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 1st September 2019 Rudloe litter pick sees, in the title pictures, Dave at Rudloe Fiveways and Howard on the A4 below Copenacre (we don't usually venture that far east but this is on the return leg of a circuit whose outward leg is down the Bradford Road as far as the byway beyond the golf superstore)
Brian, Madeleine, Meg, Adam, Gordon, Rod, Rob and Dave awaiting the off; John has just arrived out of picture, Mike has already ventured off down Westwells Road and Howard was a late arrival which made a round dozen
Howard (in the shadow of the hedge) and Dave in the Bradford Road close to the entrance to Rudloe Estate
Lovely country view eh! This is the 15-acre field 'below' Rudloe, the former site of a proposed new slope shaft for Hartham Quarry. However, an application has now been made for a slope shaft at Rudloe Firs, leaving this field available for ...
... development of course. A 15-acre field bought by the Johnston organisation for £1,200 just last year has morphed from a stone mine to a gold mine with development farmland at £1 million per acre in southern England. Simples (if you're a landowner).
An R-reg (from opaque rear plate) BMW with no front number plate had just accelerated to about 75mph here but when he saw me, with hi-viz and camera, he screeched to a complete stop. He then crept forward and we exchanged words.
Howard in the Bradford Road; the cyclist in the distance had said "thank you" when he passed.
No one can recall Wiltshire Council cutting back verges to within an inch of their lives in August. This is the brow of Box Hill on the return leg of the litter pick; the verge twixt Chapel Plaister and (big) Fiveways has also been scalped as has ...
... the verge and hedgerow on the Bradford Road. One wonders what Wiltshire Council is playing at; with cuts to essential services, why are they both wasting money on such unnecessary tasks and, at the same time, trashing the environment.
The following is the essence of an email sent to Wiltshire Council on 2nd September 2019:
No one in this neck of the woods can recall Wiltshire Council cutting back hedgerows and verges to within an inch of their lives in August. There has been what appears to be overly-severe cutting back on the B3109 between Chapel Plaister and Fiveways, again on the B3109 between Rudloe and Pickwick and on the A4 at the brow of Box Hill.
So, why have you done this, what appears to be, unnecessary cutting back this year both in a time of relative austerity and when we are urged by environmental organisations (and by our common sense) to keep as much as possible of our environment 'wild' in order to benefit wildlife (and the planet!).
The results of our labours this month - this will be collected by Wiltshire Council on Monday 2nd September
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