September 12, 2025 • 54 mins
A download of information about the fantastic Hedgerow Fest in Ireland, what the recent changes in government could mean for rural communities, and how Wild Justice can sometimes be an ally.
Callum eventually turns up after a day of no signal and horse shenanigans to disrupt things!
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
Send us photos of your interesting trinkets that your other half wants to burn or bin as submissions to the calendar or for fun at: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Links
- Hedgerow fest
- Subscribe on Patreon for extra content (you can cancel at any time)
- Richard Negus interview on YouTube
- If you enjoy what we do, consider a one-off tip on Ko-fi
- CountrySlide website
- Negus' book tour dates can be found here
The Hosts
Richard Negus website
Callum McInerney-Riley website
Richard Prideaux website
Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.
Callum eventually turns up after a day of no signal and horse shenanigans to disrupt things!
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
Send us photos of your interesting trinkets that your other half wants to burn or bin as submissions to the calendar or for fun at: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Links
- Hedgerow fest
- Subscribe on Patreon for extra content (you can cancel at any time)
- Richard Negus interview on YouTube
- If you enjoy what we do, consider a one-off tip on Ko-fi
- CountrySlide website
- Negus' book tour dates can be found here
The Hosts
Richard Negus website
Callum McInerney-Riley website
Richard Prideaux website
Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've got a really bad lurgie, and if it gets
any worse, I'm just going to go and lie down
in the maize field and let the forager run over me.
I think it'd be better for everyone. I've been fighting
it with coffee and trying to keep the caffeine levels
at the right, you know, the right percentage, just to
(00:21):
fight it off. Although I was struggling to get my
resting heart rate below one hundred earlier, so I probably
should tweak it back down again. Yeah, So where have
you been?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh? Well, in my hand, which obviously for a podcast
isn't very good because people can't see it starting a glass, yeah,
is a glass of Paddy whiskey. So that gives a
clue as to where I was this weekend. I was
in Ireland.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Were you in the bit that likes you or the
bit that doesn't like you?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
They all like me. Everywhere likes me. I was down
in County off of which is the Irish Midlands. And
it's interesting place, the Irish Midlands, because it's a bit
like I think the English Midlands in the respect that
people travel through it to get to their other destinations.
(01:16):
If you like up in, I don't know Leeds. You
travel through Leicestershire or something like that, or Northamptonshire to
get down to your holiday on the Suffolk Coast or
dan and Devon or Cornwall or something like that. But
you never bother to stop me. And when was the
last time you ever heard anyone say I'm going on
holiday this year to Melton Mowbray. Yeah, no one ever
(01:36):
says that, do they. Well, it's a bit like that
in the Irish Midlands. But they're missing out on a
trick because it's superb There are lots of bogs. I
mean it's the bogs are incredible. But I went there.
Last time I went to Ireland was nineteen ninety seven
buying horses, and then that was before the Celtic Tiger roared,
(01:58):
and you know, it was quite a old world place.
And then I've suddenly sort of missed all the massive
boom that they had and bust and I'm now back
visiting there with their upward trajectory again. But it's like
the peat cutting. I was told that where these bogs were,
(02:18):
and they used to commercially cut pete. And for most
of you who will have bought a bag of compost
in the past. You'll see this thing called board Namona,
which was a company which was basically the peat cutting
business bar none in Ireland. And so they weren't just
(02:40):
cutting peat to go and make composts for gardeners to
go and fill the hanging baskets. They were doing it commercially,
which used to a huge number of the power stations
in Ireland used to burn peat. And then they everyone went, oh,
I actually hold on a second, cutting peat is really
bad and it's releasing all this carbon. So they gave
board Namona bad the contract to put up all the
(03:03):
wind turbines. So all across these amazing peat bogs and
wetlands where surprise, surprise, huge numbers of wildfoul go, there
are now wind turbines just waiting to chop all these
these wild fowl into little bits, which I thought, I
(03:26):
can see why a government might have done that, but
I think the teal and the widgeon are going, I
hate this, This is rubbish. Can you start cutting pete again?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, you've moved in the wrong direction, lads. So this
is it wasn't that long ago actually, or maybe it was.
Maybe it was twenty odd years ago, and we're just
getting old. But you used to be able to buy
bags of peat for your fire at certain petrol stations,
like particularly in the West Country in Wales and Lights,
it used to be peat for your fire. For you
(03:57):
young uns listening, I don't think we have any but
there's no one thirty five who listens to this, do
you think so?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
But I mean that even so, that means I'm twenty
years older than than our youngest listener, which is a
bit of worry. I'm like granddad, aren't I. Yeah, So anyway,
I was an island and it was great Gandalf but
with a shorter beard, quite neatly trimmed. Yes, I was
an island this weekend and it was great for the
hedgerow fest that Mount Brisco. It was mega and I
(04:24):
really enjoyed it. And it was a bit like Richard.
It reminded me of our exploits at Folk East, where
you suddenly realized that actually, you know, we have differences
in some cultural things, but actually we're largely pulling in
the same direction. And I found that exactly the same,
(04:45):
because you know, a hedgerow fest in this country would
probably be twenty three farmers telling them about us about
their hedgerows. There would be one over enthusiastic lady who
was going to go and give you a watson or
picture of just how one before the hedgerow is and
with death by powerpoints and seventy five slides, a couple
of hedge layers, it would be telling you just how
(05:07):
vital it is that we go and keep the ancient
craft of hedge laying alive, and how the Westmoland style
is vital, because if we don't have the Westman styling,
war will all die and then that'll be about it.
Not in Ireland, Oh no, no, no, no, not in Ireland.
Not in Ireland. What they do is, yes, they've got
some hedge layers. They've got me talking about with book.
They've got Richard Markham who's laying hedges beautifully for people.
(05:30):
But they've got world famous poets talking there. They've got
a string quartet who's playing a sort of a bunch
of things, and three world famous Irish actors who are
reading out poetry about trees and hedgerows. They've got a
lady who is she's not a basket weaver. She just
creates out of willow these sculptures that you are going
(05:53):
how on Earth. Did you do that? That's ridiculous. You've
got Actually there was a professional one of you who
knew you because it through your foraging. I think he
follows you on on on Twitter after go and dig
his name out. They had foraging professional forager on there.
They had a lady who runs forest schools in Ireland.
(06:17):
They had a couple of artists. They had someone who
then took the forage stuff that they found and was
one of Ireland sort of TV chefs, and he was
cooking up for everybody. And it's all being done in
this beautiful old Georgian farm and farmyard on a rainy
(06:40):
day in the middle of County Offaly. And there were
like people with dreadlocks. But there were farmers, uh, there
were organic farmers, there were veg growers. There were just
mums and dads with with a tribe of kids all there,
and they all knew one another, and not one one
(07:00):
of them had a crossword to say against one another,
because what they just seemed to sort of think, well,
we like the countryside, we like nature, we'd like to
see more hedge rows about. Well let's go and just
hold hands and go and do this. I walked in
to a yoga session by accident. I mean it was
quite shocked for the ladies when I walked in there.
(07:20):
I did have my clothes on, I say at the time, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I'll see. It's well, it's starting to sound more and
more like some sort of weird re enactment of local
hero or a waking ned or something like that. You've
just seemed to have have had this entire cultural experience,
which would also fit neatly into a ninety seven minute
whimsical comedy about this this Englishman who went over to
(07:46):
this quaint village in Ireland and met all these characters.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Said, oh man, it was it, But do you know
what it wasn't. It was culturally really quite elegant, and
it hadn't got this sort of you know, things didn't
fall off, and there wasn't a random cow that broke out.
It was really slickly done. But you didn't feel like
(08:13):
you were getting sold to or that there was some
political agenda they've got. I tell you what Ireland seems
to have got in it were in this. But if
this is a elevance of Ireland, if sorry a reference
to Ireland today, they seem to have got rid of tribalism,
and bearing in mind, this is a country that was
(08:34):
literally nyon destroyed by tribalism. What I saw at Hegero
Fest at Mount Brisco, they have managed to destroy tribalism completely,
and they just had all these people who went said
I'm having a grand day out here, and they were
listening to other people and learning about them. Were now, jeez,
that's interesting, you know, rather than going further through look terrible.
(08:58):
Can you imagine if we did this in England? What
would happen, Richard, if we did hedgerow Fest in England
with all those combinations.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Well, first of all, you'd, like you say, you'd never
get any of the hedge people to agree with each other,
because they all say that exactly their vernacular style is
the most important thing on earth, and never mind conservation
or anything like that. Then you would have every political
tribe overlaying on top of it. So you'd have blood
and soil fascism at one end with sort of bill
(09:27):
hooks over black shirts, and then you'd have at the
other end you'd have complete back to the soil communists
with crossed bill hooks and over the over on their
T shirts. And then somewhere in between. You'd have a
lot of nature writers who look at nature but never
actually touch it or do anything, and have got very
soft hands and all of which. Well, in fact, I've
(09:51):
just realized what it would be. It would be that
nature Summit thing that's just happened or just about to happen,
the Wild Summit.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Or oh yes, Wild Summit, wild wank Fest. I think
it ought to be called. I mean, there's they've got
one farmer in there, Martin Lynes, who from the Nature
Friendly Farming Network. I mean, the jury is slightly out
on him with a lot of people. You know, is
he a gamekeeper turned poacher? Is he a poacher turned gamekeeper?
(10:21):
Is he actually a poacher? Who is? You know? Not
would be a bit squeamish at the site of blood.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's I've just looked it up. It's we're recording this
on Tuesday. It comes out to patrons on Thursday and
public on Friday, so and it's on this Thursday. So
that's that's who's there. You would have just it would
have just happened if you're listening to this.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah, I've seen some of the other people who are
on there and they're supposed to be talking about how
farming and nature can go together, and that seems to
be a well they've got They've invited the head of
the RSPB, Becky Spate, they've invited to the chief executive
of the League Against Cruel Sports. What's those two? What
(11:06):
are their background in farming? Well, i've met Becky Space,
I can tell you none, you know nothing. What what
do they bring to the party. And my mate, what's
his name, Guy shrub Soul? He hates farmers. Well, I'm
you know, the feelings mutual, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Will just I'm just looking through quickly to make sure
none of our mates are there, so we haven't actually,
you know, any friendship. No, okay, Now, if you're there,
when you're a mate of hours, then you're no longer
a friend.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
No you know, yes, you have been. You've got now
a fat you've got a country slide fatoire against you?
Shall I tell you? Going back to Ireland a second.
When I was introduced to the I spoke about my
book twice because their Saturday and Sunday and I had
a book readings and interview with a lovely lady called
(12:03):
Mariad and she introduced me, but it was like, oh,
and he's also written this book. But it was basically,
it's all about Country Slide. We're big in Ireland, did
you know? I mean, yeah, we're big in Ireland. And
she was telling that the whole of the Irish Hedgero
Cognisanti who were there, that if they didn't listen to
(12:23):
Country Slide, then they were basically you know, they're no
longer a friend of hers, which was great stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Huh. Well, I noticed we've we've increased our audience in
the Netherlands, and I wondered whether we'd just suddenly made
it big there. But then I realized that if you
have a VPN map, that's the default setting for Europe
as it goes straight to the Netherlands. So it's just
whoever's got their VPN turned on is obviously also looking
at hedge porn in the literal sense.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
That's exactly it, Richard. So all the people who are going,
damn you, Kirstarman, you've stopped me looking at Now I'm
suddenly Dutch. I could live with the Dutch adverts. I'm
just going to Yes, I'm looking at and culturally broadening
my landscape.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I know, broadening your landscape. Are you on if I've
got this right? Are you on the Fallongong News Channel?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
That was that was unexpected, I know.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah. Well, basically they've got this program called Thought, British
Thought Leaders. You know that's worries, isn't it is that
I'm one of the leaders of thought in Britain.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And that we got rid of everyone else.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, basically that's it. That's it. You know, eventually you're
digging right down into the into the sub soil and
here he is. Yeah. It was a fascinating and you know,
you know what he's saying. I've had a lot of
requests to me. I've just been asked to speak at
the Oxford Farming Conference, for example, and you know, I'm
(14:00):
the afternoonner speaker for the National Agricultural Journalists Association, you
know there, you think that's quite cool. And I've had
this sort of rather left field request to speak on
this thing. I think I'd never heard of this, but
basically I think it's the Taiwanese I think is the
(14:22):
sort of anti communist Chinese and the Yanks got together
and they created this TV station the talks and gives
voice to people because they say that you know that
free speech has not been allowed, which I guess if
you're in China is yeah, that's not lo And yeah,
(14:42):
an amazing guy interviewed me, Adrian Lee. I think he's
called Who's an English fella with a I guess a
Taiwanese cameraman and I went into a rather swanky studio
not far from Westminster and had a lengthy chat. See
it's on front. So the day when Country Slide goes
(15:03):
out to the non patrons everyone else, yeah, there's there's
me on there talking about well, my thoughts that will
supposedly lead everyone into into a sort of more educated
place about the countryside and farming and conservation and where
(15:25):
I think is going wrong and where we'll not lots
going right.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Really, next time you do one of these things, can
you sort of give us a bit of heads up
and then I can suggest some questions to them, you know,
all the things I wasn't allowed to ask you at
Folk East. You know, like no, I can't even.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Say iocast no, no, no, that's not it, because look
I'm probably already now because I've appeared on this thing.
I'm now on the the sort of low down the
hit list. But I'm still on the hit list of
the Chinese after you. Yeah, exactly, So I'll be perfectly frank,
you know, questions from you to go and add to
(16:04):
my woes that the fact that there'll be a special
forces unit of the Chinese People's Army chasing after me. No,
I don't want you to add to my woes.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
They've got those specialist shovels as well, haven't they, Those
Chinese military shovels who make a big deal about that
you can chop through trees and things with sharpened edges.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Now, listen, I have got a disaster has befallen me
and many of us in the countryside. Not so much
you in Wales because you're already devolved. But today it
has been thanks to the freedom of information request by
(16:41):
the NFU, that countryside stewardship agreements will stop in December
this year. Yeah, that's a pretty big kick in the.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Goolies, particularly the time of year as well.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's crazy, you know, we've said on here cockopper, and
do you think this is Richard? You've got half a brain?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
This is what they?
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I used to think it was just that they panicked
and they pulled the plug. But I'm increasingly starting to think, no,
they actually do hate anything rural. I think anyone on
the labour side of things, and I try and sort
of say neutral because I don't like any of them.
But Labor must now realize that they're never going to
(17:30):
be in power again in the current form anywhere. They're
all going to split off into other parties or just
have to get rebooted again, and sort of the ghost
of Tony Blair will come in and puppet someone else
into existence, but that might not happen till twenty twenty nine,
and they've got a long time to play around with
the chessboard between now and then, and all they can
(17:51):
do is really annoy everyone who's going to vote for them.
And I do wonder whether that is they are pulling
every thing out of the rural space and pushing it
into the urban space because that's where their remaining votes
will be. And the CS is a very very it's
(18:12):
only seen as a rural thing. Well, that's just making
things good for farmers and paying farmers to not grow food.
And someone will have taken that sentence and said, right, well,
that's an easy cut, let's get rid of that. We're
doing enough with net zero?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Well do you think that's what I was going to ask?
Do you think with the net zero thing? Because I
see that in this great reshuffle, the two figures conspicuous
by the fact that they're still there, hanging on like
a turd on a blanket, is the Chancellor of the
Exchequer and the woeful energy Minister Ed Miliband. Now, if
(18:53):
you are going to achieve Ed Milliban's aims, I mean,
I don't know what Rachel Reeves is are. They just
seem to be you know, I don't know. She's just
flailing about, isn't she? But Ed Milliband, clearly, let's go okay,
let's look on the positive side. He has a vision
for the future. He seems to think that because we
(19:17):
suffer from in this country the slings and arrows of
global energy prices, because we're having to import so much
of our energy, yes, that we will be allegedly self
sufficient if we go for the green energy which he
is proposing, and the only way that he could get
(19:40):
the levels of an inverted Commas green energy which he
is after, to make ourselves remotely self sufficient and therefore
immune from from the global energy prices is to put
in the solar wind. And I don't know wherever he's
(20:01):
going to go and come up with next, and it
can only be done in the countryside. Is that do
you think where perhaps he's he's looking at the hand
of the farmer.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
The people. I think you're giving him too much credit.
I think there is just this well, we're doing net zero.
That's nature, that'll do you know? That's that their obligation
towards the planet and nature is being covered by the
fact that we're letting Norway drill for oil and gas
in the North Sea and then we'll buy it off them,
or we're letting impoverished people in Africa have terrible lives
(20:36):
mining out cobalt and lithium so that we can we
can have electric cars. You know, all of these This
this offset of putting it beyond beyond sight for everything
to do with net zero is an acceptable thing to
do for the planet, and therefore you don't need hederos.
It doesn't need to be local. I wonder whether some
(20:59):
kind of balance of calculation has happened without like, well,
that's vaguely green, so we'll just cut off this thing.
This looks expensive in Fiddley. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Mean, obviously I wait with the eager anticipation, and it
is probably a forlorn hope to wait that we are
going to see uproar from the RSPB, the Wildlife trusts
and all those people who were sort of claiming that
the Conservatives were literally worse than poule Pot when it
(21:32):
came to nature. I mean, clearly you've you've had some
things because it was a stretch for some of these
guys to actually understand and accept that inheritance tax was
going to inevitably have a negative impact on wildlife because
they they don't like farmers, you know, the RSPB, the
(21:54):
Wildlife trust and now they've built up in their mind
that they're the big bad guys. But now, I mean,
like you say, the gloves are clearly off. There is
something where the rural economy is a stuff here. I mean,
I'm saying this because it may well be, it may
possibly be not well be, may possibly be that the
(22:17):
SFI is going to gain all that money. They've said, well,
we didn't like these multi strands of elms, so therefore
we're only going to have one strand and that's going
to be a simplified version of ELMS, which is just
going to have the SFI options and it will make
life easier. It does sound quite socialist because what it
means is the government will have more role. We're taking
(22:38):
the control back from the farmers that was being given
to them by how ELMS worked is you had these
multiple strands through com size, stewardship and the SFI. We
have taking it back in control. So we're going to
tell you what you can do, which is a massive
worry because I mean, Christ, how on earth they're going
to go understand the intricacies of managing you know, even
(23:00):
just the suffolk. I mean you think of the vagaries
of the soil and climate, and just in one county
which is where SFI and comes TOI TOURISIP works so
well because people could take elements out of the two
things and make it work for them. But now no
nanny knows best leave it to uncle kir He'll tell
(23:24):
you what to do because he worked on a farm
apparently when he was a young man. Now I hasten
to add when he was a young man he lived
in Ryegate. Now, I don't know if you've ever been
to Ryegate. It's quite an attractive Surrey sort of once
once a market town, it's now where stockbrokers live. My
(23:45):
sister lives in Ryegate. She's an accountant. And you know,
I don't know what farming he was doing. I would
have thought probably most of the farming that goes on
there is probably data farming.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I worked on the Surrey Foto Mouth outbreak and we
had to drive a long way around to find that
animals that sort of qualified for the foot of mouth
foot of Mouth. So let's say we get to twenty
twenty nine before an election and they sort of pad
it out to the eleventh hour, so countryside stewardship goes
(24:16):
SFI is let's say the middle case scenario where there's
some money but not much and most of the sort
of higher tier and all that sort of stuff's gone. Yeah,
what could it be turned around in twenty twenty nine
with a new government, if a new government came in
which I'm going to put my money on a reform
plus somebody sort of in sort of a coalition, Yes,
(24:39):
could it be turned around? Or would it be too
late then? Because you've got four years of of I
mean nature doesn't take too long to undo itself. When
we're all we're pushing on the edges all the time.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
I think what the problem would be is that we're
gone so far, you know. I come back to the
fact we have. I had some favorable weather for insects
this year, so therefore my windscreen was covered in dead
insects when I drove anywhere. But that was not just
because it was a favorable year. It was the since
(25:15):
for the last sort of let's say decade, that increasingly
farmers were starting to embrace the idea of stewardship. Both
financially they thought that they could see sense in it,
but also holistically they could see that yes, okay, we
are the environmental conscience of Britain. Will go and go
(25:36):
with it to greater or lesser degrees. But it took
that long. So therefore, from ten years ago when I
actually set my business up as a hedge layer and
I was having to persuade farmers that this is good
for you, it's taken ten years so that now I've
got an order book, this full arm that I'm having
(25:57):
to wipe insects off my wind screen. And I think
that nature as a whole, and so many species had
got to such a parlor state of that line that
Amy and you would probably understand better being slightly more
on the ecology sort of knowledge scale. But you know,
(26:17):
when there's that when species are sustainable, I think they
were sort of dropping below that graph line of where
they were sustainable or not. And I think we'd managed
to put them just above that grass line, so they
were starting to increase exponentially. You've only got to remove,
you know, some small elements and they go back beneath
(26:39):
that graph line. And I think they will then plummet.
