It wasn’t all bad

Young people are increasingly adopting the “make do and mend” mindset of the wartime generation, trying to fix gadgets before throwing them away. In the past year, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds visiting the eSpares website, which sells parts for household goods and guides to fixing them, has risen 319%; the next biggest rise, of 53%, was among those aged 25-34. YourFix, which explains how to repair mobile phones, is also reporting a surge in interest from young people.

A runner who spotted an unusual-looking apple near his home in Wiltshire has been informed that he has stumbled on a new variety. Archie Thomas, who works for the conservation charity Plantlife, saw the solitary pale and mottled windfall apple on a track by a large stretch of ancient woodland, and set about trying to identify it. After a “wild apple chase”, in which many experts were flummoxed by the strange fruit, a specialist at the Royal Horticultural Society confirmed that it was a new kind of apple, likely a cross between a cultivated one and a wild one.

Beavers have built their first dam on Exmoor in more than 400 years. On footage captured by camera traps, the animals, released by the National Trust ten months ago, can be seen collecting vegetation and gnawing on trees to create a dam across the multichannelled river that flows through the Holnicote estate, in Somerset. This, according to the Trust, created an instant wetland where kingfishers have already been spotted. Hunted to extinction in Britain in the 16th century, beavers can boost biodiversity by building dams.