Latest news with #Powys
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Meteor shower to dazzle over county this week
A DAZZLING display of meteors will be visible in Herefordshire this week. Known as the Delta Aquariid meteor shower, it will begin on Wednesday, July 30, and it is expected that up to 25 meteors an hour could be visible. So, where are the best Herefordshire locations to view the meteors? The best conditions needed are a clear view, minimal light pollution, safety, and good planning – so hopefully the weather is good with no thick clouds! Here are a few spots you could head to: Lugg Meadows and Bartestree Just outside Hereford, the village hall in Bartestree is a good observation site for stargazing, especially eclipses, meaning it should be perfect for capturing meteors. The Herefordshire Astronomical Society has the location as one of its observing sites. Lugg Meadow is also a great place to view the eclipse because it is a large and open space. Other locations the society lists are Fownhope Recreation Field and the National Trust property Berrington Hall near Leominster. Symonds Yat Rock and Little Doward Woods The Wye Valley as a national landscape is beautiful with its scenic views, so why not a great place for eclipse viewing? Sweeping views from Symonds Yat Rock make it ideal and just along the Wye crossing, Biblins Bridge, is Little Doward Woods. The Iron Age fort is an open space, but do be prepared for a walk. Hay Bluff and Black Mountain Right on the border with Powys, at 703.6 metres high, again this does require good fitness to climb to the trig point. Alternatively, just inside the Welsh border, the lane below Hay Bluff (or on top of the summit) is also ideal as a wild, open Brecon Beacons space. Arthur's Stone Arthur's Stone is a great lookout spot to the Black Mountains in the Golden Valley. For over 5,000 years, the stone has seen many solar eclipses, so why not some meteors! Parking in the layby adjacent to the stone is the best place to get to the ancient monument. Garway Hill A 360-degree view into Wales, Garway Hill has plenty of paths, lanes, and bridleways to get to the top. It is a wild, open hill with grazing ponies, the best countryside to view the meteors. Hergest Ridge One of the best sections of the Offa's Dyke Path, Hergest Ridge above Kington is an ancient earthwork and suggested maps have even suggested an old 'race course'. The Monkey Puzzle Trees at the top are an outlier for a spot which is iconic for a walk. It's another wild and open spot to view the skies above you. Croft Ambrey Farm and forestry tracks leading away from the National Trust property Croft Castle, will give you the chance to summit Croft Ambrey Fort. Excavations found the fort to be in use from the 6th century BC up to AD 48. The location, set upon the Mortimer Trail, is a great walk to the top at around 300 metres above sea level. Around a mile to the top, open views across the Marches and into the Shropshire Hills make this a good place for the list.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Green Man festival project site Gilestone Farm loses £500,000 in value
A farm originally bought by the Welsh government using taxpayers' money for an ill-fated festival project has lost £500,000 in Farm in Powys was originally bought for £4.75m but plans to help Green Man festival's owners were abandoned when ospreys started nesting there.A Senedd committee report has raised "serious concerns" over how the site was acquired, and demanded a Welsh government said it would "continue to explore potential opportunities for its future use". Then-economy minister Vaughan Gething said the government was "delighted" in early 2024 by the arrival of two nesting ospreys at Gilestone the discovery brought to an end to a scheme which could have seen the businesswoman behind Green Man expand to a new site. Gething, who later had a short stint as first minister during the same year, denied wasting money. Under the proposals the main music and arts festival would have remained at Crickhowell, but a company set up by Green Man's director Fiona Stewart wanted to use the farm for other politicians had criticised the purchase of the farm - with officials entering negotiations to lease it to Ms Stewart - without an initial business the discovery of the ospreys, a 750m (2,460ft) restricted zone was advised around the nest itself, which can be viewed live on the audit report previously found that using up unspent money by the end of financial year was the "most significant" factor in why the site was property is currently leased to a farm on "commercial terms". 'Not robust' In a critical report, the Senedd's public accounts and administration committee said the decision was taken with a "lack of thorough due diligence".Plans were "not sufficiently robust and had not been communicated effectively to the community", it said. It added a failure to keep an adequate record of meetings with Green Man officials meant the Senedd was "unable to fully scrutinise and evaluate decisions taken by the Welsh government".Decision-makers in the Welsh government were also not provided information about the purchase in a "timely manner", the report committee said the "haste" that the government bought the site in may have also inhibited its ability to identify risks around the presence of wildlife "that would affect its proposals for the site, and potentially, its value"."This is particularly notable as the site has now been valued at £3.75m, meaning that the Welsh government's asset has lost half a million pounds in value," the report chairman Mark Isherwood said: "The arrival of the ospreys on the site was unexpected and it's acknowledged that the Welsh government has responded positively to this development to preserve their habitat, albeit there was evidence of other protected species being present at the site at the time of purchase. "However, the future of the site now appears to be very uncertain, with the most recent valuation showing that the asset has decreased in value by £0.5m compared to the purchase price. This is highly regrettable." The committee called for a full review of the purchase process and for the Welsh government's chief civil servant, permanent secretary Andrew Goodall, to "reflect on the significant loss in value to the land and whether this could have been mitigated".A Welsh government spokesman said: "Gilestone remains one of the Welsh government's property assets and is being managed on our behalf as a working farm. "We continue to explore potential opportunities for its future use, in keeping with our commitment to seek a sustainable outcome that helps local communities thrive."We will read the committee's report with interest and respond in due course."
