"Look at it this way"

Helen Macdonald, author of 'H is for Hawk' has completed a journey around the M25 exploring the wildlife that lies along its margins. Catch it on iPlayer. Is there a wild side to Britain’s busiest road? Author and naturalist Helen Macdonald embarks on a clockwise loop around London’s orbital motorway - searching for hidden wildness and natural beauty within the sight and sound of the M25. Along her journey, Helen encounters the remarkable people, plants and animals living above, beside and beneath the motorway, and delves into the controversial history of the UK’s longest and least-loved bypass. The M25 has been part of Britain’s landscape for nearly 35 years, so how has the natural world adapted to the motorway carving a path through its environment? Starting just south of the Thames at Kent’s Junction 1, Helen explores the woodland that lines the first 40 miles of the M25. In a first sign of how animals’ lives are shaped by the man-made world, great tits are changing the p

Place 2020 is a new project which has been launched as part of the Centre for Place Writing. The work here explores, via a dynamic mix of new writing (poetry, essay, commentary, reflection and story), films, photography and podcasts, how ideas of ‘place’ shifted radically across the globe in 2020, as billions of people went into lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement changed how we think about everything. New work will feature on this site throughout 2020. An excellent piece by Amy Liptrot is part of the first few pieces, exploring young people's relationship with nature. I often think about how the geographies of our childhoods define our psyches. I grew up next to cliffs, in big skies with the open ocean and wide horizons. I’m coming to see that my son’s ‘local acre’, his native mile, will be different. Where we now live, in West Yorkshire, is about as landlocked as you can be in the UK. His is a world of woods and rivers, of ter

Well worth a listen... settle down children (and adults) ALISTAIR HAMILL · Worth doing and worth going to do

"Alright geography degree, where should we be searching?" I've been waiting for this book for some time, and it's lovely to finally hold it in my hand and flick through its contents before diving in. I didn't quite do a "gold dance" when my lovely postlady left it on the doormat and retreated two metres, but not far off. 'Detectorists' instantly grabbed me when the first episode of the first series was broadcast on the BBC on 2nd of October 2014.  The week before I'd watched another wonderful Toby Jones performance in 'Marvellous'  about the life of Neil Baldwin, so I was keen to see him in this new series too. There was something calming about the series as it progressed, with the relationship between Becky and Andy, the banter about 'University Challenge', their random finds and changing relationships. There are so many small moments of joy (many of which make it into the pages of the book) The random curries made f

"I think imagination needs a precise geography" Robert MacFarlane

“Fieldwork is the best and most immediate means of bringing the two aspects of the subject (i.e. a body of knowledge and a distinctive method of study) together in the experience of the pupil. Therefore, fieldwork is a necessary part of geographical education; it is not an optional extra”   (Bailey, 1974) Over the years I've been part of many consultations and responses to consultations from the GA and also in a personal capacity.  Over the years the GA and other bodies have had to fight to keep aspects of the subject, indeed the whole subject itself, on the curriculum. Many consultations receive a low number of responses. This often plays to those who want to skew the result in a particular way by saying "look, there's no real opposition to this in the responses to the consultation". OFQUAL has a consultation running until the 16th of July.  TAKE PART! This consultation is on the content and running of the 2021 Exams for GCSE, AS (which nobody really