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.

7th January 2024 and the the start of a new litter-picking year sees local councillor Derek Walters adding his weight to the team. The title picture shows stalwart Dave and Derek wrestling with bag-holding hoop (keeps the bag open) before the 'off'. There was a good turnout with thirteen locals (plus the local councillor) braving the weather with temperatures just a few degrees above freezing. The photo journal of the January litter-pick may be seen below (the February and March articles).

The 3rd March 2024 saw the monthly litter-pick take place on the 'saints' day of John and Charles Wesley. We therefore kicked-off the pick with the hymn 'Shall we gather at the reservoir'.

The gallery below shows the triangle of green at the southern end of Springfield Close where some (local?) idiot has dumped a pile of garden detritus, including a Christmas tree and a tomato growbag, on top of the wild flowers growing there (snowdrops can just be seen below the rubbish). I extricated the growbag and photographed it lying on the Leafy Lane verge (I will use the compost and recycle the plastic at Sainsbury's). I despair that with all the recycling possibilities (garden green bin, Melksham or Chippenham recycling centres, garden shredder to create wood chips or even just cutting it up with loppers and secateurs (which is quite theraputic), there are still such idiots about. 

It seems that there was more to this than meets the eye... see update following the gallery below*

*9th March update on the prunings and growbag dumped at the southern end of Springfield Close. The piles of 'green' detritus were far more extensive that first thought - see the photograph below.

As may be seen, I brought a 'bulk bag' to remove the 'green' detritus but it seems that this was not the endeavours of an 'idiot' as first thought but likely the work of Wiltshire Council. I presume this as, as stated above, the leavings are so extensive that they would take perhaps ten or more of the bulk bags shown above. As I indicated earlier, this detritus has been placed on top of the wild flowers (snowdrops) growing here. If a local person had dumped all this rubbish here and had been 'caught in the act', they would, no doubt, be prosecuted for fly-tipping so why does Wiltshire Council think they can get away with this? A further grow-bag (one had been found during the litter-pick) had been dumped on top of the pruned Escallonia - see photo in gallery below. I presume (again) that Wiltshire Council was not responsible for the dumping of the grow-bags but this goes to show that once detritus is deposited, others think it's okay to dump further detritus.

The title pictures for the 4th February 2024 pick show John and Ian in the Bradford Road and a dead deer on the A4 verge opposite Rudloe Firs with Ian beyond. It's a tad odd that we see dead deer at this same spot every year.

* The total bags given above is wrong, it should say fourteen. John had left two bags on the dry stone wall at the bottom of Rudloe Estate bordering the Bradford Road. When I went to collect the four (Bradford Road/A4) bags that Ian and myself had left, I just swept past John's bags without seeing them. HM would say that this is typical, I only 'see' what I am looking for and not even then if it isn't in the place where I am expecting to see it. Anyway, luckily it was household waste collection day on Monday so, having remembered John's bags in a lightbulb moment on Monday morning, I went to pick them up and put them in our household waste.

7th January 2024 and the the start of a new litter-picking year sees local councillor Derek Walters adding his weight to the team. The title picture shows stalwart Dave and Derek wrestling with bag-holding hoop (keeps the bag open) before the 'off'. There was a good turnout with thirteen locals (plus the local councillor) braving the weather with temperatures just a few degrees above freezing.