Diversity is alive and well on the natural Blackdowns

A FINAL evening canvassing on the Blackdown Hills before Easter and the weather has continued to be kind with sunshine following us wherever we go and enhancing the beauty of the environment here.
One of our first stops of the evening throws up a fairly widespread issue with concern about the speed of modern traffic on a rural road.
This time, it is the road which runs past the Holman Clavel public house and, as we are canvassing at a time when quite a lot of people are driving home from work, I decide to walk part of the road to experience the problem for myself.
Scary!
Walking just the short stretch from the caravan park to the public house with cars, lorries, and a towing caravan flashing past not too many inches away from my shoulder is a steep learning curve.
It is all very well listening to people telling you how dangerous something is, but when all you do is drive or stand and watch from a safe vantage point, you just do not feel the real danger people are exposed to.
And that was in the early evening when the light and visibility was excellent for drivers to be able to see me as I dodged on and off the little strips of grass verge which kept me out of harm’s way.
I am not going to be on the county council, which is responsible for the roads and pavements, but I shall certainly be taking every opportunity to let the powers that be know of the safety issue here.
If every highways engineer lived in a rural community and had to walk to his or her local pub, I am sure there would be more money spent on providing pavements for pedestrians.
Only a few minutes later I come across a bizarre situation where the highways people on the county council have banned heavy lorries from a stretch of road - but they appear not to have told the drivers of the heavy lorries.
As I stand at the side of the road and chat to a local resident about to walk his dogs, a large tanker trundles by. I say trundling, but the slipstream seems more like a train rushing by.
It is pointed out to me that such large vehicles are not supposed to use this road but should use a detour.
I ask why drivers who ignore the signs are not pulled up for this by the enforcement people and discover that there are no signs.
It seems hard to understand why, but anybody who has experienced the layer upon layer of county council bureaucracy involved in doing anything, even putting up a simple roadside sign, will have a good idea of how such apparent cock-ups happen.
The Lib Dems on the county council are currently trying to abolish local councils and seize all local government power for themselves with a unitary authority which they say will save us all money.
If they want to save money for Council Taxpayers, there are plenty of ways they could do so at the moment just by taking a look at how they themselves actually work, or do not work.
I tend to think that any money they think a unitary would save, would actually just go into the pockets of Lib Dem councillors who would want even bigger pay allowances than the tens of thousands of pounds they are already paid from the public purse.
The diverse nature of communities and their issues on the Blackdowns is illustrated in just a few hours this evening, as we move from running a caravan site and battling traffic to speak with couples who are retired, couples with young families, elderly people living alone, people who have only recently moved out from Taunton seeking a quieter lifestyle, and others.
There is the farmer who has had to move out of dairy farming because of the dire state of that agricultural sector despite what Tesco might tell you about the price of a pint of milk.
‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire’ comes to mind as he tells how beef and arable farming is hardly any easier.
A possible planning application for a house on a plot of land seems to be the only way out of the financial mire, but I cannot help wondering for how long it will help.
Farmers need to be able to sustain their living and not rely on generating lump sums from property development every so often. Sooner or later, there will not be any room left for such lump sums, but the need to look after the countryside and manage the environment will still be there.
Then, we meet a remarkable elderly couple who are trying to restock the River Otter with salmon.
They tell me how they hatch thousands of baby salmon - parr, I believe, is the technical term - which they distribute at different points in the river and how the water here is full of the foodstuffs baby salmon love.
There is something about the thought of salmon in a river which creates a feel-good feeling, if there is such a thing.
‘Salmon’ equates to pure, clean waters and the natural cycle of Mother Nature, so it must mean a better environment for us all.
The trouble is, the young fish have been killed by pollution which apparently came downstream from a farm some distance away.
Now, they are trying again with a new batch of salmon eggs and hope eventually to be successful.
I sincerely hope, too, that they do succeed and that I will be returning later as their borough councillor to see how they and the salmon are getting on.