And I think there will be some species which did
need a lot of human help and government support to
farmers so that they could make that dippence, and I
think we'll see them go for a long, long while,
you know. And I liken where we are at the moment.
(27:00):
With the nineteen thirties, I think that we had a
huge agricultural depression. We were affected by global influences. You know,
the Wall Street crash, et cetera, et cetera. We're being
affected by global influences, which was COVID, Brexit was obviously
a big culture and financial shock, and also that lunatic
(27:23):
in the Kremlin. So those three things, they all filter
down and the thing that usually takes the biggest hit
is nature because as soon as you go and bugger
about with farmland, then it falls down. So to answer
your question, I think that we could see a lot
of really serious species declines that may never come back
(27:46):
as a result of this. And the question will be,
is that how reform jump because you see reform might
go and say, well, okay, boys, we're going to go
maximum product. We're going to go make ourselves much more
reliant upon British food. We're going to produce, produce, It's
(28:07):
almost you know, Trump's drill, baby drill, We're going to
be plow, baby plow. Now. The problem is with that
we then go back to sort of nineteen eighties where
we're going, yeah, we're making loads of food here and
this is great. But nature was going, oh my god,
I'm dying. And so I think one of the biggest things.
And I know that the Clayer on it, I know
(28:28):
the GWC tear on it. I should imagine that Tim
Bonner has got his little machiavellian hands in it too.
Is they are probably trying to have serious conversations with
reform at the moment and say, you need to remember
(28:48):
that farmers had been prepared to do the good stuff
for nature as well as the good stuff for food.
You know. I mean, we've got to try and encourage
reform to not go plow, baby plow. We've got to
try and encourage them to not be blood and soil.
(29:09):
We've got to try and encourage them to actually go
and do what the sfi Elms and countrysized Stewarty was doing,
which was which was actually trying to help us our
farms be more sustainable and farmer nature.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And I've got a slight worry that we might end
up with an agg policy in four years time that
looks a little bit like the average viewer's impression of
agriculture based on Clarkson's farm. You know that they'll look
at that and say, well, there's too much red tape,
(29:45):
and harvest are hard and these take too long, and
we've got to keep Caleb in a job, and which
not not necessarily untrue, but it does miss out on
the sort of the bureau bureaucratic machine that is required
to a degree in order to force people to give
a little bit of space for nature in between them,
(30:05):
give them the incentive to do it.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yes, I can agree more. And I believe that the
Country Landowners Association are talking to reform and they are
trying to give them the rural business angle. And I think,
I mean, look, okay, I am, I'm If I were
(30:32):
to put my political cards on the table at the moment,
I would probably vote for Satan as long as he
was standing in opposition to the Labor Party. But I
think that unless you are living in a cave, it
is likely unless something goes completely mental that like you say,
(30:56):
we're going to get a reform with others government, possibly
just a reform, but I don't know. We haven't got
crystal balls. And if we could predict it were, we'd
be rich men because we'd be gambling on all sorts
of markets. But I would think that's going in. The
one thing we can say, which is a bonus is
that Nigel Farage, who is essentially reform at the moment.
(31:21):
You know, the other guys, who the thick are they?
You know, no one knows who they are. He likes
a bit of shooting, he likes a bit of country life.
He likes putting his flat cap on. He likes sort
of hobnobbing with a few guys in tweed, and he
likes talking to the working man. So therefore I think
(31:45):
that he will take probably the advice of some bright farmers.
So we might we might be. But christ you wouldn't
want to be have to make policy after this shower
that we've got at the moment.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
No, And it's you and I both, I mean you
a little bit more than me, but we both have
experience of talking directly to politicians, directly to MPs, directly
to senior civil servants about matters affecting the countryside and
policy and stuff, you know, very very recently, and you
both both of us have spoken, you know, spent some
(32:21):
time on different projects with Daniel Zeichner, who's you know,
recently departed from DEFRA, on different things. When you look
at everyone as an individual in these things, you can
have the discussion with them, but it's the machine of
the party and the machine of the civil service or
in one go. This is something that if you haven't
(32:41):
experienced it directly, it's sort of horrifying to discover that
you have humans and then you have this amorphous blob
of a machine that it's like a fog. It sort
of seeps into everything and you can't waft it away,
and it's no matter what you do with that person,
that fog is still there and it doesn't change quickly.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I agree, and I think if you actually wanted, I
mean the sudden and you know, the freedom of information
thing that the NF you have gone by comeside stewardship
is disastrous. But if you actually think, okay, what's the
biggest kick in the bulls to farming that's happened in
this reshuffle and the worst thing they did was Daniel Zeichner.
(33:25):
Daniel Zeichner, I've met the man right now. I don't
like his politics, but he was a man who had
spent five years as the shadow Farming Minister, so he
knew the issues inside and out. I've had everyone from
Ian Coghill saying he was an honorable and good man
(33:47):
who knew what he was talking about, through to David Barker,
who's one of the senior farmers in Suffolk, former chairman
of the Suffolk Agricultural Association, still chairman of the dis
NFU saying, who I also hastened to add was chairman
of a conservative constituency here saying I can work with
(34:09):
that man, and they've taken him away. Angela Eagle, what
flipping relevance has she gone, I mean.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I'm not allowed to say where I was working with
Daniel on something. I don't think I'm allowed to say,
so I'm not going to. But yeah, respectful, open on
every issue. He would say, this is my current position,
this is what I'm going to now spend time listening
earnestly to every single person in this room, so much
(34:43):
so that what I think I might have been drunk
at the time. But I approached him at the end
of one of the evenings and said, look, you have
impressed me spectacularly, Bay by how much you have listened.
You know you have, because I didn't know about Daniel
before that point, but he I just thanked him for listening,
(35:04):
because that's something you don't feel that's happens very often
in the countryside. And yeah, Zeichner I liked because, yeah,
I felt I could work with him, and he is very,
very sad to see him go. And I think that
character and there's a sort of a drop in talent,
maybe in who we have coming up next, But I
(35:26):
don't know maybe they'll be maybe they'll be amazing, but
there's a worrying in my waters.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, I can agree more so moving on, then, here's
something that you know more about than I. Now you
countryslide listeners will know that my view of the rights
to roam movement.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Oh yes, se Low Low.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
You know, if you think about where a snake's penis is,
think lower than that. Right? But now so, But I'm
also I wouldn't probably be accused of being although I have,
and I have even written it in my book that
I have a strong and sneaking regard for Mark Avery.
(36:17):
I don't really like Wild Justice because I find Ruth
Tingay and Chris Packham a little bit boring and just
argumentative and just sort of like frothing at the mouth rabid.
But the three of them together, Avery, Tinga, Packham are
wild Justice. You know. They always sound like something like
(36:37):
an eighties cartoon that you could have a very large orchestra. Again,
it's Wild Justice. Anyway. They have come out and done
something that I wholeheartedly agree with, and the Adventure Center
quashed over environmental concerns courtesy of the ambulance chasing lawyers
(36:58):
that they employ and their own thing. So right now
you understand this's what's happened there.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
So this is okay. So it's an outdoor center in
I think it's Pembrokeshire, so bottom left a bit of
whales they were they were hoping. I think it's either
a new outdoor center or they wanted to expand. But
it was on the coast and it's looking at at
it cursorily this morning. It's it's to do with CoA
(37:31):
steering rather than anything else. So co steering is co steering.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, you come along. It's sort of thing you do
on a stag do or a hendo or part of it.
It's like a half day activity thing that you book
in to do and then you get another group in
for the other half of the day. So you come along.
You wear wetsuits and boots and helmets and floatation vest
things called PFDs personal floatation devices and then some outdoor
(37:59):
instruction who really wanted to be a mountaineer but has
actually ended up being stuck doing coasteering because that's where
the good money is. They take you out and you
sort of scramble along the rocks and then jump into
the water at deep sections and scramble up and out
of it. It is quite good fun, but it takes
You can't do it on every single bit of coast
because you need rocks, you need some vertical drops, and
(38:22):
ideally it needs to be in a cove because you
want some shelter from swell. So you can't have a
long fetch. You can't have a big expanse of sea
that then blows huge waves and crashes onto it because
that will kill people. You want to be able to
still run your activity in most conditions apart from big storms.
(38:43):
So that's what they wanted to do, and it would
have pushed people and these activities into a sensitive cove
and sensitive nesting habitat. So there is already issues with this.
So there's up on angles up in here in North Wales.
We've got a North Stack and South Stack. We've got these,
(39:04):
we've got there's a big lighthouse as offshore there that
you can sort of walk down to, and the RSPB.
You've got the headland there, there's a big bird reserve
and they there's climbing there and there's coasteering and then
there are voluntary bands on anyone entering it during nesting
season because of the huge disturbance that's there for it,
and there's a lot of debate about it. Before there's
(39:28):
a lot of debate about the other impacts of these
outdoor activities, but it's kind of overshadowed by the fact
that within the outdoor tourism sector things like coasteering and
gorge walking are something you can do all year round.
