Real England

there it is:
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2012/08/24/oswestry-bus-doubles-up-as-moving-work-of-art/

exactly apparently most historians no longer believe that oswestry was the site of st oswald's death in some inter-tribal war (and resulting tree). back then it were all (battle)fields round here lad…

also wasn't it the romans that cut down the druidic groves?

i think one can think its a shitty thing to do and agree its not as bad as boatloads of desperate people drowning and want the 16 yr old and accomplices to hang, let's get ambitious for the feelings we can feel here

always have to check whether oswestry is in england or wales. it's to the west of wrexham fer gawd's sake

I spent a night in a Premier Inn in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Oswestry this summer. Real England/Wales.

The playlist in the restaurant featured Freedom by Wham and one Sheena Easton's hits

*one of

sugar walls i hope?

torn here between defending my marchlands heritage and making an offa's dyke joke

That proves nothing, Edinburgh's to the west of Bristol.

I was confused but turns out there were 2 St Oswalds and I was thinking of the other one. tbf St Oswald #2 was from Worcester which is not v far from Shropshire

Known colloquially as "Ozzy"

imagine booking the wrong st oswald as your after-dinner speaker, how embarrassing would that be?

https://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/adversaries/bios/images/oswald_worcester.jpg http://www.pravoslavie.ru/sas/image/101836/183611.p.jpg

no, no, no, we wanted the crow guy! fucking nightmare

the worcester guy (a saint and an archbishop, of york) is not the oswald's tree guy (a saint and a king, of northumbria) tho: the tree guy mostly made war on the welsh but then died in battle in (or possibly not in) oswestry fighting penda of mercia

as for the sycamore gap tree, it ""escaped damage on 30 May 2003 when a helicopter filming British Isles – A Natural History crashed around 30 metres (98 ft) away, narrowly avoiding presenter Alan Titchmarsh" -- truly it weaves together all our legends

sky news reports: "the tree is reportedly 300 years old and was planted between 1860 and 1890, according to the National Trust"

i think they must mean the "WOKE national trust"

sky news reports: "the tree is reportedly 300 years old and was planted between 1860 and 1890, according to the National Trust"

Had to check this and yeah it's there on the pagehttps://news.sky.com/story/could-the-tree-at-sycamore-gap-be-saved-and-why-is-it-so-famous-12972287

Hoping that's not the National Trust's error

https://imageupload.io/ib/vTFjwaNL8G3tTpM_1696033577.jpg

I'm curious about the 60 year old guy they arrested

"Gramps, okay if I take the chainsaw out tonight?"

"By all means, boy, just be careful and return it clean and refueled, have fun"

I think you'd have to be pretty skilled with a chainsaw to have felled that tree, which is why I was kinda skeptical it was just some local tearaway.

the info is already out seemingly, a disgruntled pair- one let go from a national trust apprenticeship the other from a farm job

xpost: from the looks of the stump seems like they just ran the cut in from opposite sides with no sign of a scarf. good way to get yourself squished.

I thought the same thing, it didn't look like an experienced woodman's cut

sky news reports: "the tree is reportedly 300 years old and was planted between 1860 and 1890, according to the National Trust"

Tbf it is possible that the tree was already quite old when it was planted in that spot - they were already shifting fairly large trees around in the 18th century to build landscaped gardens:

https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/librarycollections/2016/09/08/the-eminently-capable-mr-brown-lancelot-capability-brown-and-his-magnificent-tree-moving-machine/

Basically you're not going to sow an acorn if the client wants you to plant a specimen tree

Victorian squirrels were demanding

they should've asked for more than just one tree then, this guy otm:

The issue is less the felled sycamore tree than the utterly sheep-wrecked landscape in which it stood. https://t.co/xFdCMWqqHX pic.twitter.com/gpo1m6e8Jr

— Ben Goldsmith (@BenGoldsmith) September 29, 2023

Newsflash from the youth hostel bar I'm in, where on the big screen the BBC are mad for sycamore drama: a second tree has been planted in the gap, I repeat, a second tree has been planted in the gap

crisis averted!

me on shrooms: pic.twitter.com/eQwMSg0CgK

— Emma Szewczak (@EmmaSzewczak) September 29, 2023

unleash the entwives!

time to plant the only mallorn north of elfland (buckinghamshire)

Aye it’s shocking 🌳🌳🌳 pic.twitter.com/1hEUuGg81u

— CrowTours (@CrowTours88) September 29, 2023

I've been working as a gardener since the pandemic and must've chopped down and dug up hundreds of infant sycamores in that time, feel like the lucy letby of arboriculturalists right now :(

Apparently everything is going to be ok.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02WLHSzxATbUe47s5UZdgvgyduSxsCmPSwtK2h2nrbQ8vzMukZcXtWvH2pVw7LNwPKl&id=100009038634771&sfnsn=scwspwa

the entire country discovering in real time how plants work lol

Just chanced across this extremely iconic replacement sycamore myself. This is the new best sycamore I said it. Points for working out where it is

https://i.ibb.co/xDTfVJ8/IMG-20230930-120013.jpg

trees, it's almost like they're alive or something...

a professional tree-man once explained to me that the mechanism by which pruning and pollarding stimulate growth is that they basically give plants a kind of super-crazed eczema in the limbs and stumps that are spared, which is why they look like this:

https://severntreemanagement.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/tree-pollarding.jpg

tag yrself i'm ITCHY TREEBEARD

a professional tree-man

Tree Man and the Masters of the Pruniverse

Did any newspaper use the headline, Sycanomore?

Just chanced across this extremely iconic replacement sycamore myself. This is the new best sycamore I said it. Points for working out where it is.
― imago, Saturday, 30 September 2023 12:06

Can we do guess the city (or town, perhaps) for this please? I don't know where it is, but am intrigued by the blue footbridge and buildings.

Your clue is that you possibly ought to know where it is!

Your other clue is that I'm currently in the UK's best building, but it certainly isn't Real England

imago's current location:

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59a0154f8fd4d22e5e4f4e22/1504007511413-QAXY6F6DQ2ITMTH6Y51Z/Derelict.jpg

that's Blobbyworld isn't it

isn't it mark

in a sense are we not all of us dunblobbin

a very real sense

still the realest of englund:

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/10/14/article-1220390-06D1E14B000005DC-416_634x361.jpg

this is nature as i comprehend it