5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS MONTH
1 Trees make you feel better
You’ve probably felt the positive effect of a walk in the woods and a new report finds that strolling with trees can ease depression, and save the UK £185 million in mental health costs by reducing GP visits, prescriptions and days off work. The leafy doses only need to be small: ‘If people spend 30 minutes a week in trees,’ says Vadim Saraev of Forest Research, ‘there are noticeable benefits.’ And in a national show of arboreal love, people have been nominating their favourite for the Woodland Trust’s Tree of the Year – with a lone, windswept hawthorn on the beach at Kippford on Scotland’s Solway Coast clinching the win.
2 YOU CAN GO FAR WITH
MINIMAL KIT
Wearing only boots, rucksack and swimming briefs, Michael Cullen has just finished a 2000mile fundraising walk around Britain and Ireland. SpeedoMick hiked through rain, wind, snow, and storms to reach Liverpool, raising over £130,000 for charity: thespeedomickfoundation.org
3 There’s good news for creatures great and small
The sand lizard is Britain’s rarest reptile, but its fortunes are looking up thanks to the South Downs’ Heathlands Reunited project. Over the last five years 41 sites of sandy heath – the lizard’s favoured habitat – have been restored; look for the reptiles basking in spring, when males turn lime green to attract a mate. Meanwhile in Lancashire, a tiny bridge is being built to help hazel dormice safely cross a railway, and in Kent European bison are set to arrive at the Wilder Blean project. These gentle giants are exceptional ‘ecosystem engineers’ and you can join a walking safari to learn more: kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/wilderblean
4 You can pay to get lost
For most walkers the stomach-knotting panic of getting lost is a thing to avoid, but you can now pay to be dropped in the middle of who-knows-where and left to find your way out. The £15,000(!) package includes travel to a remote location, survival training, and monitoring of your whereabouts, and it’s sold with the idea ‘You have to get lost to find yourself’. See blacktomato.com
5 Tiny plankton makes big mountains
Geology lessons taught us mountains are formed by tectonic plates crushing together, but in a new study from the University of Aberdeen, John Parnell explains that ‘piling up huge slabs of rock on such a scale needs serious lubrication, otherwise friction would stop them’. That grease turns out to be two-billion-yearold plankton, which sank to the bottom of the ocean and turned to graphite – used today to help zips slide and locks turn. You can see the slip surfaces at Harris, Iona, and Tiree, a low-lying isle that is the ‘foundations of huge, long-gone mountains’.