It doesn't, and it's people paid quite a bit of
money to do it, and you can run through quite
a few groups in a day, so there has to
(39:51):
be cooperative working between providers at these venues because often
they don't own the bit of crag they're jumping into
the sea from. So it's where you park, where you meet,
the groups, where everyone goes for a p All of
these things become points of pressure, not just ecological ones.
Gorge Walking is actually quite a good parallel to this
because gorges so waterfalls going down into narrow slots in
(40:15):
the rock are sensitive habitats in their own right for
mosses and briophytes and all sorts of other things, often
surrounded by ancient nile trees up at the top that
people then want to strap slings to and anchor off
to absail into. So there's the avon the gorge here
in North Wales, which is which is a very sensitive
(40:37):
habitat but also one of the most popular gorge walking
spots in the UK. So there's a whole code of
practice for it, but it doesn't go far enough. And
you know humans are going to win in this equation,
so lots of precedent for it, lots of precedent for
how much disturbance there would be, and a broken clock
(40:58):
is still right trice to day. While Justice I think
were correct on this one, but it was. Yeah, it
was curiously missing from the right to Rome argument that
just give people place spaces and they'll spread out and
they'll do stuff. Well, no, not if they all want
to go to the same bit.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
So do you think that this is actually wild Justice
saying oi righte to Rome, your policies are, or your suggestions,
your recommendations, the things you're lobbying for are exactly this,
Because what they're saying here is that you know people
(41:36):
when people are going to go into these places you
say shelter coves and whatnot, which probably are also the
sheltered coves where I don't know what Razor Bills, Gillie Motts.
Will they be the sort of.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, yeah, it's because it's basically the West coast of
Wales is basically the Atlantic Coast, but more sheltered because
you get island they are blocking everything.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah, so so therefore it's almost something whereby where they
say well this is perfect for human beings and saying
we have this great because it's going to improve tourism
revenue and there's a company here. But they forgot to
think about nature. And this has always been my argument
against right to road. So we've suddenly got while justice
(42:20):
is batting for the good guys, wonderful. Isn't that bizarre?
H from a sudden literally a crawling out of a
crevice like a canyon. What did you call them? What
did you call them, Richard? They were called crevice's or something.
These people who jump off clips, what are they called coasteering? Coasteers? Yes, well,
(42:45):
like like a coasteerer who suddenly arrived. It's our French friend, callum.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
What time do you call this late?
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, it depends if you've waffled on, could be twenty
minutes late. But if it's good content with forty five
minutes in.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Well, basically all the good content's gone. You've just arrived
now and it's just going to be you've lowered the tone.
That's basically for the last sort of fifteen minutes. That'll
be it.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, I mean, as the sort of resident trespasser and
access to water fiend in the group. Do you have
any awareness of this story at all? Do you want
to give a sound bite for something you know nothing about?
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah, No, I think it's very important. It's a really
important issue, and it's close to us, and I think
that we should we do more of it going forward.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Really right for the Lissa at home, Callum's not got
a clue what we are talking about, and so therefore,
but anyway, it's nice to see you. So why were
you late? I mean, what rural activity were you doing?
Speaker 3 (43:53):
I'm just going to say horses and then you'll understand
horses followed by my dinner had to be from an
m ands garage. So that's not a cry for help.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
But is that a different thing.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
That I mean that does exist. But I went for
the microwave option, which was with slim pickens. To be honest,
here we are, here we are yeah, And also it
was only because I got an email through that invited
me to the podcast that I nearly an hour ago.
(44:35):
And I've also been I see you you were chatting
on the patron spot, but I've been in a place
that is completely devoid of signal all day, so I've
not been able to do anything other than on my laptop.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Where have you been then that is devoid of signal?
Speaker 3 (44:55):
STATSID airport? Basically did you cause it?
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Did you cause the instant? And was that someone else?
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Which incident?
Speaker 1 (45:04):
It was a hazardous materials incident.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Yeah, he probably went unwrapped one of his flipping home
smoked things and it's set off all sorts of all
sorts of detectors. The poor old Spaniels are on you.
You're now sort of high as kites.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
I'd like to tell you I was doing some I
did put a thing into the into the Patreon group
to say this is real work. I had to just
put some very basic code into what's Richard Nigga's brain explode.
I had to put some code into the header and
the body of a thing which is liquid coding language
(45:47):
called liquid, which is Shopify, so an integration with Google
Merchant and also Google Tags Manager. Put that together, so
we could integrate that with a checkout to try that with.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Metrics translate that he's using ai slop to vibe code
his way through life.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Okay, how do we describe that like a hedge layer? Basically,
there was a there was a hedge that needed coppasing,
and I compassed it, but it was in a it
was a different hedge, species of plant that I've never
used before, in a different soil type, so I was
(46:31):
very confused.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
This is a ship description, right, better description how many
meters did you do? Right?
Speaker 3 (46:38):
So five?
Speaker 1 (46:41):
A better description is wherever you finished hedge laying. Today
Richard Calum comes along to finish off that section, but
he's using Late the Ladybird, my first hedgerow book, as
a guide on how to do it, and instead of binders,
he's gone to get some bits of strawberry licorice and
(47:02):
the long laces and he's using those to do the
binding on the top because it looks about right but
it will actually fall apart pretty quickly, but from a
distance it looks right right.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Okay, So okay, that's explained that, Thank you, Richard. So
basically you've been doing buncom Callum in Stanstead. On the hand,
have been laying proper hedges because we're back on the
tools again now we're over working in Thorny in Cambridge.
Here in this fence. Well, it wasn't wet and tomorrow
(47:34):
looks a bit dubious, but we're going to go with it.
We've dodged the showers and we have done one hundred
a bit meters. We've got another thirty seven to do
on this particular hedge tomorrow. So we're doing the old
non rain dance because we obviously can't work in the rain.
(47:55):
But it's funny because this time of the year is
so much leaf on and you have to sort of
work with it, and and then you realize you think,
oh you've got quite a lot of hedge, and then
there's actually not quite as much as you thought. So
it's not the prettiest, but I know it will grow.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
So as you be your slogan, oh yeah it's prettiest,
but I know it will grow.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yeah, that's what big girlfriends of mine have heard me
say that.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Somehow you'll thank me, but not now exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
But we went back interesting enough to Heaveningham Hall, which
is amazing place in Suffolk, to go and look at
some of the hedges that we did a couple of
years ago, and that is probably the best thing in
hedge laying really because you know, all the instagrammar hedge layers,
all they ever do is that they show all the
pretty laid pleachers and all the pretty pretty binding and
(48:53):
all that stuff. They never actually show. The important bit
is in two years time of what this thing looks like.
And that is the absolute bill and end all for me,
because it's no point laying a hedge and managing it
better if you don't go and say, well, this is
the reason why we've done all this thing. It's not
about the craft, it's about the graft. And wow, isn't
(49:16):
it incredible? Do you know what I was saying when
you were off fiddling around with horses and your AI
just actusations? Yeah, ye see airon horses, you know. Anyway,
the Richard that you know, I've been in Ireland this
weekend and here's two interesting things, particularly for you. Firstly,
(49:37):
the podcast was like the thing that actually set me
apart is because this is Ireland, so they were a
wash with superb authors and great users of language and whatnot.
So therefore they went Oh yeah, it's just another bloker
has written a book. Yeah, it's a bestseller. Big guy.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
He's got a radio on the internet.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
That is precisely it. He's got it's the podcast they
were going Country Slide. It's like the big thing. And
and right they mispronounced Richard's name Richard Pridducks, right right,
but Callum mckin ernie Riley. They were all over it.
They were you know, they warmed and it was like, yes,
(50:18):
and this is Richard here. He's got the Country Sloyd podcast,
which is I think you're most listened to. He's on it.
And there's this fellow called Richard, this great young fella
called Callum mcinernie Riley. And there was like a yes,
he's pushed from a gypsy.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
Which one is it?
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Mind?
Speaker 2 (50:43):
Absolutely? You know, everyone was suddenly saying, I think he's
one of the mcinernie Riley's from County Offully. He's not
the ghastly fellas.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
And I went to a I went to a hotel
in Galway and I just went into default mode, which
was like, uh, they said, what's your name? I said,
you know, Callum mac and Ernie Riley. You want me
to spell it, and she just looks at me like
I'd like I'd farted in the lobby and just sort
of walked over like that. No, you're like the third
(51:12):
one to check in and it's only ten thirty surprised.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
They're just disappointed it's not in Gaelic.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah, happens a bit like Wales in
that they have you know, everything has got it is
in both languages, Welsh and Welsh and and English and
there it's Gaelic and English. But because everything in Gaelic
seems to be ridiculously long, you know, it's you get
(51:41):
these road signs that are the size of a lorry
because they have to fill in this sort of you know,
stop and something with hyphens four times across it. It's bonkers.
It's a language I understand, and.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Welsian's margin better, but not.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
It depends where you are.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
Yeah, some of it can be some of it can
be pretty crazy as well.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
Like the comparison, because of how history works, there's a
lot of the Welsh too. English version of the Welsh,
aren't They aren't too dissimilar, whereas the Gaelic into English
translations are all over the place. The there are some
very descriptive as well. When you look at where they are.
It's sort of like this is that the town on
(52:27):
the hill in between two rivers or something like that
is what it means.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
Which is the Welsh language generally quite descriptive towards the
yes thing. Yes, microwave is poppty ping.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Isn't it. No, that's no, that's that's that's one. No,
that doesn't that doesn't exist. It's something that was a
Welsh joke, is that? Well? Someone I think it was
an Englishman telling a joke about the Welsh language that
they said, oh did you did you know that the
microwave that they don't have a proper word for microwaves.
They've got it popperty ping, and it's it's a lie, correct, Richard, that's.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Just microdon it's the Welsh ferm microwave. You get this
with a lot of place names, a lot of other things,
like the woodland. One of the woodlands we manage is
coid Namt, which is basically the woodland in the valley.
So there's a lot of that kind of thing. And
then there's you get it with the animal names as well.
(53:23):
So while garlic is cravagave here, which is basically goats.
