"Look at it this way"

My toolkit book featured a quote from Bill Bryson when he became President of the CPRE, used with permission. A lot of houses have Emma Bridgewater designed pottery in them. She is about to be announced as the new President of the CPRE : an organisation that has featured on this blog many times over the years. In this Telegraph interview piece she describes some aspects of her views on the Rural landscape. It is a small country. It is all of our backyards.  With increasing numbers of us living in cities then the need to be able to walk out into unspoilt country is all the more crystal clear. The population is going up - we really, really must be very, very intelligent about how we develop and be mindful of the irreversible nature of development.  We will be hated by our grandchildren if we get this wrong.

“This is the equivalent to trying to build a cable car in front of Buckingham Palace.  Cheddar Gorge is of international importance. There are better ways of driving business without destroying the very asset people come to see. It is far better to retain the uniqueness of the place. ”   Helen Bonser-Wilton, assistant director of operations at the National Trust. Year 7  explored the plans to build a cable car in Cheddar Gorge. Over half term, this has come into the news once again ( it looks like we were ahead of the game here ), and here are a few links that you could follow to bring the story up to date. We may take a look at this in the next week or so, although we have other things that we have to do before we move into the exam week, which will be on us before we know it. First, there's a clip from West Country News....  (may only work for a limited time) A few different opinions expressed here... Also an article from the Daily Mail , which show...

CPRE have some great resources on their site, and have recently added a new section. The countryside and the city - how can we tell them apart ? There are going to be 6 speeches to listen to. These would perhaps be most useful for older students. The first two are there at the time of posting.... They are by Andrew Motion and Frances Pryor.... Useful for landscape - links to the idea of changes and different impacts on the landscape....

Have been accompanied on my travels for the last week by Bill Bryson via a 10 CD audiobook version of his " Notes from a Small Island " borrowed from the library ( don't forget your local library ! ) I've been developing some activities based around his travels, and the impressions that he gives of some of the cities he visits, compared to the views of others, and also the changes that might have occurred since he visited them in 1995 (which is about the time that GCSE students would have been born, so handy for thinking about changes "in your lifetime"...) You can also find a range of video clips from the accompanying TV series on YouTube of course, such as this one... Plenty of cultural geography inspiration, as well as the chance to discuss the nature of the British landscape. Bill Bryson is currently the President of CPRE : the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

Image by Alan Parkinson: Castle Acre Castle, Norfolk An excellent article in the Times magazine a couple of weeks ago which I have just got round to blogging... It features Bill Bryson interviewing David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown about their policies on the countryside in advance of the General Election... I used a Bill Bryson quote at the start of my book "Look at it this Way" from the speech that he gave when he took over as President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) in June 2007 The Times article begins with this excellent paragraph which would make an excellent discussion piece, or perhaps the script for a video / presentation to be put together by students, along with appropriate images.... Nothing – and I mean, really, absolutely nothing – is more extraordinary in Britain than the beauty of the countryside. Nowhere in the world is there a landscape that has been more intensively utilised – more mined, farmed, quarried, covered with cities ...