Cutacre

An interesting site visit this morning.

When this site was (allegedly) the largest tip in Europe it was known as Lomax.

Then open cast mining/coal washing took place - it was known as Cutacre (after one of the two brooks that flow through it)

Now it is Logistics North. Big warehouses have gone up and are going up (the latest is a huge one for Amazon), which is all good for local employment and business growth.

And associated with the this is a new Country Park, which involves a lot of muck shifting and land reshaping, and the creation of lots of swales to deal with drainage issues. And newt relocation (some ponds here hold all five British amphibians). It's one of those ironies that brownfield sites are often much better for wildlife than greenfield ones - supposedly pristine agricultural land is often heavily polluted with chemicals.

Quite impressed with the work that Harworth are doing. And talking to the site ecologist, it's clear that this is a fantastic wildlife resource.

Oh - and the site as a whole is just huge. Most of it is Bolton, part of it in Salford, and it is hard up against the boundary with Wigan.