It's like goat garlic effectively because it goes on the
side of on the side of hills and crags. And
then I'll leave the listeners to look up what jellyfish
is because locally we call it contey more and you
(53:44):
can work that one out yourselves.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
I reckon, I reckon. You know, I've got very.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Just like well carrots, one hundred things.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, I think I'm knowing what this is. Do you know?
I'm going to take an educated guess, and we would
need to go and edit out what my educated guests
would be.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Let's go to the after show and we can talk
about it there because that's Paywald and we can get
silly there. Andy, I've got some stories to tell. One
has got hedges in it, so we'll go into that.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
You can get the after show by being a subscriber
on Patreon, So go and support us. There lots of
you already do.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Bye bye bye
I've got a really bad lurgie, and if it gets
any worse, I'm just going to go and lie down
in the maize field and let the forager run over me.
I think it'd be better for everyone. I've been fighting
it with coffee and trying to keep the caffeine levels
at the right, you know, the right percentage, just to
(00:21):
fight it off. Although I was struggling to get my
resting heart rate below one hundred earlier, so I probably
should tweak it back down again. Yeah, So where have
you been?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh? Well, in my hand, which obviously for a podcast
isn't very good because people can't see it starting a glass, yeah,
is a glass of Paddy whiskey. So that gives a
clue as to where I was this weekend. I was
in Ireland.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Were you in the bit that likes you or the
bit that doesn't like you?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
They all like me. Everywhere likes me. I was down
in County off of which is the Irish Midlands. And
it's interesting place, the Irish Midlands, because it's a bit
like I think the English Midlands in the respect that
people travel through it to get to their other destinations.
(01:16):
If you like up in, I don't know Leeds. You
travel through Leicestershire or something like that, or Northamptonshire to
get down to your holiday on the Suffolk Coast or
dan and Devon or Cornwall or something like that. But
you never bother to stop me. And when was the
last time you ever heard anyone say I'm going on
holiday this year to Melton Mowbray. Yeah, no one ever
(01:36):
says that, do they. Well, it's a bit like that
in the Irish Midlands. But they're missing out on a
trick because it's superb There are lots of bogs. I
mean it's the bogs are incredible. But I went there.
Last time I went to Ireland was nineteen ninety seven
buying horses, and then that was before the Celtic Tiger roared,
(01:58):
and you know, it was quite a old world place.
And then I've suddenly sort of missed all the massive
boom that they had and bust and I'm now back
visiting there with their upward trajectory again. But it's like
the peat cutting. I was told that where these bogs were,
(02:18):
and they used to commercially cut pete. And for most
of you who will have bought a bag of compost
in the past. You'll see this thing called board Namona,
which was a company which was basically the peat cutting
business bar none in Ireland. And so they weren't just
(02:40):
cutting peat to go and make composts for gardeners to
go and fill the hanging baskets. They were doing it commercially,
which used to a huge number of the power stations
in Ireland used to burn peat. And then they everyone went, oh,
I actually hold on a second, cutting peat is really
bad and it's releasing all this carbon. So they gave
board Namona bad the contract to put up all the
(03:03):
wind turbines. So all across these amazing peat bogs and
wetlands where surprise, surprise, huge numbers of wildfoul go, there
are now wind turbines just waiting to chop all these
these wild fowl into little bits, which I thought, I
(03:26):
can see why a government might have done that, but
I think the teal and the widgeon are going, I
hate this, This is rubbish. Can you start cutting pete again?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, you've moved in the wrong direction, lads. So this
is it wasn't that long ago actually, or maybe it was.
Maybe it was twenty odd years ago, and we're just
getting old. But you used to be able to buy
bags of peat for your fire at certain petrol stations,
like particularly in the West Country in Wales and Lights,
it used to be peat for your fire. For you
(03:57):
young uns listening, I don't think we have any but
there's no one thirty five who listens to this, do
you think so?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
But I mean that even so, that means I'm twenty
years older than than our youngest listener, which is a
bit of worry. I'm like granddad, aren't I. Yeah, So anyway,
I was an island and it was great Gandalf but
with a shorter beard, quite neatly trimmed. Yes, I was
an island this weekend and it was great for the
hedgerow fest that Mount Brisco. It was mega and I
(04:24):
really enjoyed it. And it was a bit like Richard.
It reminded me of our exploits at Folk East, where
you suddenly realized that actually, you know, we have differences
in some cultural things, but actually we're largely pulling in
the same direction. And I found that exactly the same,
(04:45):
because you know, a hedgerow fest in this country would
probably be twenty three farmers telling them about us about
their hedgerows. There would be one over enthusiastic lady who
was going to go and give you a watson or
picture of just how one before the hedgerow is and
with death by powerpoints and seventy five slides, a couple
of hedge layers, it would be telling you just how
(05:07):
vital it is that we go and keep the ancient
craft of hedge laying alive, and how the Westmoland style
is vital, because if we don't have the Westman styling,
war will all die and then that'll be about it.
Not in Ireland, Oh no, no, no, no, not in Ireland.
Not in Ireland. What they do is, yes, they've got
some hedge layers. They've got me talking about with book.
They've got Richard Markham who's laying hedges beautifully for people.
(05:30):
But they've got world famous poets talking there. They've got
a string quartet who's playing a sort of a bunch
of things, and three world famous Irish actors who are
reading out poetry about trees and hedgerows. They've got a
lady who is she's not a basket weaver. She just
creates out of willow these sculptures that you are going
(05:53):
how on Earth. Did you do that? That's ridiculous. You've
got Actually there was a professional one of you who
knew you because it through your foraging. I think he
follows you on on on Twitter after go and dig
his name out. They had foraging professional forager on there.
They had a lady who runs forest schools in Ireland.
(06:17):
They had a couple of artists. They had someone who
then took the forage stuff that they found and was
one of Ireland sort of TV chefs, and he was
cooking up for everybody. And it's all being done in
this beautiful old Georgian farm and farmyard on a rainy
(06:40):
day in the middle of County Offaly. And there were
like people with dreadlocks. But there were farmers, uh, there
were organic farmers, there were veg growers. There were just
mums and dads with with a tribe of kids all there,
and they all knew one another, and not one one
(07:00):
of them had a crossword to say against one another,
because what they just seemed to sort of think, well,
we like the countryside, we like nature, we'd like to
see more hedge rows about. Well let's go and just
hold hands and go and do this. I walked in
to a yoga session by accident. I mean it was
quite shocked for the ladies when I walked in there.
(07:20):
I did have my clothes on, I say at the time, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I'll see. It's well, it's starting to sound more and
more like some sort of weird re enactment of local
hero or a waking ned or something like that. You've
just seemed to have have had this entire cultural experience,
which would also fit neatly into a ninety seven minute
whimsical comedy about this this Englishman who went over to
(07:46):
this quaint village in Ireland and met all these characters.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Said, oh man, it was it, But do you know
what it wasn't. It was culturally really quite elegant, and
it hadn't got this sort of you know, things didn't
fall off, and there wasn't a random cow that broke out.
It was really slickly done. But you didn't feel like
(08:13):
you were getting sold to or that there was some
political agenda they've got. I tell you what Ireland seems
to have got in it were in this. But if
this is a elevance of Ireland, if sorry a reference
to Ireland today, they seem to have got rid of tribalism,
and bearing in mind, this is a country that was
(08:34):
literally nyon destroyed by tribalism. What I saw at Hegero
Fest at Mount Brisco, they have managed to destroy tribalism completely,
and they just had all these people who went said
I'm having a grand day out here, and they were
listening to other people and learning about them. Were now, jeez,
that's interesting, you know, rather than going further through look terrible.
(08:58):
Can you imagine if we did this in England? What
would happen, Richard, if we did hedgerow Fest in England
with all those combinations.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Well, first of all, you'd, like you say, you'd never
get any of the hedge people to agree with each other,
because they all say that exactly their vernacular style is
the most important thing on earth, and never mind conservation
or anything like that. Then you would have every political
tribe overlaying on top of it. So you'd have blood
and soil fascism at one end with sort of bill
(09:27):
hooks over black shirts, and then you'd have at the
other end you'd have complete back to the soil communists
with crossed bill hooks and over the over on their
T shirts. And then somewhere in between. You'd have a
lot of nature writers who look at nature but never
actually touch it or do anything, and have got very
soft hands and all of which. Well, in fact, I've
(09:51):
just realized what it would be. It would be that
nature Summit thing that's just happened or just about to happen,
the Wild Summit.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Or oh yes, Wild Summit, wild wank Fest. I think
it ought to be called. I mean, there's they've got
one farmer in there, Martin Lynes, who from the Nature
Friendly Farming Network. I mean, the jury is slightly out
on him with a lot of people. You know, is
he a gamekeeper turned poacher? Is he a poacher turned gamekeeper?
(10:21):
Is he actually a poacher? Who is? You know? Not
would be a bit squeamish at the site of blood.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's I've just looked it up. It's we're recording this
on Tuesday. It comes out to patrons on Thursday and
public on Friday, so and it's on this Thursday. So
that's that's who's there. You would have just it would
have just happened if you're listening to this.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah, I've seen some of the other people who are
on there and they're supposed to be talking about how
farming and nature can go together, and that seems to
be a well they've got They've invited the head of
the RSPB, Becky Spate, they've invited to the chief executive
of the League Against Cruel Sports. What's those two? What
(11:06):
are their background in farming? Well, i've met Becky Space,
I can tell you none, you know nothing. What what
do they bring to the party. And my mate, what's
his name, Guy shrub Soul? He hates farmers. Well, I'm
you know, the feelings mutual, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Will just I'm just looking through quickly to make sure
none of our mates are there, so we haven't actually,
you know, any friendship. No, okay, Now, if you're there,
when you're a mate of hours, then you're no longer
a friend.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
No you know, yes, you have been. You've got now
a fat you've got a country slide fatoire against you?
Shall I tell you? Going back to Ireland a second.
When I was introduced to the I spoke about my
book twice because their Saturday and Sunday and I had
a book readings and interview with a lovely lady called
(12:03):
Mariad and she introduced me, but it was like, oh,
and he's also written this book. But it was basically,
it's all about Country Slide. We're big in Ireland, did
you know? I mean, yeah, we're big in Ireland. And
she was telling that the whole of the Irish Hedgero
Cognisanti who were there, that if they didn't listen to
(12:23):
Country Slide, then they were basically you know, they're no
longer a friend of hers, which was great stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Huh. Well, I noticed we've we've increased our audience in
the Netherlands, and I wondered whether we'd just suddenly made
it big there. But then I realized that if you
have a VPN map, that's the default setting for Europe
as it goes straight to the Netherlands. So it's just
whoever's got their VPN turned on is obviously also looking
at hedge porn in the literal sense.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
That's exactly it, Richard. So all the people who are going,
damn you, Kirstarman, you've stopped me looking at Now I'm
suddenly Dutch. I could live with the Dutch adverts. I'm
just going to Yes, I'm looking at and culturally broadening
my landscape.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I know, broadening your landscape. Are you on if I've
got this right? Are you on the Fallongong News Channel?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
That was that was unexpected, I know.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah. Well, basically they've got this program called Thought, British
Thought Leaders. You know that's worries, isn't it is that
I'm one of the leaders of thought in Britain.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And that we got rid of everyone else.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, basically that's it. That's it. You know, eventually you're
digging right down into the into the sub soil and
here he is. Yeah. It was a fascinating and you know,
you know what he's saying. I've had a lot of
requests to me. I've just been asked to speak at
the Oxford Farming Conference, for example, and you know, I'm
(14:00):
the afternoonner speaker for the National Agricultural Journalists Association, you
know there, you think that's quite cool. And I've had
this sort of rather left field request to speak on
this thing. I think I'd never heard of this, but
basically I think it's the Taiwanese I think is the
(14:22):
sort of anti communist Chinese and the Yanks got together
and they created this TV station the talks and gives
voice to people because they say that you know that
free speech has not been allowed, which I guess if
you're in China is yeah, that's not lo And yeah,
(14:42):
an amazing guy interviewed me, Adrian Lee. I think he's
called Who's an English fella with a I guess a
Taiwanese cameraman and I went into a rather swanky studio
not far from Westminster and had a lengthy chat. See
it's on front. So the day when Country Slide goes
(15:03):
out to the non patrons everyone else, yeah, there's there's
me on there talking about well, my thoughts that will
supposedly lead everyone into into a sort of more educated
place about the countryside and farming and conservation and where
(15:25):
I think is going wrong and where we'll not lots
going right.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Really, next time you do one of these things, can
you sort of give us a bit of heads up
and then I can suggest some questions to them, you know,
all the things I wasn't allowed to ask you at
Folk East. You know, like no, I can't even.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Say iocast no, no, no, that's not it, because look
I'm probably already now because I've appeared on this thing.
I'm now on the the sort of low down the
hit list. But I'm still on the hit list of
the Chinese after you. Yeah, exactly, So I'll be perfectly frank,
you know, questions from you to go and add to
(16:04):
my woes that the fact that there'll be a special
forces unit of the Chinese People's Army chasing after me. No,
I don't want you to add to my woes.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
They've got those specialist shovels as well, haven't they, Those
Chinese military shovels who make a big deal about that
you can chop through trees and things with sharpened edges.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Now, listen, I have got a disaster has befallen me
and many of us in the countryside. Not so much
you in Wales because you're already devolved. But today it
has been thanks to the freedom of information request by
(16:41):
the NFU, that countryside stewardship agreements will stop in December
this year. Yeah, that's a pretty big kick in the.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Goolies, particularly the time of year as well.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's crazy, you know, we've said on here cockopper, and
do you think this is Richard? You've got half a brain?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
This is what they?
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I used to think it was just that they panicked
and they pulled the plug. But I'm increasingly starting to think, no,
they actually do hate anything rural. I think anyone on
the labour side of things, and I try and sort
of say neutral because I don't like any of them.
But Labor must now realize that they're never going to
(17:30):
be in power again in the current form anywhere. They're
all going to split off into other parties or just
have to get rebooted again, and sort of the ghost
of Tony Blair will come in and puppet someone else
into existence, but that might not happen till twenty twenty nine,
and they've got a long time to play around with
the chessboard between now and then, and all they can
(17:51):
do is really annoy everyone who's going to vote for them.
And I do wonder whether that is they are pulling
every thing out of the rural space and pushing it
into the urban space because that's where their remaining votes
will be. And the CS is a very very it's
(18:12):
only seen as a rural thing. Well, that's just making
things good for farmers and paying farmers to not grow food.
And someone will have taken that sentence and said, right, well,
that's an easy cut, let's get rid of that. We're
doing enough with net zero?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Well do you think that's what I was going to ask?
Do you think with the net zero thing? Because I
see that in this great reshuffle, the two figures conspicuous
by the fact that they're still there, hanging on like
a turd on a blanket, is the Chancellor of the
Exchequer and the woeful energy Minister Ed Miliband. Now, if
(18:53):
you are going to achieve Ed Milliban's aims, I mean,
I don't know what Rachel Reeves is are. They just
seem to be you know, I don't know. She's just
flailing about, isn't she? But Ed Milliband, clearly, let's go okay,
let's look on the positive side. He has a vision
for the future. He seems to think that because we
(19:17):
suffer from in this country the slings and arrows of
global energy prices, because we're having to import so much
of our energy, yes, that we will be allegedly self
sufficient if we go for the green energy which he
is proposing, and the only way that he could get
(19:40):
the levels of an inverted Commas green energy which he
is after, to make ourselves remotely self sufficient and therefore
immune from from the global energy prices is to put
in the solar wind. And I don't know wherever he's
(20:01):
going to go and come up with next, and it
can only be done in the countryside. Is that do
you think where perhaps he's he's looking at the hand
of the farmer.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
The people. I think you're giving him too much credit.
I think there is just this well, we're doing net zero.
That's nature, that'll do you know? That's that their obligation
towards the planet and nature is being covered by the
fact that we're letting Norway drill for oil and gas
in the North Sea and then we'll buy it off them,
or we're letting impoverished people in Africa have terrible lives
(20:36):
mining out cobalt and lithium so that we can we
can have electric cars. You know, all of these This
this offset of putting it beyond beyond sight for everything
to do with net zero is an acceptable thing to
do for the planet, and therefore you don't need hederos.
It doesn't need to be local. I wonder whether some
(20:59):
kind of balance of calculation has happened without like, well,
that's vaguely green, so we'll just cut off this thing.
This looks expensive in Fiddley. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Mean, obviously I wait with the eager anticipation, and it
is probably a forlorn hope to wait that we are
going to see uproar from the RSPB, the Wildlife trusts
and all those people who were sort of claiming that
the Conservatives were literally worse than poule Pot when it
(21:32):
came to nature. I mean, clearly you've you've had some
things because it was a stretch for some of these
guys to actually understand and accept that inheritance tax was
going to inevitably have a negative impact on wildlife because
they they don't like farmers, you know, the RSPB, the
(21:54):
Wildlife trust and now they've built up in their mind
that they're the big bad guys. But now, I mean,
like you say, the gloves are clearly off. There is
something where the rural economy is a stuff here. I mean,
I'm saying this because it may well be, it may
possibly be not well be, may possibly be that the
(22:17):
SFI is going to gain all that money. They've said, well,
we didn't like these multi strands of elms, so therefore
we're only going to have one strand and that's going
to be a simplified version of ELMS, which is just
going to have the SFI options and it will make
life easier. It does sound quite socialist because what it
means is the government will have more role. We're taking
(22:38):
the control back from the farmers that was being given
to them by how ELMS worked is you had these
multiple strands through com size, stewardship and the SFI. We
have taking it back in control. So we're going to
tell you what you can do, which is a massive
worry because I mean, Christ, how on earth they're going
to go understand the intricacies of managing you know, even
(23:00):
just the suffolk. I mean you think of the vagaries
of the soil and climate, and just in one county
which is where SFI and comes TOI TOURISIP works so
well because people could take elements out of the two
things and make it work for them. But now no
nanny knows best leave it to uncle kir He'll tell
(23:24):
you what to do because he worked on a farm
apparently when he was a young man. Now I hasten
to add when he was a young man he lived
in Ryegate. Now, I don't know if you've ever been
to Ryegate. It's quite an attractive Surrey sort of once
once a market town, it's now where stockbrokers live. My
(23:45):
sister lives in Ryegate. She's an accountant. And you know,
I don't know what farming he was doing. I would
have thought probably most of the farming that goes on
there is probably data farming.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I worked on the Surrey Foto Mouth outbreak and we
had to drive a long way around to find that
animals that sort of qualified for the foot of mouth
foot of Mouth. So let's say we get to twenty
twenty nine before an election and they sort of pad
it out to the eleventh hour, so countryside stewardship goes
(24:16):
SFI is let's say the middle case scenario where there's
some money but not much and most of the sort
of higher tier and all that sort of stuff's gone. Yeah,
what could it be turned around in twenty twenty nine
with a new government, if a new government came in
which I'm going to put my money on a reform
plus somebody sort of in sort of a coalition, Yes,
(24:39):
could it be turned around? Or would it be too
late then? Because you've got four years of of I
mean nature doesn't take too long to undo itself. When
we're all we're pushing on the edges all the time.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
I think what the problem would be is that we're
gone so far, you know. I come back to the
fact we have. I had some favorable weather for insects
this year, so therefore my windscreen was covered in dead
insects when I drove anywhere. But that was not just
because it was a favorable year. It was the since
(25:15):
for the last sort of let's say decade, that increasingly
farmers were starting to embrace the idea of stewardship. Both
financially they thought that they could see sense in it,
but also holistically they could see that yes, okay, we
are the environmental conscience of Britain. Will go and go
(25:36):
with it to greater or lesser degrees. But it took
that long. So therefore, from ten years ago when I
actually set my business up as a hedge layer and
I was having to persuade farmers that this is good
for you, it's taken ten years so that now I've
got an order book, this full arm that I'm having
(25:57):
to wipe insects off my wind screen. And I think
that nature as a whole, and so many species had
got to such a parlor state of that line that
Amy and you would probably understand better being slightly more
on the ecology sort of knowledge scale. But you know,
(26:17):
when there's that when species are sustainable, I think they
were sort of dropping below that graph line of where
they were sustainable or not. And I think we'd managed
to put them just above that grass line, so they
were starting to increase exponentially. You've only got to remove,
you know, some small elements and they go back beneath
(26:39):
that graph line. And I think they will then plummet.
