This blog

My entry to the blogosphere is largely inspired by the blog of Steve Gale who covers a geographical area I also wander in regularly. His blog covers mostly bird-related subjects although occasionally he mentions plants, my main interest. Whilst randomly following the links from his blog I was struck by the huge number of birding-related blogs and the paucity of UK plant-related blogs (I might be wrong, please let me know if I am!). So I have decided to increase the number of botanical blogs by one!

I should point out at the beginning I do not intend to totally restrict my posts to Banstead or botany but will have a considerable bias in those directions.

Thought I would start by giving a little background to Banstead. Banstead is a small town sitting on the North Downs in north Surrey fortunately surrounded by largely open space on three sides (N, S, and E) and even to the west housing is not too dense. In the next few entries I will go through specific areas but generally we have some chalk downland (mostly Banstead and Chipstead Downs that are SSSIs), arable farmland and mixed "ancient" woodland that provides a considerable diversity of habitat and resulting fauna and flora. In short it is quite a nice area to walk in and appreciate natural history.