It’s happenstance that I glance up from a corner of the Pleasure Boat Inn in Hickling on a quiet Sunday evening and see the Guardian natural history writer Patrick Barkham at the bar. When he tells me that the pub is owned by Norfolk Wildlife Trust, I wonder briefly if one of us has drunk unwisely. But he is, after all, president of the trust, and when he explains that it already owned the surrounding land, that the purchase has both restored a cherished community asset and created opportunities to introduce an entirely new demographic to the wildlife of the Norfolk Broads, it starts to make sense.
At Patrick’s suggestion, the following morning I take a walk through the managed mosaic of nearby Hickling Broad Nature Reserve. Where a path emerges from a small woodland, I find myself flanked by a shoulder-high bramble hedge. Mundane and maligned bramble may be, but in full bloom, intertwined with flowering honeysuckle, it looks beautiful, smells amazing and is humming with life. I let my focus drift (the same trick required for those “magic eye” images of the 1990s), and everywhere there is movement: many species of bee, assorted sawflies, dozens of different hoverflies, darting damselflies.
