Welcome to the first Newsline of the summer. Speaking of summer, there are still available tickets for our Mid-Summer 20th Anniversary Celebration at Norwood Park. More details are given in Newsline and I hope to see many of you there. If you haven't got your tickets yet they'll be on sale at the June meeting.
As Spring ended, we had the pleasure of spending a wonderful week away in the Yorkshire Dales. When the sun shines (as it did), with bluebells and wild garlic filling the wooded valleys and lambs, curlews and lapwings on the grasslands, there really is no finer place to spend a week walking.
There's a lot in the news at the moment about digital technology, whether it's good or bad for us. Those who know me will recognise I can still be quite "old school" when it comes to some technological advances. My sister-in-law would go even further and suggest I'm quite a Luddite. I still use an old ink fountain-pen to take notes; I'll use a paper map out of preference and those in the Geopolitics Group will know my views on AI (or, more precisely, the people who control AI).
However, a week in the Dales showed just how some digital advances really can enhance a trip away. A paper map may still be preferred, but when we found ourselves staying in one of those places where four maps overlap, then the Ordnance Survey App comes into its own. Even more so when you're on a footpath which enters a farmyard and has three possible alternative exits. It can certainly help stop possible arguments with irate landowners!
Two other Apps also helped us to appreciate and understand more the beauty and variety of what nature had to offer. I still have an old "Clapham, Tutin and Warburg" which, if you don't know, was once the definitive book used to identify British floral species. However, it took ages to identify anything - e.g. was it annual, biennial or perennial; were the leaves obovate or oblanceolate (yes, I've no clue either!). Now we have a fantastic App called Plant Net where you can take a picture of an unidentified flower and within seconds it will be offering suggestions as to what it might be.
I joined, recently, one of our Birdwatching groups who introduced me to the Merlin App, which helps you to identify different bird songs. Of course, such things are not infallible. John Tebbs told me it identified a Bittern near Calverton - he suspects it was more likely to have been a lawnmower!
Whatever, both Apps meant that walks where previously the comment would have been "I wonder what it is?" now become more informed. Of course, nothing beats the personal contact and advice. We're off to Harris in the Hebrides in the coming week, and I was looking at the Met Office App to try and work out what the temperature might be like. Ben Johnson (SWIG group leader) was up in Northern Scotland so I asked him for any guidance as to what it might be like and what to pack. "Pack anything you can lay your hands on" was his advice. Now those words give clear and unambiguous guidance, far better than any a digital App might tell me!
Mike Freemantle
Chair