Craft Beer in the Spotlight AONB & Green Belt in Peril Events & Activities for Spring
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ISSUE 223 • SPRING 2017 www.chilternsociety.org.uk • CHILTERN SOCIETY MAGAZINE Craft beer in the spotlight AONB & green belt in peril Events & activities for spring HERITAGE • CONSERVATION • ENVIRONMENT • WILDLIFE • LEISURE ISSUE 223 • SPRING 2017 www.chilternsociety.org.uk • CHILTERN SOCIETY MAGAZINE In this Craft beer in the spotlight AONB & green belt in peril Events & activities for spring HERITAGE • CONSERVATION • ENVIRONMENT • WILDLIFE • LEISURE Beech trees and bluebells on Crowell Common issue (Clive Ormonde) NEWS & VIEWS 3 EDITOR 22 4 CRAFT BEER IN THE SPOTLIGHT SOCIETY Society Awards 2017 EVENTS & 5 CHILTERNS FOOD & DRINK FESTIVAL ACTIVITIES 14 AWARD FOR BARNABY USBORNE – sPRING 2017 23 CHILTERNS WALKING FESTIVAL 26 MEET OUR NEW WALKS CO-ORDINATOR & TRUSTEES 28 WORKING TOGETHER FOR THE CHILTERNS Interview with CCB Chief Executive, Sue Holden 33 LACEY GREEN WINDMILL 09 Opening hours 2017 36 LETTERS RESTORING WHITELEAF 43 bERKHAMSTED WALK 2017 CROSS ENVIRONMENT 14 NEW BOX AT IBSTONE 18 AONB & GREEN BELT IN PERIL Paul Mason outlines the Society’s proposed countermeasures 27 FAIR GAME? SPECIAL Gill Kent with a farmer’s perspective MEMBER on culling OFFERS see page 40 37 WILDLIFE GREAT 6 HELP US BRING BACK THE FAMILY HAZEL DORMOUSE! DAYS OUT 32 WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? AT COAM George Stebbing-Allen investigates 38 WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT THE CHILTERNS? Asks Tony Marshall PATRON: Rt Hon The Earl Howe HEAD OF CONSERVATION & DEVELOPMENT: Gavin Johnson PRESIDENT: Michael Rush HEAD OF MARKETING & MEMBERSHIP: Victoria Blane VICE PRESIDENTS: CHILTERN SOCIETY OFFICE: Tracey Read Lord Carrington KG PC CH KCMG MC White Hill Centre, White Hill, Chesham, Michael Colston Esq Bucks HP5 1AG Sir John Johnson Tel: 01494 771250 Geoffrey Legge • John Taylor Email: [email protected] CHAIRMAN: David Harris Please re-cycle this magazine Registered Charity number: 1085163 Company limited by guarantor number: 4138448 Share it with family, friends and work colleagues - before recycling! 2 Chiltern 223 A good walk spoiled From the Editor Richard Bradbury I derive a great deal of pleasure from my daily walks in the Chilterns. There are occasions, HERItaGE however, when – to paraphrase Mark Twain’s verdict on golf – a good walk is spoiled for me by conditions underfoot that aren’t simply the result of normal wear and tear. 30 STREET WISE John Hockey researches road names My heart sinks, for example, when I see a in Edlesborough big yellow triangle with an exclamation mark on it, warning of ‘tree felling’, ‘forestry 37 LAMBS, LONGBOWS & MORE Spring events at Chiltern Open Air Museum operations’ or something similar. It’s not that I object to the work taking place – I understand that the presence of too many CONSERVatION trees can be detrimental to the wellbeing of woodland areas, and that balance sometimes 8 LAST BUT NOT LEAST News from Penn Jubilee Wood has to be re-established to protect other and our other sites plants and shrubs and improve wildlife habitats – it’s the after effects that I resent. 34 NO BEDS REST (Photo: RB) All too often the heavy machinery used Another busy year in prospect at Ewelme leaves the footpaths and tracks badly A second matter that concerns me is scarred, with deep ruts where huge tyres ‘path improvements’, by which I mean, LEISURE have sunk into the ground – ruts that fill with essentially, resurfacing. Some are very well water when it rains, creating difficult and done and make a really positive difference 10 DON’T RIDE ON THE CARPET Simply enjoy the bluebells, says Dennis dangerous conditions for walkers and riders. to the experience for users. They may not Keeling They then seek to take evasive action, until a look entirely natural, but they are robustly much wider and even more unsightly route constructed using materials that are firm 12 JOURNAL QUILTS has been carved out. Sadly, restoration of the underfoot and should stand the test of time. Patchwork inspired by the Chilterns original path rarely seems to be implemented A very narrow path near Swan Bottom, 16 COLNE VALLEY WALK and some of them never fully recover. which was ankle-deep in mud and was 20 CHILTERN COFFEE REVOLUTION There are several sites like this within a eventually closed for safety reasons, has Café society has its perks, writes Martin few square miles of my home in Chartridge. now been transformed into a route that Pearson One in particular can only be walked can be used with impunity by walkers and 22 SOCIETY EVENTS & ACTIVITIES comfortably after a long period of dry riders alike. In contrast, I can think of at Spring 2017 weather – it always had a tendency to be a least three places where ‘upgrading’ a path bit boggy, but now it’s a semi-permanent