The first HUGS Annual General Meeting will be held on on Saturday the 27th of February at 2.00pm. Having started up last summer, we’re now a larger group on the committee and are managing public funding for our owl project, so we now need to be more formal in how we run our activities.
We’re keen that lots of you join us from the three villages at the AGM and find out more about our plans for the 2021/2022 work programme.
Zoom link for AGM Meeting ID: 816 8730 9468 Passcode: 282936
If you have ideas for future projects that you’d like to see HUGS run, do send us your thoughts to hugsustainability@gmail.com by February the 20th and we can talk about them together in the meeting.
The Agenda and supporting documents will be posted at https://tinyurl.com/ze6uhg51
https://www.hugsustainability.org/

David Rickeard

Farthings, Blewbury Road,

East Hagbourne,

If you had a massive farm and it was losing money year after year, what would you do? This was the dilemma facing Isabella Tree and her husband at Knepp in Sussex. They ran a mixed arable and dairy operation, but global overproduction and falling prices meant they couldn’t keep their heads above water. To cap it all, the launch of Häagen-Dazs stomped all over sales of their successful ice cream brand.
What they did next is recorded in Isabella Tree’s book, Wilding. It’s an inspiring tale – their plans to try to replicate an older, wilder landscape were regarded with suspicion by many. In particular they were thwarted by scientists and policy-makers who wanted proof that the thing they wanted to try would work before they’d even started.
It’s the pioneer’s paradox: you want to set out in a bold new direction, but you find yourself hampered by the doubts and fears (often based on speculation) of the establishment.
One set of pioneers who are persevering – and with brilliant success – is Sustrans. The railway line is an incredible asset for walkers and cyclists, and the closure of Chilton Road to complete the largely car-free route to Harwell could be another.
Sustrans is worried that after lockdown there’ll be an unprecedented return to the roads. Public transport will have much-reduced capacity so everyone will use their cars, creating congestion, pollution and emissions. We’ll emerge from one crisis only to exacerbate another. Part of the solution Sustrans proposes is to remove every possible barrier to allowing people to circulate on foot and bike including e-bike.
More bicycles, cargo bikes, free bike servicing, dedicated bike and pedestrian lanes – these are the kinds of things that will help us be mobile, healthy and resilient in future. The pioneers of the bicycle, once ridiculed as eccentrics and fanatics, would be cock-a-hoop.
Kieron
Obituaries
It is with great sadness that we report the deaths of two of our oldest residents who have lived in the village for a long time.
Muriel Wright our oldest resident and probably the oldest ever resident of Upton, died on 6th January at the age of 106 years 7 months and 10 days.
Alec Chennery died on 29th November aged 89. Alec moved into a new bungalow in Newman’s Close with his wife Yvonne in 1962. He worked in Research Reactor group at Harwell and was a member of the team that built our village hall.

We were slightly hampered by Covid in our first few months – the perishing pandemic prevented us from holding meetings or getting plans for a refill pop-up off the ground. But, we still managed to launch a nature trail (free on www.hugsustainability.org), run a campaign to plant 1,000 trees (400 planted so far!) and focus on helping the local owl population. Members also wrote to our MP, David Johnston, to invite him to take part in a discussion about the private member’s bill on tackling the climate emergency (www.ceebill.uk). He declined.

We had a workshop on mitigating global emissions using the en-roads simulator – pretty whizzy stuff developed by MIT. You can have a go yourself at www.climateinteractive.org/tools/en-roads/  And we contributed ideas to the various Parish Councils for improving green spaces, supporting nature’s recovery and becoming more sustainable. Hopefully more on these once we’ve seen the PC’s response to the village questionnaire.

Chilton Road Bird Survey

Have you heard the birds along Chilton Road? It’s quite a little chorus following the closure and will be even better as the weather gets warmer. We’ve started monitoring bird species on the new quiet stretch to see if anything changes. There were 10 species logged on the first pass in December. (You can see what they were on the iRecord system at www.brc.ac.uk/irecord – search for “Chilton Road survey”. You can also join the team of volunteers who are carrying out the fortnightly update.)

Ideally we’d also have comparison data from before the road was closed. Unfortunately we don’t have this, but we’re working with the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre (TVERC) to interpret the data we’re now collecting.

While on the subject of cycle-friendly routes, did you know that there’s now an almost continuous track from Upton to Wantage along the 544 Cycle Route and Icknield Greenway? This is part of ongoing improvements to cycle routes across Oxfordshire.

On Boiling Frogs

Thanks to experiments by Friedrich Goltz in 1869 (and probably numerous predecessors), we know there’s no truth in the idea that a frog will sit happily in a saucepan that is gradually heated up until it becomes an ex-frog. But it’s an image that’s been used a fair bit when describing apathy towards mitigating climate change. The analogy works well: incremental change doesn’t seem to require urgent response. And then, suddenly, when the danger becomes clear, it’s too late. At the point of realisation, you’d expect a fast and decisive reaction. (Frog exits pot; governments ban CFCs to prevent further damage to ozone layer.) So, what’s different about climate change? Why are we so reluctant to take the necessary action to prevent global warming increasing by 1.5 degrees Centigrade?

The most obvious reasons are that governments want to protect their economies, and that as individuals we’re not willing or able to brook the cost or inconvenience of doing without the products that create the emissions. It’s not uncommon to feel powerless when in front of such a big problem. And after all, “the Chinese are building new coal-fired power stations so it makes no difference what I do”.

The main issue with doing nothing is that the problem gets worse. And if we divest ourselves of responsibility we’re being dishonest into the bargain: we’re the ones busy buying affordable goods manufactured in China, so we’re driving demand for that energy.

Facing up to the problem is going to involve changes, sacrifices and some creativity. One writer likens it to medieval cathedral building*. The people who start the job won’t be around to see it finished. But they know they’re contributing to something much more important that will endure.

*(Read the full article at https://cutt.ly/xh6aXfL)

Kieron