In the last few weeks many people have ventured out into the countryside who would never normally do so. Historian Jeremy Burchardt has noticed that walking over the usually deserted Pewsey Downs in Wiltshire in recent weeks, he has met dozens of walkers and cyclists, while paragliders swooshed past overhead, and the same was true, minus the paragliders, on Ladle Hill in Hampshire a fortnight earlier. It’s not just the numbers – regular walkers get used to seeing certain sorts of people out in the countryside, mainly middle-aged and white. Since the lockdown began, Jeremy has noticed many more people in their teens and twenties, many more families and more BAME people. Ironically and exhilaratingly, the lockdown has unlocked the countryside for millions of people who have previously been or felt excluded from it, that it was in some sense not available to them, ‘not theirs’. Read more on the Changing Landscapes project blog…