And I think there will be some species which did
need a lot of human help and government support to
farmers so that they could make that dippence, and I
think we'll see them go for a long, long while,
you know. And I liken where we are at the moment.
(27:00):
With the nineteen thirties, I think that we had a
huge agricultural depression. We were affected by global influences. You know,
the Wall Street crash, et cetera, et cetera. We're being
affected by global influences, which was COVID, Brexit was obviously
a big culture and financial shock, and also that lunatic
(27:23):
in the Kremlin. So those three things, they all filter
down and the thing that usually takes the biggest hit
is nature because as soon as you go and bugger
about with farmland, then it falls down. So to answer
your question, I think that we could see a lot
of really serious species declines that may never come back
(27:46):
as a result of this. And the question will be,
is that how reform jump because you see reform might
go and say, well, okay, boys, we're going to go
maximum product. We're going to go make ourselves much more
reliant upon British food. We're going to produce, produce, It's
(28:07):
almost you know, Trump's drill, baby drill, We're going to
be plow, baby plow. Now. The problem is with that
we then go back to sort of nineteen eighties where
we're going, yeah, we're making loads of food here and
this is great. But nature was going, oh my god,
I'm dying. And so I think one of the biggest things.
And I know that the Clayer on it, I know
(28:28):
the GWC tear on it. I should imagine that Tim
Bonner has got his little machiavellian hands in it too.
Is they are probably trying to have serious conversations with
reform at the moment and say, you need to remember
(28:48):
that farmers had been prepared to do the good stuff
for nature as well as the good stuff for food.
You know. I mean, we've got to try and encourage
reform to not go plow, baby plow. We've got to
try and encourage them to not be blood and soil.
(29:09):
We've got to try and encourage them to actually go
and do what the sfi Elms and countrysized Stewarty was doing,
which was which was actually trying to help us our
farms be more sustainable and farmer nature.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And I've got a slight worry that we might end
up with an agg policy in four years time that
looks a little bit like the average viewer's impression of
agriculture based on Clarkson's farm. You know that they'll look
at that and say, well, there's too much red tape,
(29:45):
and harvest are hard and these take too long, and
we've got to keep Caleb in a job, and which
not not necessarily untrue, but it does miss out on
the sort of the bureau bureaucratic machine that is required
to a degree in order to force people to give
a little bit of space for nature in between them,
(30:05):
give them the incentive to do it.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yes, I can agree more. And I believe that the
Country Landowners Association are talking to reform and they are
trying to give them the rural business angle. And I think,
I mean, look, okay, I am, I'm If I were
(30:32):
to put my political cards on the table at the moment,
I would probably vote for Satan as long as he
was standing in opposition to the Labor Party. But I
think that unless you are living in a cave, it
is likely unless something goes completely mental that like you say,
(30:56):
we're going to get a reform with others government, possibly
just a reform, but I don't know. We haven't got
crystal balls. And if we could predict it were, we'd
be rich men because we'd be gambling on all sorts
of markets. But I would think that's going in. The
one thing we can say, which is a bonus is
that Nigel Farage, who is essentially reform at the moment.
(31:21):
You know, the other guys, who the thick are they?
You know, no one knows who they are. He likes
a bit of shooting, he likes a bit of country life.
He likes putting his flat cap on. He likes sort
of hobnobbing with a few guys in tweed, and he
likes talking to the working man. So therefore I think
(31:45):
that he will take probably the advice of some bright farmers.
So we might we might be. But christ you wouldn't
want to be have to make policy after this shower
that we've got at the moment.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
No, And it's you and I both, I mean you
a little bit more than me, but we both have
experience of talking directly to politicians, directly to MPs, directly
to senior civil servants about matters affecting the countryside and
policy and stuff, you know, very very recently, and you
both both of us have spoken, you know, spent some
(32:21):
time on different projects with Daniel Zeichner, who's you know,
recently departed from DEFRA, on different things. When you look
at everyone as an individual in these things, you can
have the discussion with them, but it's the machine of
the party and the machine of the civil service or
in one go. This is something that if you haven't
(32:41):
experienced it directly, it's sort of horrifying to discover that
you have humans and then you have this amorphous blob
of a machine that it's like a fog. It sort
of seeps into everything and you can't waft it away,
and it's no matter what you do with that person,
that fog is still there and it doesn't change quickly.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I agree, and I think if you actually wanted, I
mean the sudden and you know, the freedom of information
thing that the NF you have gone by comeside stewardship
is disastrous. But if you actually think, okay, what's the
biggest kick in the bulls to farming that's happened in
this reshuffle and the worst thing they did was Daniel Zeichner.
(33:25):
Daniel Zeichner, I've met the man right now. I don't
like his politics, but he was a man who had
spent five years as the shadow Farming Minister, so he
knew the issues inside and out. I've had everyone from
Ian Coghill saying he was an honorable and good man
(33:47):
who knew what he was talking about, through to David Barker,
who's one of the senior farmers in Suffolk, former chairman
of the Suffolk Agricultural Association, still chairman of the dis
NFU saying, who I also hastened to add was chairman
of a conservative constituency here saying I can work with
(34:09):
that man, and they've taken him away. Angela Eagle, what
flipping relevance has she gone, I mean.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I'm not allowed to say where I was working with
Daniel on something. I don't think I'm allowed to say,
so I'm not going to. But yeah, respectful, open on
every issue. He would say, this is my current position,
this is what I'm going to now spend time listening
earnestly to every single person in this room, so much
(34:43):
so that what I think I might have been drunk
at the time. But I approached him at the end
of one of the evenings and said, look, you have
impressed me spectacularly, Bay by how much you have listened.
You know you have, because I didn't know about Daniel
before that point, but he I just thanked him for listening,
(35:04):
because that's something you don't feel that's happens very often
in the countryside. And yeah, Zeichner I liked because, yeah,
I felt I could work with him, and he is very,
very sad to see him go. And I think that
character and there's a sort of a drop in talent,
maybe in who we have coming up next, But I
(35:26):
don't know maybe they'll be maybe they'll be amazing, but
there's a worrying in my waters.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, I can agree more so moving on, then, here's
something that you know more about than I. Now you
countryslide listeners will know that my view of the rights
to roam movement.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Oh yes, se Low Low.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
You know, if you think about where a snake's penis is,
think lower than that. Right? But now so, But I'm
also I wouldn't probably be accused of being although I have,
and I have even written it in my book that
I have a strong and sneaking regard for Mark Avery.
(36:17):
I don't really like Wild Justice because I find Ruth
Tingay and Chris Packham a little bit boring and just
argumentative and just sort of like frothing at the mouth rabid.
But the three of them together, Avery, Tinga, Packham are
wild Justice. You know. They always sound like something like
(36:37):
an eighties cartoon that you could have a very large orchestra. Again,
it's Wild Justice. Anyway. They have come out and done
something that I wholeheartedly agree with, and the Adventure Center
quashed over environmental concerns courtesy of the ambulance chasing lawyers
(36:58):
that they employ and their own thing. So right now
you understand this's what's happened there.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
So this is okay. So it's an outdoor center in
I think it's Pembrokeshire, so bottom left a bit of
whales they were they were hoping. I think it's either
a new outdoor center or they wanted to expand. But
it was on the coast and it's looking at at
it cursorily this morning. It's it's to do with CoA
(37:31):
steering rather than anything else. So co steering is co steering.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, you come along. It's sort of thing you do
on a stag do or a hendo or part of it.
It's like a half day activity thing that you book
in to do and then you get another group in
for the other half of the day. So you come along.
You wear wetsuits and boots and helmets and floatation vest
things called PFDs personal floatation devices and then some outdoor
(37:59):
instruction who really wanted to be a mountaineer but has
actually ended up being stuck doing coasteering because that's where
the good money is. They take you out and you
sort of scramble along the rocks and then jump into
the water at deep sections and scramble up and out
of it. It is quite good fun, but it takes
You can't do it on every single bit of coast
because you need rocks, you need some vertical drops, and
(38:22):
ideally it needs to be in a cove because you
want some shelter from swell. So you can't have a
long fetch. You can't have a big expanse of sea
that then blows huge waves and crashes onto it because
that will kill people. You want to be able to
still run your activity in most conditions apart from big storms.
(38:43):
So that's what they wanted to do, and it would
have pushed people and these activities into a sensitive cove
and sensitive nesting habitat. So there is already issues with this.
So there's up on angles up in here in North Wales.
We've got a North Stack and South Stack. We've got these,
(39:04):
we've got there's a big lighthouse as offshore there that
you can sort of walk down to, and the RSPB.
You've got the headland there, there's a big bird reserve
and they there's climbing there and there's coasteering and then
there are voluntary bands on anyone entering it during nesting
season because of the huge disturbance that's there for it,
and there's a lot of debate about it. Before there's
(39:28):
a lot of debate about the other impacts of these
outdoor activities, but it's kind of overshadowed by the fact
that within the outdoor tourism sector things like coasteering and
gorge walking are something you can do all year round.
It doesn't, and it's people paid quite a bit of
money to do it, and you can run through quite
a few groups in a day, so there has to
(39:51):
be cooperative working between providers at these venues because often
they don't own the bit of crag they're jumping into
the sea from. So it's where you park, where you meet,
the groups, where everyone goes for a p All of
these things become points of pressure, not just ecological ones.
