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   Ben Thompson 🐕 (jbenjamint@mastodon.scot)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:33 JST Ben Thompson 🐕

   101 in "How not to drive on singletrack roads."

   I realise this is incredibly gammon of me, but how do folk not get it?

   #Scotland

   • Embed this notice
     Ben Thompson 🐕 (jbenjamint@mastodon.scot)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:20 JST Ben Thompson 🐕

     in reply to

     • Simon Brooke
     • MarjorieR
     • Wen

     @simon_brooke @marjolica @Wen @jbenjamint area of our regular Norway visit, a couple of hours north of Oslo. This is taken at 900m this April. The peak on the right is 1341m, 3m less than Ben Nevis. Not without grazing pressure either!

     The Highlands feels ruined after a couple of weeks walking in this environment.

   • Embed this notice
     Simon Brooke (simon_brooke@mastodon.scot)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:21 JST Simon Brooke

     in reply to

     • MarjorieR
     • Wen

     @marjolica @Wen @jbenjamint all of the Highlands is former forest. The treeline in Norway is well above the top of Scotland's highest hills. It is partly ship building, partly iron foundries, that have deforested Scotland. But it's mainly sheep.

     Mr. Bill repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     MarjorieR (marjolica@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:26 JST MarjorieR

     in reply to

     • Simon Brooke
     • Wen

     @simon_brooke @Wen @jbenjamint true, but these days it has been mostly abandoned to sheep, grouse and hill walkers.
     The same is also true of all the abandoned 'wildernesses' of the UK and around the world, they were originally nothing like they are today having been changed by human occupation, sometimes in different way at different times.
     The Lake District was once heavily wooded with natural species such as oak, until they were cut down to make wooden ships and charcoal to smelt ore, so for a while a hive of industry.
     The Amazon watershed was likewise extensively populated before Europeans brought their diseases.

   • Embed this notice
     Simon Brooke (simon_brooke@mastodon.scot)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:27 JST Simon Brooke

     in reply to

     • MarjorieR
     • Wen

     @marjolica @Wen @jbenjamint The Highlands is not 'wilderness'. It's stolen land: intentionally depopulated land. The legacy of extreme environmental degradation for profit, of radical enclosure of commons, and of ethnic cleansing.

     In the seventeenth century it was both populous and -- for the common people -- prosperous land.

     #LandReform
     #ScotPol

   • Embed this notice
     MarjorieR (marjolica@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:28 JST MarjorieR

     in reply to

     • Simon Brooke
     • Wen

     @simon_brooke @Wen @jbenjamint sometimes the solution seems to be put parking at the bounds of the wilderness area and run minibuses in. Obviously you still have to provide access for those who live and work there.

   • Embed this notice
     Simon Brooke (simon_brooke@mastodon.scot)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:29 JST Simon Brooke

     in reply to

     • MarjorieR
     • Wen

     @marjolica @Wen @jbenjamint ... For those sufficiently privileged (and sufficiently profligate) to have a car.

   • Embed this notice
     Wen (wen@mastodon.scot)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:30 JST Wen

     in reply to

     • Simon Brooke
     • MarjorieR

     @simon_brooke @marjolica @jbenjamint Be fair. Sometimes you can walk…

   • Embed this notice
     MarjorieR (marjolica@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:30 JST MarjorieR

     in reply to

     • Simon Brooke
     • Wen

     @Wen @simon_brooke @jbenjamint probably most of those stuck motorists were planning to walk, just a walk always seems to involve a long car journey first..

   • Embed this notice
     Simon Brooke (simon_brooke@mastodon.scot)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:31 JST Simon Brooke

     in reply to

     • MarjorieR

     @marjolica @jbenjamint in the Highlands there are no "alternative routes". There are very few roads at all, and many of them are still single track.

     If you block it up, **nothing** gets through.

   • Embed this notice
     MarjorieR (marjolica@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Wednesday, 28-May-2025 22:58:32 JST MarjorieR

     in reply to

     @jbenjamint the same thing happens down here is Devon but it's usually due to an accident or road works on an adjacent dual carriageway and GPS such as Android Auto, that monitors the congestion, then suggest a stupid alternative route that naive holidaymakers then attempt to follow, en masse.