Making a B-Line

Val explains how we can help provide ‘insect pathways’

- Val Bourne

A FEW years ago I had to interview an Oxford professor about the origin of apple trees. DNA evidence had confirmed that apple trees were not British natives, as was first thought. He and others had proved conclusively that they were descended from fruit trees found in the Tian Shan forests of Central Asia.

The interview took place on one of those summer days pregnant with the possibility of rain so, after we’d finished, the aforesaid professor said he would run me to my bus station on the outskirts of Oxford. It was already sheeting down as we began zigzagging through the streets that were still largely inhabited by university academics and straight out of an Inspector Morse set.

Suddenly my unlikely chauffeur remembered that he had a meeting and evicted me from the car there and then. I was left to navigate the roads and finally emerged, like a drowned rat, at the correct roundabout. I could see the car park, but I couldn’t reach it because there were waist-high barriers stopping people crossing the road.