David Pottinger writes:
It’s always illuminating to read what others think of Fleet Pond and to hear how they get involved and appreciate it. Recently I came across an interesting post by a local resident, Melissa, who gives her reasons for visiting, and some of the different animals and locations seen:
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been spending an hour or so at the end of each day walking around my neighbouring nature reserve. Fleet Pond is so close and it seems ridiculous that we barely visited when we first moved here years ago. Now, I can’t imagine a day without it. Instead of getting home and immediately vegging out, I take a lovely meditative 2 mile walk, sometimes extending it to 3 or 4 miles over the weekend.
Please take a look at her interesting article for the details (the attractive photos above and below are taken from it).
The story related in Melissa’s post reminded me a bit of my own situation. Although I live very near the Pond I rarely visited it for quite a while.
However when I had business trips to London I used to walk to the railway station through the nature reserve (at least if it wasn’t raining) and each time I noticed something different, in particular various improvements (better paths etc).
When I decided to work part-time I thought I’d give something back to the local community by joining a voluntary group. Luckily I’d heard about Fleet Pond Society (FPS) and elected to give that a go. I was quite amazed at how much they did and what an inventive group they were.
Visitors reading the new board at the Lions’ View (both provided by FPS)
Fascinated and surprised that so much was going on (see example picture below), I decided to set up this blog as a way of communicating events and activities at the Pond to as wide an audience as possible. This has paid off as, since starting in July 2008, we’ve had nearly 130,000 views!
From the first post on this blog in July 2008 – it really happened!
If you’d like to join (and thereby support) FPS, please see here.
If you’d like to get involved as a volunteer, in one way or another, please contact Colin Gray, our Chairman, who would be delighted to hear from you.
Colin’s contact details are:
Phone 01252 616183
Email colin@fleetpondsociety.co.uk
Picture credits (top two): here.