With this 570th post, I’ve reached ten years of blogging on this site. It is somewhat surprising that I’ve kept it going so long; I only set up my blog to ‘give it a go’ a see if some longer-form writing would give me an outlet for my thoughts beyond the usual social media.

The blog started 18 months after I retuned to work following a 12-month career break. So much of that year was spent in nature with a mixture of volunteering, wildlife trips and photography, that it helped me find a new enthusiasm for the world around me and gave me a much more positive and constructive life overall. Before the break I had very little to say beyond my work life and I would never have blogged about that; I’ve always tried to keep work and home separate and leave thinking about work to weekdays. Continuing to spend my time away from work in nature in a number of different ways led me to consider blogging. I had done some (pretty rubbish) creative writing as a mindfulness practice and it seemed to work in moving my thoughts away from work. Doing things more interesting and constructive with my free time also gave me more inspiration to write and it just seemed to be an obvious extension to my practical conservation volunteering and photography, adding another dimension and enabling me to dive more deeply into my interests.

I can’t say this is the most keenly read or most visited blog and certainly not the best written or most thought-provoking. However, it does have a small band of followers and it does have individual posts which continue to be read years after they’ve been written. It seems that my posts on Scottish Islands and my trip to the Falkland Islands (also nearly 10 years ago) continue to get the most visits. Perhaps a bit of Googling while planning a holiday is the main source of my visitors.

The most visited posts at the time of writing have always been those about my volunteering at the Glaslyn ospreys in north Wales, where for a number of years I did nest protection shifts each spring. From the statistics page for my site it’s very easy to see when I stopped doing those shifts as my visitor numbers have never been the same since.

The subject which I have most prolifically written about is probably Ramsey Island. Since 2012, I’ve spent one, two or three weeks a year there as a residential volunteer for the RSPB, which all culminated in a three month stay in 2019. When I’ve written so much about the place, it’s hard to think of new things to say but I’m sure I’ll be inspired some more by my next visit.

I also can’t say that it hasn’t been a struggle at times to keep it going and to generate the enthusiasm to do so. Certainly over the past two or three years my rate of posting has dropped markedly. I have a generally strong underlying angst over the state of nature, the country and the world as a whole. I find so many things so concerning and hugely negative. I often find it exhausting when thinking beyond my own little world and at times writing about nature, when I feel so depressed about it, is almost the last thing I want to do. However, perhaps my blog should again be a place for positivity in the face of all the negativity around us.

At this ten-year mark in my blogging, I have considered whether it’s time to stop. It would end the false pressure and guilt I put on myself for not posting but it would seem such a waste of all the effort I’ve put in over the last decade. I also feel I still have so much to say, possibly, in fact, more than I used to. Almost by chance, my work has started to encroach on areas I blog about, with rural transport and wider countryside and coastal issues being a key area of my weekday focus. I don’t want my private time and work to mix too much but my personal thoughts on some of the crossover subjects could form the basis for future posts.

So, at this 10-year point, I don’t intend to leave the blog behind but, instead, find some new energy and, hopefully, new ideas, to reinvigorate my site and continue posting for a good while yet.

I’ll finish my post with a video. It was shot on my phone at Snettisham on the Norfolk coast of The Wash a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I had a weekend away, staying in a lovely pub nearby. One evening we went to the shoreline at the RSPB reserve to watch the dusk flight of birds as the tide came in. The result was a natural spectacular with thousands upon thousands of geese and waders putting on a show at a scale seen in few other places in the UK. It was a truly inspiring sight and one that re-energised my love of nature.