10 yrs ago I wrote a book called Holloway w/ @Dan_Zep & @StanleyDonwood abt Dorset's sunken lanes––their histories, time-slips, ecologies.
Now a new project seeks to map the UK's holloways.
Please RT/reply with pics & locations, hashtagged #sunkenlanes
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…
7
@RobGMacfarlane
🔥 Well this is immense & breaking news🔥
The Labour Party has today announced it will pass a Right To Roam Act for England *&* reverse the Dartmoor ban if they come to power.
Such an act wd need be based on Free, Fair & Informed Access for all.
A big moment in access history. twitter.com/Right_2Roam/st…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Gorne Wood is a fragment of Ancient Woodland & a remnant of London’s Great North Wood.
But it’s in trouble.
Local community has *5 days to raise last 2% of funds* needed to secure & restore the site for wildlife & people.
Read more/give/RT to support this change on the ground.👇 twitter.com/FourthReserve/…
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@RobGMacfarlane
“It sticks in my craw. We are not accepting favours from our masters. We are not their serfs. It isn’t the 19th century. Dartmoor is not a private gentlemen’s shooting estate.” theguardian.com/environment/20…
10
@RobGMacfarlane
So: wealthy landowner takes case to High Court to exclude wild camping from his 4000-acre bloodsporty Dartmoor estate.
Wins case.
Now *sells* the right to camp back to the taxpayer, on a reduced area.
Sucks so much.
A massive step back—and a stitch-up.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
11
@RobGMacfarlane
Five Goshawks.
Five of these magnificent, rare raptors, shot and dumped together.
I can’t even…
Contact @RuralPolicingSC with any info. twitter.com/RaptorPersUK/s…
12
@RobGMacfarlane
RIP the great Ronald Blythe—author of Akenfield & one of the most gently luminous 20th-c writers of people & place.
Ronnie died last night aged 100.
A beautiful obituary by @patrick_barkham.
I visited Ronnie at Bottengoms; he gave me two prints I treasure.
theguardian.com/books/2023/jan…
13
@RobGMacfarlane
“We’ll use this one step back as two steps forward. This isn’t just going back to the status quo. We’ll ensure that we have better access to the countryside.”
👊👊👊
The protest against the Dartmoor decision will be peaceful & relentless.
Watch this space! theguardian.com/environment/20…
14
@RobGMacfarlane
🔥BREAKING (bad) news🔥
Wealthy landowners the Darwalls have won court case to extinguish our long-exercised right to wild camp responsibly on Dartmoor—only place where it’s been legal in England
It’s a terrible decision. Follow @Right_2Roam/@EveryonesStars to resist & protest.
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@RobGMacfarlane
John Keats on finding happiness in the modest moment (from an 1817 letter to Benjamin Bailey).
"If a sparrow come before my Window, I take part in its existence & pick about the gravel..."
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@RobGMacfarlane
Writing about House Sparrows today; our convivial, cheery, cheeky, chattering & disappearing neighbours.
Sparrow: from Old English spearwa.
AKA spuggie, spadger, cuddy, roo-doo.
Do you know other folk/common names for them (plus region of use)?
Painting by @JackieMorrisArt
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@RobGMacfarlane
Ah...the Hardy Tree has fallen today in London.
An ash tree, of course; the World Tree.
Hardy stacked gravestones around it 160 yrs ago––like the leaves of a circular book––after the dead of those graves were exhumed for the railway.
Life-in-death-in-life.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/d…
18
@RobGMacfarlane
Happy Winter Solstice to all in the northern hemisphere, today 21st December.
The turn of the year's tide; a pivot-point; the day when the dark stops rising & the sun begins its slow climb back.
We need all the light we can get right now.
#TheLightIsRising
📷 Dominik Hofbauer
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@RobGMacfarlane
Number Crunching
@PrivateEyeNews
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@RobGMacfarlane
Hello—it’s Midwinter Eve & the 1st episode of our @bbcworldservice audio-drama adaptation of The Dark Is Rising is out today!
A year’s work.
An episode a day for 12 days.
Pls listen along, tell us how you’re finding it, tell others!
#TheDarkIsRising
Here: bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w… twitter.com/RobGMacfarlane…
21
@RobGMacfarlane
Striding Edge on Helvellyn was a weather-blade today, dividing light & shadow, white & green, snow & grass.
Crossed it with my son.
Summit plateau was polar, with blue landskeins of receding ridge-lines out towards the Irish Sea.
22
@RobGMacfarlane
This icicle-hung cave is the site of a Neolithic stone axe “factory”, where fine-grained greenstone was—from c. 6000 yrs ago—used to make tools of great beauty &value
It was a moving place to reach; where ancestors had climbed & worked for centuries, in deep human time.
23
@RobGMacfarlane
I met my own Brocken Spectre on the Fairfield Horseshoe today, haloed in concentric ice-refracted coronae.
An encounter I’ll never forget; a portal & a double that retreated in the measure I approached it.
24
@RobGMacfarlane
Happy that our film River won Best Documentary at the Australian Academy Awards yesterday.
Such a joy to work on this with director Jen Peedom, Willem Dafoe, Jonny Greenwood, Joseph Nizeti & the astonishing @didgefusion.
Rivers are beings—and our fate flows with theirs.
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@RobGMacfarlane
“When the Dark comes rising/Six shall turn it back…”
I wrote today about the Midwinter power of Susan Cooper’s great novel & the experience of adapting it over the last year with the great @SimonMcBurney & @Complicite.
Starts on @bbcworldservice 20/12
❄️
theguardian.com/books/2022/dec…
@RobGMacfarlane
Books: Is A River Alive? (WIP) Underland, The Lost Words, The Old Ways, etc. | Films: River, Mountain, Upstream | Nature, climate, people | Prof @Cambridge_uni