I was pleased to see this week that the CPRE are calling for action over the amount of man-made clutter in our countryside. Overhead wires, phone masts, advertising boards and pylons all all cited along with one blight which particularly annoys me – unnecessary road signs. We’ve all seen them… on my trip to work there are  pairs of no-limit road signs, 40mph signs and 30mph signs all within a stretch of less than 200 yards. All can be viewed within the blink of an eye - a total waste of time and expense. The CPRE tell me that on the B3006 in the South Downs there are 300 signs on a seven-mile stretch – that’s almost 45 per mile. Ridiculous.

I’ve often read about sightings of big cats around the countryside but never one this large and in the sky! Hope you can make it out – or is it just me? There were some wonderful cloud formations this morning during my walk over the moors – for a couple more sky photos visit my other blog on www.dalesman.co.uk (Editor’s Week).

It was good to see and hear curlews and lapwings while out on the moors this week. The curlew’s call, even if a little haunting (!) is a welcome sign of early summer around here. What I am surprised at though, for the time of year, is the lack of water. Streams are just a trickle in many places or have disappeared out of sight into their underground channels in the limestone. Even the major rivers seem lower than normal. Many householders in our village are supplied by a small private reservoir and they have been asked to preserve as much water as possible as it is at an unusual low for early June. My house is supplied by a bore hole which has not been known, in living memory, to run dry – touch wood. As I write, the skies are darkening and the forecast is for short showers so maybe some much-needed rain is approaching.
The photo was taken on Friday and shows the dry riverbed in Deepdale in north-west Yorkshire.

Don’t you just love traditional meadows. There just aren’t enough of them about any more… it may be a trick of the memory but I do seem to remember there being a lot more around when I was a youngster. I read somewhere that up to ninety-five per cent of ancient meadows have disappeared because of pesticides and changes to farming methods. So I was pleased to hear from the National Trust that they are creating wildflower meadows and will publicise them more throughout the summer. I’ll be giving further details about this in next month’s Countryman and you can also visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk
You don’t have to be a farmer or landowner to create meadows of course, and my picture shows a local churchyard where an area has been set aside for wildflowers which will be cut for hay later in the year.