Cracked

For a few glorious hours we thought we had cracked the house conundrum: a big sea view, a refurbed portion of a steading, two acres, a barn and bothy. In the end we decided the fragments lacked coherence, integrity. Not a small holding but the leftovers of someone else’s development where the price kept rising.

I’ve been advisedly agnostic on the Galloway national park proposal, which after vocal and well organised landowner farmer and other opposition has been dropped like a hot potato.
But today I was struck by the development pressure for holiday homes and rentals, the intensification of dairy farming that begins to look like milk factories peopled by cows, new silviculture forest planting in lowland ‘unspoilt’ areas and the onward march of wind farms with something like 62 further developments pending in Dumfries and Galloway.

Yeah, I know, I’m a grumpy old hypocrite who wants his 1950s quiescent rural economy and his supermarket milk in a plastic bottle and his climate change amelioration at someone else’s expense.