William hails importance of communities on visit to woodland on Mull
William and Kate came suitably dressed for a trip to Ardura Community Forest on the Isle of Mull and spent time with an early years outdoor learning play group and their parents.
The couple celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary on Mull on Tuesday and were congratulated on the milestone as they mingled with families the next day, as three and four-year-olds ran around at their feet.
Chatting to one father, William said: 'That's what we've lost, the ability to come together and know your neighbour,' and he went on to say: 'You can get lost in the cities.'
Kate crouched down to speak to some of the children learning about their environment through simple tasks like gathering flowers and den building, and she later played with the youngsters by the neighbouring River Lussa, as they threw sticks into the clear running water.
Jan Dunlop from the Mull and Iona Ranger Service hosted much of the visit, and she said later about the couple: 'I think they loved it, I think they really did.
'Catherine would have stayed all day and you could see when she got to the water, that was it.'
Grants provided by William's conservation umbrella group United For Wildlife's Nature Protectors initiative will fund Ms Dunlop and a colleague's ranger roles for a year.
Ardura forest is one of Scotland's most precious habitats which has been central to the way of life for generations of Mull families, and William pointed out the ferns growing on trees in the 'temperate rainforest' when he chatted to one couple.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Country diary: The sense of emptiness in these driven-grouse moors stirs a deep melancholy
It's one of my midsummer rituals, if the forecast is right, to climb on to the moorland tops and await sunset. I build in several secondary goals: check if there are lapwings still on eggs in the sheep pasture below the summit (just two); see if there are curlew pairs breeding in the heather (only three). These exercises add to a personal dataset that is 50 years old. While I can confirm that, in all that time, snipes, curlews, lapwings and golden plovers have bred annually, both redshanks and dunlins have long gone and the other quartet is much diminished. As a result, Combs Moss is steeped in melancholy for me. It's not just the loss of breeding waders, but the sense of remarkable emptiness on these driven-grouse places. You stand there in the falling light, gazing across thousands of acres, Manchester twinkling as a child's toytown on the far horizon, and there can be no sign of any wild vertebrate life for minutes on end. Except your own troubled heartbeat. I love this place tenderly. I also lament its deeply arrested condition and, as I settle in for the sunset hour, I ponder how we can terminate legally these bird-killing rituals and create something richer. But my business isn't politics. There are few places more beautiful in our area than Derbyshire's cotton fields at dusk. In this moment, it's the common cotton-grass whose white-flossed heads, unfolding across the rolling moor, actually invoke some landscape in deepest Alabama. In Shetland and Orkney, in fact, people once had the patience and skill to pick, spin and knit this sedge floss into garments. There is a pair of christening socks in the Orkney Museum that is made from what they called 'Lucky Minnie's Oo', oo meaning wool in Shetlandic. Tonight, it flows as salt-white foam settled on a full tide, or even like the crusted snow blanketing this same place during most winters. I love it most where the dusk-tinted hanks of the bog-cotton mingle with the minute, hard, rose-tinged seedheads of the bent grasses. Together they create this enormous glittering sheet whose matrix colour, at last light, is the soft sepia of deep nostalgia. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Opening date put forward for rebuilt Brinsley headstocks
A mining landmark in Nottinghamshire that was pulled down over a risk to public safety will be rebuilt by April next year after a six-month headstocks - a rare wooden example of the system used to take miners into the pit - were removed from the site in Brinsley in December Borough Council approved a £220,000 "like-for-like" replacement in January after campaigners called for the structure to be announced a projected reopening date of 18 April next year while discussing the wider project's timeline during a meeting on Friday, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said. The headstocks were part of Brinsley Colliery, which opened in 1842 and closed in 1934, although shafts at the site remained open until 1970 for access to other pits. 'International significance' After the site fully closed in 1970, it was reclaimed as a nature and picnic area, with the structure acting as a landmark until its meeting heard the wider project - including a new wildflower meadow and remembrance orchard for miners who lost their lives at the pit - is more than half Radulovic, leader of the council, said: "It will be a tourist attraction not just for the area, but for the wider area and will have international significance."The April deadline reflects a six-month delay to the original project's goal, with the leader of the council previously aiming for the full project to be completed by October delay was caused by the discovery of two old mining shafts back in October 2024 from a ground investigation partly using old of the mining tunnels is underneath the remembrance orchard area and while it was inaccessible, there were concerns the ground above could be are also concerns over potential vandalism on the site after two trees in the remembrance orchard were stolen earlier this year,Kennith Hamilton, Chair of Friends of Brinsley Headstocks, the voluntary community group maintaining the site, said vandalism of a new memorial bench, for the 33 people known to have lost their lives at the pit, was his "biggest worry".He said: "It's such a beautiful bench, it's such a good thing for the miners that passed away or got killed at the pit. "If [anyone] vandalises it they should be ashamed of themselves."Radulovic said the council was preparing to put mobile CCTV in place "if we do have any occurrence of vandalism or inappropriate behaviour on that site".He added: "We expect people to treat it with respect and dignity… they [would be] betraying the previous generations that, that is a memorial for, and I expect people that do will be treated £74,000 has so far been spent on the wider project, the LDRS said.
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Daily Mail
I can't stop my neighbour felling this glorious tree - BECAUSE it's in an area of outstanding natural beauty
The blackbird who has made his home in my garden has become something of a friend. He potters about on the grass in search of worms immediately after I've finished mowing and takes a keen interest whenever the compost heap is turned over to reveal all kinds of nutritional goodies.