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Serious concerns raised over how Welsh Government bought £4.25m farm
Serious concerns have been raised about how the Welsh Government bought a piece of land which has dropped in value by half a million pounds. The government bought Gilestone Farm in Powys in 2022 as part of a deal with Green Man Festival for it to be a base for its operations. However, in 2023 protected species - a pair of ospreys - were seen on the land. A 750-metre restriction zone around their nest was set up to protect the birds, who have since returned and laid an egg, with an admission made that 'the presence of the ospreys on the site inevitably brings some uncertainty." The land was purchased in 2022 for £4.25m, and earlier this year the Welsh Government confirmed that its valuation had dropped to £3.75m. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here. READ MORE: I abandoned my life in London for Wales. I thought I was living the dream but was totally burnt-out READ MORE: Welsh pub can't find a new landlord so it's being turned into flats A 2023 Audit Wales review looking at the farm purchase found ministers acted with "avoidable haste" as an underspend fuelled a rush to make a decision on the £4.25m purchase before the financial year's end. Now, the Senedd's Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee has published a report which claims the purchase of Gilestone Farm was 'rushed due to end-of-year budget pressures'. The report, published on Monday, July 28, says lessons must be learned from the purchase and that there is a need for 'urgent improvements and better governance for acquisition practices'. Significant failings have been identified with regards to the handling of the acquisition, raising broader concerns about governance, due diligence, and community engagement. 'The committee is deeply concerned by the Welsh Government's handling of the purchase of Gilestone Farm,' said Mark Isherwood MS, the committee's chair. 'While we recognise the importance of acting swiftly to support the creative sector, this decision was taken with avoidable haste and without the thorough due diligence that the public rightly expects. It raises serious questions about internal processes and the robustness of governance structures. 'Furthermore, the Welsh Government must do more to ensure that communities are not only consulted but genuinely listened to. Engagement must be meaningful, inclusive, and consistent. 'The significant loss in the value of the property is particularly notable in the current financial climate, and we expect the Welsh Government to clarify its future intentions for the site and to set out how it will mitigate the financial loss to the public purse. 'To ensure lessons are learned, the committee will want to carry out further work looking at the Welsh Government's approach to property investments, to assess whether current processes are sufficiently rigorous and fit for purpose.' The Welsh Government was asked to comment by WalesOnline on the issues raised above. It said it will respond fully after reading the committee's report. A spokeswoman said: 'Gilestone Farm was acquired in 2022, following proper processes and in keeping with market values at the time, in order to support the growth of the creative sector in Wales and a stronger mid Wales economy. 'We were delighted to learn in August 2023 of the arrival of the pair of mating ospreys, which returned in 2024, and again this year. Their first egg hatched in early June 2025. This is believed to be a first for the Usk Valley in at least 250 years and marks an important milestone in the protection of this important species. 'The arrival of the ospreys necessarily impacted on the planned use of the farm, and the original project had to be stopped. Gilestone remains one of the Welsh Government's property assets, and is being managed on our behalf as a working farm. We continue to explore potential opportunities for its future use, in keeping with our commitment to seek a sustainable outcome that helps local communities thrive. 'We will read the Committee's report with interest, and respond in due course.'
