Burning and overgrazing have ensured that natural tree lines have almost been eliminated in the UK. So it is good to see Merryn Glover (Country diary, 24 December) exploring the best remaining example, in the Cairngorms, where the old Caledonian pinewood extends up to its altitudinal limits.
But as forest habitats are today being extended to meet the twin challenges of biodiversity restoration and climate-change mitigation, we should expect to see the recovery of many more tree lines. Perhaps the royal family could show what is possible and set an example for others. Better control of the red deer population on Balmoral, as well as neighbouring estates, would allow the ancient pinewood to slowly recover.
Dave Morris
Kinnesswood, Kinross
• I know the ancient dew pond on Combe Hill beautifully evoked by Nicola Chester (Country diary, 23 December) as it was near my boyhood home. She doesn’t mention (why should she?) the grisly 17th-century murder said to have taken place in that isolated and reputedly haunted spot. A woman and her lover drowned her husband in the pond and were hanged from the gibbet that still stands nearby. The story was dramatised by the director John Schlesinger in his first film, Black Legend, made in 1948 while he was still an undergraduate.
Stephen Bates
Deal, Kent
• Susie White (Country diary, 21 December) transformed a column of words into an evocative, vivid, multicoloured painting of a Northumbrian lane, complete with high-arching stone bridge over the River Allen and Oakpool alongside. It’s nearly half a century since I fished there, but little has changed: herons, kestrels, moorhens and dippers all kept me company then. Keep painting pictures, Susie, and thank you.
Angus MacIntosh
Burley in Wharfedale, West Yorkshire
• Amy-Jane Beer (Country diary, 26 December) says nautical twilight “allowed” simultaneous observation of horizon and stars. Electronic navigation systems have not robbed us of the phenomenon and young mariners are still taught, and practise, celestial navigation. So the tense really should have been “allows”.
Dr Chris Haughton
Preesall, Lancashire
