For the first time this year, the sun had warmth in it. As I cycled through Longshaw, two-tone great tits sang more loudly and roundly. The earth hummed a little, seeming to stir itself. Up ahead on the trail, I noticed something sprouting from the cropped grass beside it, and something similar a few yards further on. What might those be, I wondered. Two small black plastic bags, as it turned out, squatting dumpily beside the path – two more offerings for the poo fairy. My sympathies to estate managers everywhere who deal with the consequences of this inexplicable cult.
Back on the road to Sheffield, the sight of those bags prompted my attention to the verge. Compared with many places in Britain, the level of garbage was not awful, but the catalogue grew: fast-food wrappers, plastic bottles, some half-filled with questionable liquids, empty energy drink cans, empty beer cans, empty vapes, shreds of polythene spiked on hawthorns, bits of car bumper and shattered wing mirrors.
Then my heart lurched as I passed a pretty vixen lying on her side, newly dead, legs outstretched. Traffic moves fast here and, like any cyclist, I’ve grown used to the disheartening levels of roadkill on country roads.
Despite the refuse, in summer this stretch of road blooms with colour, much more so than the other side of the stone wall that separates it from the glowering moor beyond.
There’s lady’s bedstraw and cranesbill, but best of all the pinks of common and heath spotted-orchids, which combine here to produce a sterile hybrid, one of just a handful of sites in the county where this rarity occurs. There are 313,000 miles of rural roadside in our nature-poor country and verges like this one offer reservoirs for recovery.
The local authority plays its part, mowing at the right time of year to keep this rich diversity flourishing, even though, like every council, it faces much bigger problems than garbage. But if you want to see the whole picture, it can pay to start the jigsaw at its edges and work in.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