Sky News
6 days ago
- Health
- Sky News
Farm visitors in Wales told not to hug lambs after disease outbreak
Visitors to Welsh farms have been urged not to hug lambs after an infection outbreak earlier this year. The report by Public Health Wales (PHW) comes after hundreds of people fell ill due to a cryptosporidium outbreak linked to a farm in Wales this spring. More than 200 people became ill, with 18 having to attend hospital. The body responsible for public health in the country has advised farmers to avoid offering people close contact with the lambs, such as holding, cuddling or kissing them. The publication by PHW shows those who had closer contact were more likely to fall ill. The advice is one of a range of recommendations made following the outbreak. The report also recommends better hand-washing facilities, prominent signage to encourage regular hand-washing and that visitors wash their clothing as soon as possible after the visit. The report is being presented at the Royal Welsh Show on Thursday, Europe 's largest agricultural show, which takes place in Builth Wells, Powys, annually. Cryptosporidium is a microscopic parasite, very common in young livestock, that can cause an illness called cryptosporidiosis, according to the UK Health Security Agency. It can cause sickness and diarrhoea. In some vulnerable people, such as children, illness can be severe. Dr Christopher Williams, consultant epidemiologist at Public Health Wales, who co-authored the report, said diseases such as this one "are spread very easily" in environments such as lamb feeding events. "This report recommends that lamb or calf feeding is supervised and done with the animals separated from the visitors by their pens," he said.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘The delivery man arrived with the ashes in a gift bag' – why are so many people opting out of traditional funerals?
When my father-in-law, Cliff, died in March 2021 after being diagnosed with an aggressive and late-caught cancer, he didn't leave any funeral plans. Nor was there money squirrelled away to pay for them, even if he had. He was an ardent atheist, so a church service was out of the question, and pandemic restrictions had been limiting guest numbers, so my wife, Hayley, and her siblings decided to opt out of having a traditional funeral. Instead, they chose 'direct cremation', a service that minimises formalities – and, crucially, the cost. There is no funeral service; the coffin is simply brought into the crematorium before it is cremated, after which the ashes are returned to the family. During an online consultation with 'death specialists' Farewill, Hayley was quoted £1,062 for a direct cremation, more than £3,000 cheaper than the current average cost of a basic funeral. The only catch was that no one would attend the cremation, aside from those paid to carry it out. It seemed a cruel choice to some, who could not get their heads around the idea that there would not be a funeral to attend. But Hayley explained why it seemed like the perfect option: they could obtain her father's ashes without fuss and hold their own, intimate ceremony on the banks of the River Wye, where Cliff had loved to fish. Although Cliff died in a hospital in Powys, Wales, he was cremated 140 miles away at a crematorium near Exeter. His ashes then travelled 220 miles east, with no limousine cortege in sight, to our home in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. The delivery man arrived holding a gift bag containing Hayley's dad in one hand and a small bunch of flowers in the other. Farewill's co-founder Dan Garrett is something of a disruptor within the death industry. Death first inspired him when he was growing up in Golders Green in north London, where his family home backed on to the local crematorium. 'The walk with my family was always to the crematorium,' he says. 'It was absolutely beautiful; I reckon it left some kind of resonance in my head.' He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2015 looking for a gap in the startup market, and launched Farewill the same year. He felt that the funeral industry, with its monopolising practices based around local, family-run funeral directors, was ripe for revolution. Farewill branched out from its initial offer of online will-writing services (usually carried out by solicitors) after it noticed a pattern emerging among its customers. 'We were speaking to 20,000 people a year,' he says. 'And we had a box [on the online form] that said: 'What do you want to do with your funeral?'' And probably 80% of what people were writing was: 'I just want no fuss, don't wear black, nothing traditional, just something that represents me.'' Garrett realised this was 'a great business opportunity'. Farewill began doing direct cremations in December 2019, a few months before Covid hit the UK. The popularity of its services did not peter out with the pandemic, and now 20% of bodies are disposed of by direct cremation. Farewill rivals Pure Cremation recently predicted that 50% of the UK population will choose direct cremation within 20 years. Business has been bolstered by a generation of tech-savvy consumers navigating a cost of living crisis and a stagnant economy. It is not exclusive to the UK: the US is experiencing a similar shift in the funeral industry, as detailed by the New York Times. According to the Cremation Society, up to 80% of people are cremated in the UK, which is above the average globally – although this is still behind Japan, where almost everyone is cremated – but it hasn't always been the case. As Jessica Mitford (who, like David Bowie, opted for direct cremation) wrote in The American Way of Death, there were just three cremations in the UK in 1885 – the first year of its legalisation, after a hard-fought period of campaigning. Today, the vast majority of the UK would rather be incinerated, perhaps for reasons similar to those articulated by George Bernard Shaw in the 1940s: 'Earth burial, a horrible practice, will some day be prohibited by law, not only because it is hideously unaesthetic, but because the dead would crowd the living off the Earth if it could be carried out to its end of preserving our bodies for their resurrection on an imaginary day of judgment.' Despite its growing popularity, fightback is brewing against direct cremation, nicknamed 'burn and return' by those who oppose it. 