Month: January 2019

How can you live in a National Park?

“We googled your postcode and it showed up in the Brecon Beacons National Park, so we thought it must be wrong”

That was what they said, when we booked some flooring fitters based in the West Midlands. The idea that people can live in National Parks, or work in them, was a mystery to these guys. What did they think a National Park was? A bigger version of a town park, with a big fence around some swings and slides and maybe a football pitch or a pond? Or proper wilderness with mountains and wild animals? Maybe they were expecting Yosemite.

Yes there is wilderness. But National Parks in the UK also have farmers. And houses. And doctors, and schools, and shops, and businesses. Everything that you need to live.

However, in a National Park these ‘essentials’ are present in a way that contributes to the very special character of the area. So priority is given to maintaining and improving the environment – both the landscape and wildlife. Development of all buildings is tightly controlled. And residents and businesses have to behave in ways that complement the aims of the National Park, to ensure it remains very special.

So that’s what we try to do here – preserve and enhance the beauty and peace of this place, whilst stewarding the natural resources on the farm to support our life here. 

There is always tension between those who want to keep the Park exactly as it is, and those who think that it needs to evolve to survive. Maybe that’s the difference between those who come to visit and those whose livelihoods depend on it. But both constituencies have the same desire – to see the Park thrive and continue to be a resource for everyone.

P.S. If no-one lived, or farmed, or did business here, then the Brecon Beacons National Park would look very different. And the character of the landscape would rapidly change. But that’s a topic for another post…

Next event: The Black Mountains Model Management Summit

As the world’s politicians and billionaires travel to Davos in sunny Switzerland this week, plans are well underway for the next event here.

The EA Model Management summit will be held here on February 20th.

Specialist users of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect will be meeting for a day of sharing experiences, problem solving and cake eating.

Who is it for?

  • EA Model Managers.
  • Learning together and building on each other’s ideas & experience
  • Tackling agreed common problems.
  • To develop and deliver transferable skills and solutions that can be applied to our models straight away.
  • It’s “Davos” for Large Enterprise Architect Models

We’ll be answering questions such as:

  • How can we maintain control of our architecture models?
  • What’s the best way to coordinate model contents across programmes and projects?
  • How can we improve the way we do model governance?
  • What can we do to make sure quality doesn’t drop as the model grows?
  • What’s really going on inside our models?
  • and much more

Places are still available – see http://www.abilityengineering.co.uk/index.php/events for more information and to book your place.

Forest Coal Pit?

Seems like an odd name for somewhere in a National Park. Especially as there has never been any coal mining in the valley.

The answer is simpler: “Forest Coal” is another name for what we now call charcoal. Before the discovery that coal could be roasted to make coke for iron-making, this area was heavily forested with Alders, which make excellent charcoal. The valley – and our farm – still has lots of charcoal platforms. These are about the size of a full-sized snooker table, and are just flat bits of land created on slopes, where the charcoal could be made, near to where the trees were felled.

We have a couple of them which still have a layer of charcoal beneath the soil, even though the practice died out in the 1700’s. See if you can spot them.