Gorge Walking is actually quite a good parallel to this
because gorges so waterfalls going down into narrow slots in
(40:15):
the rock are sensitive habitats in their own right for
mosses and briophytes and all sorts of other things, often
surrounded by ancient nile trees up at the top that
people then want to strap slings to and anchor off
to absail into. So there's the avon the gorge here
in North Wales, which is which is a very sensitive
(40:37):
habitat but also one of the most popular gorge walking
spots in the UK. So there's a whole code of
practice for it, but it doesn't go far enough. And
you know humans are going to win in this equation,
so lots of precedent for it, lots of precedent for
how much disturbance there would be, and a broken clock
(40:58):
is still right trice to day. While Justice I think
were correct on this one, but it was. Yeah, it
was curiously missing from the right to Rome argument that
just give people place spaces and they'll spread out and
they'll do stuff. Well, no, not if they all want
to go to the same bit.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
So do you think that this is actually wild Justice
saying oi righte to Rome, your policies are, or your suggestions,
your recommendations, the things you're lobbying for are exactly this,
Because what they're saying here is that you know people
(41:36):
when people are going to go into these places you
say shelter coves and whatnot, which probably are also the
sheltered coves where I don't know what Razor Bills, Gillie Motts.
Will they be the sort of.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, yeah, it's because it's basically the West coast of
Wales is basically the Atlantic Coast, but more sheltered because
you get island they are blocking everything.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah, so so therefore it's almost something whereby where they
say well this is perfect for human beings and saying
we have this great because it's going to improve tourism
revenue and there's a company here. But they forgot to
think about nature. And this has always been my argument
against right to road. So we've suddenly got while justice
(42:20):
is batting for the good guys, wonderful. Isn't that bizarre?
H from a sudden literally a crawling out of a
crevice like a canyon. What did you call them? What
did you call them, Richard? They were called crevice's or something.
These people who jump off clips, what are they called coasteering? Coasteers? Yes, well,
(42:45):
like like a coasteerer who suddenly arrived. It's our French friend, callum.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
What time do you call this late?
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, it depends if you've waffled on, could be twenty
minutes late. But if it's good content with forty five
minutes in.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Well, basically all the good content's gone. You've just arrived
now and it's just going to be you've lowered the tone.
That's basically for the last sort of fifteen minutes. That'll
be it.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, I mean, as the sort of resident trespasser and
access to water fiend in the group. Do you have
any awareness of this story at all? Do you want
to give a sound bite for something you know nothing about?
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah, No, I think it's very important. It's a really
important issue, and it's close to us, and I think
that we should we do more of it going forward.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Really right for the Lissa at home, Callum's not got
a clue what we are talking about, and so therefore,
but anyway, it's nice to see you. So why were
you late? I mean, what rural activity were you doing?
Speaker 3 (43:53):
I'm just going to say horses and then you'll understand
horses followed by my dinner had to be from an
m ands garage. So that's not a cry for help.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
But is that a different thing.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
That I mean that does exist. But I went for
the microwave option, which was with slim pickens. To be honest,
here we are, here we are yeah, And also it
was only because I got an email through that invited
me to the podcast that I nearly an hour ago.
(44:35):
And I've also been I see you you were chatting
on the patron spot, but I've been in a place
that is completely devoid of signal all day, so I've
not been able to do anything other than on my laptop.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Where have you been then that is devoid of signal?
Speaker 3 (44:55):
STATSID airport? Basically did you cause it?
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Did you cause the instant? And was that someone else?
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Which incident?
Speaker 1 (45:04):
It was a hazardous materials incident.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Yeah, he probably went unwrapped one of his flipping home
smoked things and it's set off all sorts of all
sorts of detectors. The poor old Spaniels are on you.
You're now sort of high as kites.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
I'd like to tell you I was doing some I
did put a thing into the into the Patreon group
to say this is real work. I had to just
put some very basic code into what's Richard Nigga's brain explode.
I had to put some code into the header and
the body of a thing which is liquid coding language
(45:47):
called liquid, which is Shopify, so an integration with Google
Merchant and also Google Tags Manager. Put that together, so
we could integrate that with a checkout to try that with.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Metrics translate that he's using ai slop to vibe code
his way through life.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Okay, how do we describe that like a hedge layer? Basically,
there was a there was a hedge that needed coppasing,
and I compassed it, but it was in a it
was a different hedge, species of plant that I've never
used before, in a different soil type, so I was
(46:31):
very confused.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
This is a ship description, right, better description how many
meters did you do? Right?
Speaker 3 (46:38):
So five?
Speaker 1 (46:41):
A better description is wherever you finished hedge laying. Today
Richard Calum comes along to finish off that section, but
he's using Late the Ladybird, my first hedgerow book, as
a guide on how to do it, and instead of binders,
he's gone to get some bits of strawberry licorice and
(47:02):
the long laces and he's using those to do the
binding on the top because it looks about right but
it will actually fall apart pretty quickly, but from a
distance it looks right right.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Okay, So okay, that's explained that, Thank you, Richard. So
basically you've been doing buncom Callum in Stanstead. On the hand,
have been laying proper hedges because we're back on the
tools again now we're over working in Thorny in Cambridge.
Here in this fence. Well, it wasn't wet and tomorrow
(47:34):
looks a bit dubious, but we're going to go with it.
We've dodged the showers and we have done one hundred
a bit meters. We've got another thirty seven to do
on this particular hedge tomorrow. So we're doing the old
non rain dance because we obviously can't work in the rain.
(47:55):
But it's funny because this time of the year is
so much leaf on and you have to sort of
work with it, and and then you realize you think,
oh you've got quite a lot of hedge, and then
there's actually not quite as much as you thought. So
it's not the prettiest, but I know it will grow.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
So as you be your slogan, oh yeah it's prettiest,
but I know it will grow.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yeah, that's what big girlfriends of mine have heard me
say that.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Somehow you'll thank me, but not now exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
But we went back interesting enough to Heaveningham Hall, which
is amazing place in Suffolk, to go and look at
some of the hedges that we did a couple of
years ago, and that is probably the best thing in
hedge laying really because you know, all the instagrammar hedge layers,
all they ever do is that they show all the
pretty laid pleachers and all the pretty pretty binding and
(48:53):
all that stuff. They never actually show. The important bit
is in two years time of what this thing looks like.
And that is the absolute bill and end all for me,
because it's no point laying a hedge and managing it
better if you don't go and say, well, this is
the reason why we've done all this thing. It's not
about the craft, it's about the graft. And wow, isn't
(49:16):
it incredible? Do you know what I was saying when
you were off fiddling around with horses and your AI
just actusations? Yeah, ye see airon horses, you know. Anyway,
the Richard that you know, I've been in Ireland this
weekend and here's two interesting things, particularly for you. Firstly,
(49:37):
the podcast was like the thing that actually set me
apart is because this is Ireland, so they were a
wash with superb authors and great users of language and whatnot.
So therefore they went Oh yeah, it's just another bloker
has written a book. Yeah, it's a bestseller. Big guy.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
He's got a radio on the internet.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
That is precisely it. He's got it's the podcast they
were going Country Slide. It's like the big thing. And
and right they mispronounced Richard's name Richard Pridducks, right right,
but Callum mckin ernie Riley. They were all over it.
They were you know, they warmed and it was like, yes,
(50:18):
and this is Richard here. He's got the Country Sloyd podcast,
which is I think you're most listened to. He's on it.
And there's this fellow called Richard, this great young fella
called Callum mcinernie Riley. And there was like a yes,
he's pushed from a gypsy.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
Which one is it?
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Mind?
Speaker 2 (50:43):
Absolutely? You know, everyone was suddenly saying, I think he's
one of the mcinernie Riley's from County Offully. He's not
the ghastly fellas.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
And I went to a I went to a hotel
in Galway and I just went into default mode, which
was like, uh, they said, what's your name? I said,
you know, Callum mac and Ernie Riley. You want me
to spell it, and she just looks at me like
I'd like I'd farted in the lobby and just sort
of walked over like that. No, you're like the third
(51:12):
one to check in and it's only ten thirty surprised.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
They're just disappointed it's not in Gaelic.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah, happens a bit like Wales in
that they have you know, everything has got it is
in both languages, Welsh and Welsh and and English and
there it's Gaelic and English. But because everything in Gaelic
seems to be ridiculously long, you know, it's you get
(51:41):
these road signs that are the size of a lorry
because they have to fill in this sort of you know,
stop and something with hyphens four times across it. It's bonkers.
It's a language I understand, and.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Welsian's margin better, but not.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
It depends where you are.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
Yeah, some of it can be some of it can
be pretty crazy as well.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
Like the comparison, because of how history works, there's a
lot of the Welsh too. English version of the Welsh,
aren't They aren't too dissimilar, whereas the Gaelic into English
translations are all over the place. The there are some
very descriptive as well. When you look at where they are.
It's sort of like this is that the town on
(52:27):
the hill in between two rivers or something like that
is what it means.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
Which is the Welsh language generally quite descriptive towards the
yes thing. Yes, microwave is poppty ping.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Isn't it. No, that's no, that's that's that's one. No,
that doesn't that doesn't exist. It's something that was a
Welsh joke, is that? Well? Someone I think it was
an Englishman telling a joke about the Welsh language that
they said, oh did you did you know that the
microwave that they don't have a proper word for microwaves.
They've got it popperty ping, and it's it's a lie, correct, Richard, that's.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Just microdon it's the Welsh ferm microwave. You get this
with a lot of place names, a lot of other things,
like the woodland. One of the woodlands we manage is
coid Namt, which is basically the woodland in the valley.
So there's a lot of that kind of thing. And
then there's you get it with the animal names as well.
(53:23):
So while garlic is cravagave here, which is basically goats.
It's like goat garlic effectively because it goes on the
side of on the side of hills and crags. And
then I'll leave the listeners to look up what jellyfish
is because locally we call it contey more and you
(53:44):
can work that one out yourselves.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
I reckon, I reckon. You know, I've got very.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Just like well carrots, one hundred things.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, I think I'm knowing what this is. Do you know?
I'm going to take an educated guess, and we would
need to go and edit out what my educated guests
would be.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Let's go to the after show and we can talk
about it there because that's Paywald and we can get
silly there. Andy, I've got some stories to tell. One
has got hedges in it, so we'll go into that.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
You can get the after show by being a subscriber
on Patreon, So go and support us. There lots of
you already do.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Bye bye bye
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