I am lucky enough to live in a village within 250 metres' walk of open fields, 500 metres' walk of forests, and 1000 metres from a major river, and within cycling distance of the sea.
Deciding that I would enjoy my solitary long walks better if I had some sort of purpose to them, I took up botanical recording for the database maintained by the Botanical Society of the British Isles. I had done a bit in previous years but all sorts of other commitments always curtailed my plant-hunting.
With the patient help and guidance (all by e-mail) of the County Recorder, I have added thousands of records to the database. It wasn't too hard to do so, because there are so many map squares within just 5 miles of here that had never been properly surveyed, and I can expect to find 100 or more species in any one of them.
There are many plants that I just don't know (I am not at all good at telling the different types of grasses, sedges and rushes apart), but I just send a photograph to the County Recorder, and he normally knows and tells me what it is. It doesn't really matter if I miss something, because maybe another surveyor will find it, or I might find it on a return visit. And any information is better than none in the database.
I've found all sorts of interesting things, including pure white Melancholy Thistles, Alpine Lady's Mantle on two places on the (lowland) river bank, a South American beech in woods in the north of Scotland, and plants that have not previously been recorded in this area. I've also seen Creeping Lady's Tresses at long last, and learned to recognise hundreds of species of plant.
I'm planning to keep going until I have submitted at least 10,000 records, but I won't stop even then as there are still plenty of opportunities to record plants even in the winter now that I have learned to recognise leaves without flowers. And I suspect that I may still be doing quite a lot in 2021.
So it's been a real win-win-win-win, and I am still enjoying it immensely. I have had lots of exercise and plenty of sunshine; I've explored places within 5 miles of here far more thoroughly than I ever did before, and learned to appreciate my home area even more than I used to; I've learned a vast amount about the local plant life; and I hope I've made a small but useful contribution to science.
And since lockdown was eased a little, allowing travel by car, I have undertaken some longer walks with friends (no botanising on those of course as it's impossible to walk at a comfortable pace and record plants at the same time) on low- or medium-level paths and rights of way within about 30 miles. I have online photo-journals of those at
http://www.geograph.org.uk/geotrips/ if anyone wants to see them.
And the failures. Plenty of those. The garden remains a wilderness full of interesting wild plants, and the house is still in chaos, full of piles of things I was preparing to get rid of when the pandemic struck. The kayak remains unpainted, the slides remain unscanned, the boxes of papers and bags of mending are as full as ever they were, the knitting wool remains in balls, and the tax return is still untouched. Ach, it's almost autumn, and it will soon be winter, and there's time enough for all that indoor stuff when the weather gets worse.
