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.

1st December 2024 - an early start today (9:30) as the Wombles Christmas lunch is booked at Forage (Wadswick) at 12 o'clock. The title picture shows John and Lorraine patrolling the Bradford Road.

In the gallery below, we have a good set of fast food cups in the A4 verge: McDonald's, Burger King, Costa and Gregg's. A Coke can implores RECYCLE ME but with so many morons about, what hope is there for the future when young parents toss nappies out of the window. Aren't they all tossers?

And then we move further down the A4 opposite the eastern entrance to the Copenacre estate where a clear bin bag full of detritus has been lying in the verge for quite some days (why hasn't a Copenacre or Stone Close resident picked this up?). The photos in the gallery show the offending bag, the same bag alongside the black bin bag of detritus just collected and a nice set of cans and bottles in the 'cut' between the A4 and the Bradford Road.

3rd November 2024 brought the November litter pick and in the title picture we see Derrick and Madeleine in Leafy Lane - Madeleine seems to have spotted something of interest in Leafy Lane Wood. Much against my better judgement, all photos are taken with my phone as it slips easily into the pocket. However, it is a pain in the posterior; it switches modes from the required 'photo' to video or portrait or night or anything else that takes its fancy. And it is constantly switching to its 48 megapixel setting which produces photos too large (in terms of file size) to reproduce on this website. Also in this mode, the zoom facility doesn't work. Then it takes pictures by itself (with no finger on the shutter release button - see file at the end of this article). There are interruptions from other parts of this overcomplicated system - something (the dreaded 'app' I suppose) says it wants to know my location and another 'app' interrupts with "Try saying whatever if you want to whatever" to which I (of course) respond "why don't you f-off". I must revert to my compact camera.

More images of John and Lorraine in the Bradford Road follow:

As promised, some of the phone's 'selfies' (photos which it decided to take of its own accord) are in the gallery below (I haven't included the numerous uninteresting, colourless examples):

The 6th October 2024 litter pick was unexpectedly dry. After a few days of fine weather, rain was forecast - just goes to show, supposed experts can't be trusted. The title picture shows Lorraine and John patrolling the Bradford Road.

Taking the 'high road' behind Springfield Close, we found that a local blockhead has been dumping garden detritus on the high verge between the footpath and the Bradford Road - see pictures in the gallery below. What's wrong with that some might say? Well, a number of things. Firstly, if we all dumped our garden detritus on local verges, they (the verges) would resemble a linear compost heap. Secondly, the people that do this have little or no appreciation of what they are dumping their rubbish on top of. Verges are important environments for wild plants, some of which may be quite scarce. Thirdly, there are a number of 'green' alternatives to dumping: 1. a garden compost heap (which becomes a worm haven), 2. The Council green bin which is now collected fortnightly and the contents composted (and passed on/sold for use in farms and gardens) and 3. Household recycling centres at Melksham and Chippenham (again, the green waste is composted and passed on).

And the following gallery shows wild plants growing in the Bradford Road verge (ref the dumping referenced in the paragraph above) - comfrey in this case. We also see John and Lorraine heading north in the Bradford Road and Rod heading south.

Instead of leaving their discarded debris in a conspicuous place where it can easily be identified and collected, litterers persist in ferreting it away in the depths of verges. Could it be that they are really ashamed of what they are doing - being out of sight might mean (to them) that it's not actually there? See gallery below.