'Direct cremation interrupts both this sacred understanding of the dead body and the sense that it has deep and powerful spiritual value,' wrote Anne Richards, public policy adviser to the Church of England, in June. 'Whether offered overtly or not, such a no-fuss service undermines the sense that a dead body is worthy of respect, care, dignity and love. Why spend money on something worthless?' Writing in the Spectator, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, in a piece that described the process as 'a lonely end for one's mother or father, or indeed oneself – and actually quite expensive for what happens, which is basically waste disposal', said: 'You can see how – as with assisted dying – the elderly could be pressurised into going for this option by the death-averse, non-religious and hard-up young.' But looked at another way, direct cremation has demystified an industry that has long been accused of overcharging grieving families. The 'cost of dying' in the UK, including professional fees for administering the estate, a simple funeral service, and all optional extras like the party or wake, has this year hit a record high of £9,797, according to Sun Life's annual study, while 6% of funerals are now crowdfunded. In February 2025, Farewill was sold to Dignity, one of the largest funeral companies in the UK, which operates 45 crematoria. In the office of Dignity's Bentley crematorium, just outside Brentwood, Essex, manager Ian Best says he still calls direct cremations 'unattended cremations' out of habit. It is a hangover from the days when the only cremations without family or friends were 'pauper's funerals', paid for by the council if there were no relatives to cover the cost (thanks to the cost of living crisis, the number of such funerals, now known as public health funerals, has risen by 47% in England in the last seven years). Before the pandemic, Best says, unattended cremations only happened at Bentley every three or four months. Now, they count for roughly a third of all cremations that take place there. 'It's definitely changed the industry massively, and I think we're learning as we go,' says Best. 'It's uncharted territory for us.' The biggest change, he says, 'is just the fact that people aren't here. I'm so used to being here, looking out of the window, seeing the car park full up, and hearing people – to then think, oh, there's no one outside, but I'm still attending a funeral.' But in many other ways, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a direct cremation and a service attended by mourners. 'I always emphasise the fact that we do it exactly the same here, regardless of whether it's attended or unattended,' says Best. 'You'll still always come through the front [of the chapel], we'll always have music on, we'll always bow, we'll always have the curtains, there'll always be that element of respect.' Imagining it reminds me of another echo of the pandemic – catching highlights of Liverpool's winning Premier League campaign when there were no crowds; all that ceremony, but with no one to share it with. I first arrived at Bentley shortly after a direct cremation and family members were standing outside chatting, having said their final goodbyes. I ask Ian if he minds people attending direct cremations in this manner, when they are advertised as 'unattended' (and this is reflected in the price). Quite the contrary, he says: when he noticed them congregating, he turned the speakers on outside and played music as they watched the funeral directors take in the coffin. 'Theoretically, an unattended funeral should just be the funeral director bringing the loved one in the coffin: there's no family,' he says, but he is open to families watching, and sometimes invites people in to sit at the back, to help them grieve for their loved one. 'I'm not going to turn people away. It doesn't cost me anything.' Some funeral directors suggest that the way direct cremations are sold is too pushy. Pure Cremation is one of the country's biggest direct cremation providers, with an enormous crematorium in Andover, Hampshire, and a multimillion-pound TV advertising spend, with commercials shown primarily during daytime hours to catch the retired demographic most likely to buy funeral plans. Their adverts are all over social media, too. I saw one advert promising a free afternoon tea, up to the value of £50, when buying a direct cremation through the company ('Offer ends 31 August'). The rise of direct cremation, as well as the backlash, goes some way to addressing a fundamental question about death: what, or who, are funerals for? 'Funerals have always been for the living,' says Martin Stibbards, whose family funeral directors in Essex offer everything from a full horse-drawn funeral cortege that harks back to their Victorian roots to their own direct cremation service. 'You don't know you're at your funeral, but your relatives do.' Stibbards says that the genius of the new direct cremation companies is that they have flipped the decision from the family to the living, directing their advertising towards those making their own funeral plans. 'Grief is difficult. You might think it's all very good when you're sitting in your living room and you're not dying and thinking: 'Yeah, I'll just sign up, this is going to be great for my family.' But when the reality happens and you're whisked off somewhere without anybody knowing where you are … grief can be very complex.' At Bentley, Best ushers me behind a curtain to see the cremation chamber. Coffins from unattended and attended services wait to be cremated. It feels inadequate, somehow – but not because of the cremation process itself. Rather any attempt to mark the end of a life feels unsatisfactory. And nothing – direct cremation, a princely burial after a multi-vehicle cortege, or lighting up the sky with fireworks like Hunter S Thompson – can change that.
