As usual Skipton town centre is rather busy, but how much is being spent I am not sure, for few people seem to be carrying shopping bags. It was lunch time on market day, with white van after white van parked along the main street. Not a very endearing sight. This evening I visited a local curry house, where the service was slow. But there was no need in my opinion for the bad manners that was on display from some customers towards the waiters.

On a more worrying note, last night there was a pungent smell of chemicals when I was out walking Robbie. Today I noticed that two large fields have been sprayed with some type of weed killer, every nook and cranny delt with carefully, no weeds or nettles left, nothing available for the insects or bee’s. Plus last week some of the village verges were also sprayed. This is surely the wrong way to deal with excessive weed growth, and can only be harmful to wild life. The result is field after field full of bright green grass without any wild flowers present. And the bee population falling dramatically. Not so long ago, farmers and their farmhands used grub hoes, long handles scythes and mowers.  Now it seems it either use a chemical straight jacket or total neglect. We neglect insects and bees at our peril. As for the soil and farm animals…