"During the time I’ve lived in the Gwent Levels, I used to have nightmares about people building on the green fields near my house and taking away the wild, beautiful land around me. I was always filled with relief when I woke up and realised that it was just a dream. But now something worse might really happen. A six lane motorway blasting its way through the Levels, raised twenty metres on stilts in places, thundering over the reens, driving away the wildlife, destroying a precious and rare habitat – an awful, brutal thing striding across this place of calm and beauty.
Dark sky over the Gwent Levels by Catherine Linstrum
The Levels are extraordinary. People come here from Cardiff and Newport to get away from the city - to breathe in the fresh air, listen to the curlews, watching lapwings displaying and the oyster-catchers out on the mud flats, look at the big empty skies reflected in the reens, experience a unique landscape on their doorstep. It’s only a stone’s throw from Newport but sometimes it feels a hundred miles away. On cold nights the mist rolls in like a scene from Great Expectation, eerie and chilling. In spring the hedgerows are full of hawthorn and blackthorn, eglantine and elder-flower, the reeds flanked by yellow flag and ladies mantle. On summer evenings the sunsets are glorious.
Flock of lapwings by Ernie Janes (rspb-images.com)
I once made a list of all the different birds that we’ve seen around the house here and it came to thirty-nine. I’m not a real bird watcher (I don’t even have any binoculars) but the birds are here and I love them so I counted them. The swans, the otters, the warblers, the egrets and the goldfinch… all going about their lives, part of a delicately balanced ecosystem that makes you glad to be alive.
If the motorway comes then all this could be lost. And that would be a disaster."
Catherine Linstrum
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Regards,
Ian.