Local Quotes

“The prolific hillwalker Rob Woodall became the first person to visit every trig point, on a mission that took him from Lizard Point in Cornwall to Unst in the Shetlands. He climbed Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest peak, and bagged the trig point by the Little Ouse in Norfolk, which lies 1,346 metres lower – one metre below sea level, in fact. It took two years of campaigning before he was granted permission to visit the privately owned trig point in Fort Borstal, Kent. At the end of his journey he said, ‘I’m not sure what I will do next but I’m not sure I could ever take up stamp collecting.”
― Alastair Humphreys, Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness

“They hang the man and flog the woman Who steals the goose from off the common, Yet let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose.”
― Alastair Humphreys, Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness

“Shifting baseline syndrome is the way change happens so slowly that we don’t recognise our perception of ‘normal’ changing. I think I look the same in the mirror each morning until one day I can’t button up my jeans. We don’t realise a landscape is deteriorating until it’s too late. It is one of the most important concepts I learnt all year.”
― Alastair Humphreys, Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness