Changes

After weeks of slow progress towards spring there's now some movement. No coltsfoot yet but curlews have been flying over for a week now and yesterday there were chiff chaffs at the edge of the woods. Blackbird, song thrush and mistle thrush were singing away gustily.

On the debit side an increase in litter can almost certainly be put down to mountain bikers. When I mentioned this before the blog was subjected to an orchestrated campaign of abuse from MTBers. They divided into mainly two groups. One comprised those who knew little vocabulary outside 4 letter words. The other was frankly in denial, claiming that all who ride mountain bikes are like themselves who only used special drinks containers so MTBers could not possibly be responsible. These latter people are a menace because they have persuaded themselves that everybody who has chosen their particular form of activity behaves exactly like them. Their indignation became increasingly hysterical after my post was copied onto their message board by one biker. What was fascinating was that this biker has his own website on which he had himself been complaining of other bikers leaving drinks containers on one of his favourite routes!!

But the biggest problem here is SWT who refuse to do anything about the appalling damage done by MTBers to the route from Devil's Elbow to Shorts Lane. Some regular walkers on Blacka are now starting to talk about banning bikes from Blacka altogether. Not fair on the responsible ones of course, but what do they suggest?

Regrettably I've had to restrict comments to those who are willing to identify themselves. Who is to blame for this? Well, MTBers of course.