Sold...

Thursday evening was spent at the property auction. For nearly a week I'd been going over the sales and legal details and DEFRA and Natural England designations of a small agricultural plot and a few site visits.
By a couple of weeks time from now, contracts will have been exchanged and I'll become custodian of 0.83 ha (2 acres) of traditional lowland meadow. Cheap (relatively), because it's part of the River Dee flood plain - interesting in it's present form (a triangular slice of a previously much larger meadow, annexed by a mid 1980s road bypass scheme).

From June 2010

Of particular interest to me, is that it's potentially ideal habitat for planting up a few of the relatively rare black poplar trees, yet still remaining large enough and useful for grazing / hay and with bio-diversely rich hedgerows (mainly hawthorn, with bramble, blackthorn, dog-rose and 10 large ash trees). A shadier narrow eastern side could be ideal for a small native species copse and room for a small experimental orchard wouldn't be too much out of place.
The other side of the east boundary has the Long Distance Path The Marches Way.
Near-by there is a small ruined castle, a mediaeval bridge across the River Dee to Wales and across the fields, the site of a Roman Villa...
An hour and a half after hammer-fall, I dropped by on the way home and a middle aged couple had parked up on the access track and part way up the hedgerow had set up a picnic rug!