Budleigh Past and Present

The primroses came out early this year, heralding the arrival of spring. And now with May Day we enter a new season.   It’s no surprise that this pretty plant has been adopted as our county flower,   decorating as it does, in the words of the official website “countless miles of Devon's hedgerows and roadside verges in the early months of the year.” The flower has been chosen also for its value as a symbol of conservation.   “Common species such as the Primrose are often useful indicators of the world around us,” I read a little further on the site.   “Unless we succeed in maintaining the status of such common plants, we stand little chance in saving those habitats and species that are already rare or threatened. By promoting the conservation of the Primrose, we can help to look after the many habitats in which it is fundamental for growth and the many species that are typically found along side it.”   ...

With our landscape currently being battered by unusually stormy weather the forthcoming talk should be of special interest. Dr Sam Bridgewater, Conservation Manager of the Pebblebed Heaths, and David Daniel of the Otter Valley Association will talk about the way human settlement and economic activity interact with the underlying geology and ecology of the Lower Otter Valley, to produce the landscape we see today. Their talks will be based on presentations they were asked to give to a group of landscape and engineering third year students from Bath University as background to a project being conducted in collaboration with Bicton College. David Daniel is well known as a speaker on the history and geography of the Lower Otter Valley. Dr Bridgewater has been Nature Conservation Manager for the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths (EDPH) and the River Otter Estuary since November 2012. He is responsible for the management of the 2,800 acres of heaths - which lie b...

    The Victoria and Albert Museum , London Image credit: Andreas Praefcke Visiting one of our national institutions like the British Museum or the V&A brings home to you the big difference between them and little outfits like Fairlynch. It’s money of course. Volunteer-run museums such as Budleigh Salterton’s operate on a relative shoestring, frequently running at a loss because of the cost of maintenance both of the building and of the environmental conditions needed to conserve artefacts.       Amanita muscaria (fly agaric)    Image credit: Michael Maggs   Our damp English autumn is a time for fungi foragers, for mushrooms, for spectacular toadstools like this, and of course for mould. Yesterday I remembered too late that I’d left my smart new gardening gloves in the potting shed at the end of the summer. When I went to rescue   them they’d changed col...

There's always something going on in Budleigh Salterton in spite of what some meanies say. 'Sponge throwing'? Why not? We'd heard it was a charity event involving local dignitaries, and there was even a rumour that one of them would be getting a soaking, standing in the stocks and wearing his regalia. It was all happening in a local resident's garden with an exhibition set up in a marquee, and bizarrely the day's theme was sponges. Anyway off we went and sure enough there was the dignitary looking pretty wet and bedraggled but smiling away, calling out between sponges "It's all in a good cause! Come on, sponge my face!"   Very sporting of him we thought.   The good cause was the Marine Conservation Society, and the sponge theme was all to do with the bicentenary of the man who used to live in this charming little cottage on Fore Street Hill. It's called Umbrella Cottage, apparently because the porch, now thatch...