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.

STOP littering our streets ... John found this sign in the beech woodland on the Bradford Road during our 4th July 2021 litter pick. There was quite a good turnout in spite of the weather - see photo below of the 10 o'clock, pre-pick gathering at the junction of Leafy Lane and Boxfields Road.

Mandatory McDonalds McCrap McPackaging is, as the reader will be aware, the most common litter item. Below we see a few items discarded in the Bradford Road verge. The most recent McDonalds TV ad switches from scene to scene to scene with people laughing, just laughing. But laughing at what? I guess the fact that they discard their detritus at will and rely on mugs like us to pick it up. It seems they are so indifferent to their actions that they even leave their receipts with name and address showing. Here, a Mr/Mrs/Ms Pearce of Eider Avenue, Lyneham has ordered a McCrappy through Just Eat, perhaps scoffed it on the way to work (here at Rudloe?) and chucked the remnants from the car window.

1st August 2021 and the litter is hard to find in the verdant verges but rather a verdant verge than one severed to within a centimetre of its life. From a study in sciencedirect.com (the study may be found in the .pdf file below) we find such things as: It is thus surprising that verges are often excluded from studies assessing the value of urban greenspace, especially as they can support considerable biodiversity AND Roadside vegetation is particularly beneficial for enhancing air quality due to its proximity to traffic AND the importance of maximising road verges contribution to mitigating flood risk AND SO ON. Only last month we found a previously unseen orchid in the Bradford Road verge. The title picture and other pictures in this article illustrate the flourishing Bradford Road verge.

On Friday (30th July) we passed the McDonald's (formerly Sainsbury's, formerly Chequers) roundabout in Chippenham twice (outward and inward). On both occasions, there was a tailback from the McDonald's drive-thru counter onto the roundabout and up the A350. On the outward leg, an articulated lorry having been queueing in the McDonald's lane, realised what was going on and, attempting to pull out, was straddling both lanes. Hardly surprising then that the morons responsible for this then chuck their detritus out of their vehicle windows when passing Rudloe (and anywhere/everywhere else).

Around the turn of the century, the United Nations undertook a worldwide water quality survey encompassing 122 nations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. The country that had the worst water quality in the world was a First World country, Belgium. On BBC World Service, the interviewing journalist expressed surprise to the UN representative that a First World country was at the bottom of the pile. The problem was, apparently, industrial pollution and agricultural run-off. And on my cycling exploits around the Mons area of Belgium over many years, an abiding memory was and still is the smell of stagnant water.

Anyway, to the point ... Some years after this survey, there was a Stella Artois ad on British TV which included the line "made with the finest Belgian water" along with an image of a running stream.

A miracle! The sun came out for the Rudloe monthly litter pick on Sunday, 5th September 2021. Following a thoroughly miserable August (we have had the heating on for the first time on some days in June, July and August), we now have a 'window' of sunny weather until Wednesday. The title picture shows the usual McDonald's detritus on the A4 pavement between Copenacre and Rudloe Firs.