consisted of spreading what appears to be 24 DEPTH OF FIELD – PHOTOGROUP NEWS quagmire. Tree felling has recently been little more than builders’ rubble, complete 25 PUZZLE PICTURE carried out on a short stretch of the Chiltern with shards of glass and broken tiles capable 33 SUNDAY MORNING RIDE Heritage Trail near Lee Common, and at of lacerating the feet of passing animals, A poem by Ben Williams the moment it’s quite hard to identify the whether wild or domesticated. In one 40 MEMBER OFFERS waymarked path down through the trees, instance, half bricks and other detritus are while conditions at the bottom of the hill are starting to roll down into a wood. How can 42 WALKS PROGRAMME unpleasant to say the least. Perhaps there’s such a slapdash approach be justified? a good reason why it’s not possible to make If, as I suspect, money – or the lack of it – good the damage left by this kind of work – is the root cause of these problems, nothing if so, I’d be delighted to hear the explanation will change until natural resources like the scan here for from somebody who knows more about it Chilterns are given the priority they deserve. I www.chilternsociety.org.uk than I do. won’t hold my breath. DEADLINES REPRODUCTION OF IMAGES It is not possible to guarantee that items received after The photographs in this magazine must not be the deadline will be included in the next issue, unless a reproduced elsewhere, except with the express prior arrangement has been made with the Editor. permission of the photographer via the Editor. If you do not wish your photographs to be used in other SENDING COPY AND PHOTOGRAPHS Published quarterly by The Chiltern Society Society publications, please make this clear when you Please email text as Word attachments. Pictures should send them. EDITOR: Richard Bradbury • 01494 793049 be sent as jpg attachments. High resolution images Email: [email protected] are required for publication, although low resolution The Society does not necessarily accept images can be sent as samples in the first instance, if responsibility for the views of contributors or the ADVERTISING: Sophie Elkan claims of the advertisers. Email: [email protected] preferred. Please indicate the quality of images sent, entitle your pictures and delete any numbers. DESIGN & TYPESET: Clickdraw • 01525 374270 PRINT: Hartgraph • Amersham on materials DEADLINE FOR ISSUE 224 (JUNE 2017) produced by environmentally friendly processes. Items to the Editor by: Monday 27 March • Published: Saturday 27 May email: [email protected] 3 SOCIETY AWARDS 2017 Craft beer in the spotlight Who brews your favourite tipple, asks Elaine Mason We’re excited to announce that this year the Society’s Food & Drink Awards will be seems that drinkers are willing to pay a turning the spotlight on craft beer. A craft brewery or microbrewery produces beer on a premium for craft beer, which they see as smaller scale than typical corporate breweries. As artisan producers they can focus their a luxury product. Interestingly, economic efforts on brewing technique, quality and flavour. experts have forecast that Brexit is also pretty good news for the continuing What exactly is craft beer, you may well their own artisan breweries. profitability of microbreweries. Apparently ask. There’s no official definition, so nobody Since then microbreweries have been the weakening of sterling against other really knows what it means, but everybody thriving and their numbers have been currencies will benefit them more than the wants some! The word ‘craft’ suggests growing steadily, with recent studies giants of the brewing industry, because something made locally on a small scale pointing to a positive explosion in new their products are made and distributed involving a high level of skill. Producers are, breweries. In 2015 Marcus Jones, the locally, giving them relative immunity from therefore, very keen on the term. The craft Community Pubs Minister, said that any increase in import charges. beer phenomenon is heavily influenced Britain is back on the map as a ‘brewing The popularity of artisan beer has also by what’s happening in the USA, where powerhouse’. ‘We gave the world the led the Society of Independent Brewers innovation in brewing has proved the key IPA and the great British pint has been to create a new classification ‘Assured to making big bucks. The Americans didn’t revered ever since. This brewing boom Independent British Craft Brewers’, so the have a brewing heritage as we do here, means we are not only creating some of public can identify genuine British craft so they embarked on producing modern the world’s best beer that we all enjoy beer. beers in a more creative way, leading to a in our local pub and at home, but also Happily for us, the Chilterns is very much greater variety and a huge range of thousands of jobs and a multi-billion much part of this success story.