---- From the car park at Morrisons in Chorley I could see fires over the Lancashire west pennine moors near Winter Hill and Anglezarke last Thursday week. I dropped the shopping off at home, picked up my wife Susanne and drove up to the Bay Horse pub, Adlington for this vantage point.

---- We got nearer to the fire from the Rivington to Belmont road.

---- At this point the smoke was drifting over us - a nice smell like wood smoke but it should’ve been mixed with roasted baby curlew and lapwing as this is peak time for their chicks! Shame.


---- The fire was right in the middle of the moors farthest away from roads - and because chavs and vandals usually don’t move their backsides far from tarmac to set deliberate fires - it probably was caused by the day’s strong sun magnified through a thrown away glass bottle, coupled with grass dried by the recent hot spell. If climate change does increase we’ll see more of this apparently, and then I remember the previous three summers peeing it down for the record books! And now the Environment Agency are warning that if there's no large amounts of rainfall in England's North West over the next couple of months they'll have to impose a Drought Order to bring in a hosepipe ban.  Perhaps we should clear ourselves of the national disease of moaning about rain and our weather and never appreciating when it's either fine weather or when the rains come - maybe then we'd actually try and reduce our wasteage of water.

Posted on Environment Times Online on 25th June 2010, photographs taken by Duncan Ashcroft (copyright) on 17th June 2010.