Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.
Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.
Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!
Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.
Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/
It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.
Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.
The main Litter page is becoming full so from now (June 2018) on each month's litter pick will have its own page. The summer months are difficult for litter picking as plant growth hides most of it but we will press on regardless. Also on lovely summer days, like 3rd June was, litter picking isn't high on the list of domestic priorities. This month's photos show most of the group at the start and end of the pick but I was alone on my Bradford Road pick (I hadn't had a shower for some days) so the pictures taken during the pick focus on the Rudloe environment. The title photos are from the 'special' 13th and 22nd July litter picks - see articles and photos below.
Most of the group at the start of the June 2018 Rudloe litter pick. Varian up to no good at the back.
A rural, Rudloe scene on the Bradford Road but the government has sold local communities down the river with its promises of local decision making. Bradford Road will soon be urbanised and this scene will be consigned to history.
The last patch of miscanthus twixt the Rudloe-Hudswell byway and Skynet Drive. This year's crop was harvested in April so this is about two months' growth.
Fine new section of dry stone wall on Bradford Road below Rudloe
Corsham is creeping up the Bradford Road towards Rudloe in spite of all County and local plans insisting that a strategic gap should be maintained
Dog rose in Skynet Drive in a large bramble patch which is a haven for wildlife. This, like the Bradford Road trees, will be consigned to history and photographic archives.
The remote barn will soon be surrounded by eighty-eight unnecessary houses (the 2013 Rudloe Housing Needs Survey found that eleven new homes were needed in Rudloe) on greenfield land
The tree canopy in Bradford Road. There are no other such canopies along its length between Corsham and Bradford-on-Avon.
The Bradford Road trees at left will be removed to facilitate the unnecessary, Bellway, greenfield development of eighty-eight houses
A field maple frames the distant Redcliffe development of 170 houses on another greenfield site twixt Bradford Road and Park Lane
A zoomed shot of the Redcliffe development filling the required (by County and local plans) 'strategic gap' between Corsham and Rudloe
Another view of that Redcliffe, greenfield development this time framed by a Bradford Road horse chestnut
Ah yes, the litter pick - here's some of the crew at the end of the pick
13th July 2018 - the title photographs show a 'bag for life' in the Bradford Road.
The 'bag for life' contained five used (of course) nappies so could, aptly, be renamed a 'bag for shit'. I would imagine that the perpetrator is a local (it would have been hard to chuck this lot from a passing car but you never know!) family/mother/father/whatever with a baby who shops at Aldi (the 'bag for life' is Aldi's).
Having gathered, nicely, this lot together, one carried them to the Rudloe bus stop (see picture) and reported it as a fly tip to Wiltshire Council. But whether this lot is in the hedge or in a landfill it makes little difference to the big picture - 'we' have made and are making an almighty mess of this ancient planet in just a few generations. The rubbish was 'replaced' by road kill, a muntjac (see picture), just a few days later.
The rubbish in Bradford Road, on 13th July 2018, before the 'gathering together'
The rubbish, gathered together, at the Rudloe bus stop on 13th July 2018
Just a week later, a muntjac has become another victim of our car culture at the same spot. The first car away from the temporary traffic lights further down the road was a sporty BMW which reached about 90 mph by the bend below Rudloe.
Walk up/down Bradford Road (or indeed any arterial road) and you will see drivers behaving like maniacs. Here's a Ford Focus overtaking a motorhome in spite of an oncoming vehicle. It will have to stop at traffic lights just seconds later.
22nd July 2018 and Christmas comes early to Boxfields Road (see title picture)
France is a wonderful country; the only trouble is its full of the French; England is a wonderful country; the only trouble is ... This Christmas tree was undoubtedly in some English garden until a few days ago when its owner decided to share the love with the rest of us by chucking it into the verge, on top of the comfrey that graces the eastern end of Boxfields Road. If only he/she had placed it nicely by the side of the road (as I now have done), passers-by could have admired it until its removal by Wiltshire Council. Also by the Boxfields Road 'passing place' (I'll have a moan about these signs on another occasion) is a small, plastic container and a pile of used bog paper (could be mud but I doubt it in this weather).
In a recent TV article on the Salisbury novichok affair, an 'official' of some kind stated that people should not pick up anything that they themselves had not dropped. Could this be the end of litter picking enterprises? I think not ... we shouldn't be further infected through the fears perpetuated by the 24-hour news industry.
The 'fear' of discarded stuff has even crept into the lives of the younger generations. On a recent outing, our granddaughter went to pick up something that looked interesting whereupon our grandson called out "Don't touch that, it might contain Stokavitch". The word Stokavich continues to be used in the family's vocabulary.
The interim resting place for our Christmas tree having been pulled out from the comfrey that it was lying on top of
The interim, final resting place for our Christmas tree. This is the spot where, each month, the Rudloe Wombles place collected litter. Wiltshire Council's (idverde) rubbish collection truck passed on Monday (23/7) morning and didn't pick it up!
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