Just back to Hotel in Pickering, beside the North York Moors, with one boot and sock drying beside the radiator after sinking knee deep into peat bog. Couldn’t curse though as I am filming for Countryfile on the bizarre world of peat. How come that we are spending many thousands of pounds of public money to preserve and re-grow it by millimetres when a few miles away it’s being dug up by the tonne to put into compost bags? It’s even more weird when you see that armies of people, helicopters and diggers which have been drafted in to the war effort to protect the peat as our battered shield against climate change,and compare that to the industrial extraction elsewhere.
We visited a waste reprocessing site this morning where they were turning garden and kitchen waste into peat replacement compost: old plants to grow plants. Great pictures with huge trucks and loaders looming out between steaming piles of rotting veg. Got to try my hand at sifting unwanted plastic etc from the conveyor belt. In 2 mins I turned up a babies changing mat, an old shoe and a fire engine toy in the ‘green’ waste! It was like a low budget Generation Game.
Got my hands on a nail gun this afternoon as we helped build dams to block erosion gullies in the peat bog. it was in an zone between Dalby Forest and Fylingdales military early warning site. I hope they can see incoming enemies as in the short term it played havoc with our sound gear.

CountryFile Sunday 29 April BBC1 6.25 pm