AS the warm, orange-gold sun rose over the towering Humber Bridge just before 8am last Friday morning, it was hard to comprehend that less than two hours before I had been scraping ice off my windscreen.
That, combined with a broken boiler which had meant I had to endure an ice-cold shower (it reminded me of my wild swimming experience, have I mentioned I have been wild swimming recently?), had ensured a chilly start to my day.
But by the time I reached the outskirts of Hull, I could feel the warmth, and it wasn’t just down to an improvement in the weather.
I was at the Bridgehead Business Park, which overlooks the Humber estuary, to compere an event where leading developer Wykeland Group and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust announced a pioneering framework agreement to create developments in which people and nature thrive together.
Business people, local politicians and wildlife campaigners all came together with a sense of positivity to celebrate this groundbreaking partnership.
The agreement builds on more than a decade of successful collaboration between the two organisations and aims to ensure commercially successful development and ecological enhancement go hand in hand.
The agreement with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust commits Wykeland to embedding ecological principles across the company’s entire portfolio of developments.
And there is nowhere better to see that in action than a flagship project at Wykeland’s Bridgehead Business Park in Hessle.
Behind the smart office buildings which house the headquarters of major regional firms such as Beal Homes and Spectrum as well as the Hull Porsche dealership, a 1km nature trail has been created.
Among the 8,000 shrubs and hedgerows, 4,500 herbs and bulbs and more than 200 trees are innovative art installations that complement and support the nature around them.
Woven willow dens, funky bird feeders, bird boxes with wings high in the trees and a colourful insect hotel make the nature trail hugely popular with local families.
The centre piece is a giant 10ft bird’s nest created by artist Liz Dorton together with help from local children.
That’s it in the photo above. The three bright mosiac eggs look like they might have been laid by a prehistoric pterodactyl, but perhaps just my vivid imagination.
Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Andy Gibson and Tom Cannon of Wykeland gave guests at the event a tour of the woodland nature trail.
The Trust manages the pathway and its surrounding natural habitat on behalf of Wykeland and the developer has also worked with community volunteering charity, The Conservation Volunteers, as well as local primary schools to create the Jubilee Woodland, which features 1,200 trees and borders Wykeland’s Melton West business park in East Yorkshire.
Wykeland managing director Dominic Gibbons and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust chief executive Rachael Bice formally signed the new agreement between their two organisations at the event.
A major element of the new agreement is the integration of the Trust’s expertise at the earliest stages of Wykeland’s design and development processes, as a constructive and critical friend.
Wykeland will actively involve the Trust from the initial planning and design phases, ensuring that ecological considerations are prioritised in new and existing projects, including developments such as Bridgehead, Melton West, the Fruit Market urban village in Hull, and Europarc in Grimsby.
Dominic told guests at the event: “We’re delighted to be continuing our work with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust to enhance not just our future developments, but also our existing ones.
“We’re committed to ensuring all our developments benefit the businesses that occupy them, and the people who work in and use them, as well as enriching the natural environment.”
Rachael added: ““Driving better outcomes for wildlife in new development is critical and possible, even when there is pressure for strong economic growth and more homes.
“The relationship we have built with Wykeland shows solutions can be found for ecologically sensitive development when professionals bring together their different perspectives, that benefit wildlife and create attractive, healthier places where people want to live and work.”
I left the event with a spring in my step.
Well, at least until I remembered I had to drive back along the M62 where a long stretch has a 30mph limit.
It makes the M1, with its plethora of 50mph restrictions, feel like Brands Hatch.
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TO the Flying Pizza restaurant in my old stomping ground of Roundhay in North Leeds for lunch with Sir Roger Marsh.
The former northern chairman of accountancy giant PwC and the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership is engaging company and has some unique insights into business, national and regional politics and economics.
His effectiveness in delivering many successful regional projects, such as Channel 4’s move to Leeds, was certainly helped by the time he spent as a senior figure in the Cabinet Office on secondment from PwC.
Sir Roger remembers that while he was in that role he used to be puzzled why when he had meetings at the Ministry of Defence, the military officers used to stand when he entered the room.
Until it was explained to him that in the heirarchy of government, the seniority of the role he held as a civil servant was equivalent to that of a three star general.
It was all I could do to not to salute him as we left the restaurant.
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AT this time of year you are never far from a charity ball or dinner.
I returned from the event in Hull to get ready to head off to the Martin House Glitter Ball at Rudding Park Hotel in Harrogate.
The ball was an excellent event for the amazing children’s hospice at Boston Spa and more than £200,000 was raised on the night
I was looking forward to donning my new purple velvet dinner jacket from tailor James Michelsberg.
He wanted a photograph of me in it to put on his social media and so I struck a Downton-esque pose next to a fireplace at Rudding for this shot by fellow ball guest Jackie Knaggs.
Given it was taken just after I arrived and had yet to have a sip of champagne, I really have no idea why I was so red in the face.
Perhaps it is because I was embarrassed.
I just don’t like to be in the spotlight you see.
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I SUPPOSE I deserved it.
I should have known that putting a photo of me in my trunks going wild swimming last week would create a reaction.
I received a torrent of vile abuse on social media.
And that was just from one close friend in the public relations world.
But it did prompt an email from a former colleague, James Graham, who was deputy business editor at the Yorkshire Post when I was there.
James is now a senior journalist in the BBC’s business unit at Media City in Salford.
He wrote: “Enjoyed your write up about wild swimming. I could picture the Kenneth Williams reference.
“Seeing the pic, I couldn’t help wondering – do you wax?!”
Now, given James once suggested that my reference to the owner of historic menswear brand Crombie wearing a ‘torso hugging’ black cashmere jumper in a YP profile interview was “homoerotic”, that is some question.
And, I have to admit, I’m slightly offended.
To be asked a question like that after the toil I have put in to create a blog that is cultured and intellectual is insulting.
Suffice to say I don’t wax.
But I would always advocate a bit of strategic trimming.
Have a great weekend.