Wetlands in England

Many years ago I used to live in Somerset near Glastonbury Tor.  This is an area steeped in Arthurian legends, indeed legend has it that a chalice of Christ's blood was hidden in Chalice Well .  The area has many wetlands.  The name Somerset comes from summer settlement as the area was uninhabitable in the winter time. The area was drained by monks hundreds of years ago and became extremely fertile farm land. This is the home of the Sweet Track, nearby is the Glastonbury Lake Village.  This was an iron age village that now looks like small bumps on an otherwise flat field.  I have seen a canoe, a spade handle, and some bread (probably stale) from that village.

This was such a wonderful area of England that I used to practise my navigation using a compass and a map.  It was here that I came across footpaths across fields, only there was no field.  A field sized hole was all that was visible.  The peat had been excavated and sold.  What took 10,000 years to build was suddenly gone.  This rape of the farmland will affect the area for hundreds of generations from now.

There is an American Indian saying that you borrow the land from your children, you do not inherit it from your ancestors.  Rather than despoiling the land, make it better.  I do not entirely subscribe to the organic farming theory.  However spraying some pesticides on food crops is not really such a good idea.