The Transition Town Wellington Newsletter - If you're not already signed up, you should!
- JoshW
- Jul 1
- 13 min read
Offering a wealth of wildlife and community opportunities and news each week, Transition Town Wellington's newsletter is undoubtably one of the best ways to keep up to date and engaged with local nature. TTW events are open, varied, and welcoming to all. You can sign up here: https://ttw.org.uk/contact/ July 2025 Above are some photos of the June Bio-blitz, at Fox's Field Full Report when final counts are known Wednesday 2nd July 7.30-9pm TTW’s Monthly Fundamentals Meeting Location: The Eco Lodge on Foxdown Hill what 3 words to the gate is ///marketing.uncle.lovely This meeting we’ll be discussing upcoming plans, focussed on actions, for all the sub groups of TTW. Everyone is welcome to come. Please try and walk, cycle or car share as there is very little parking in this residential area. The full agenda will be posted online here Monthly Meeting - Transition Town Wellington closer to the time. Community Gardening Fox’s Field June saw a lot of cardboard and wood chip being used as we mulched the far end of the herb area, preventing the encroachment of grass from the field side by mulching under the windbreak and food hedge, plus recreating the path that runs around the inside edge. We did lots of weeding and grass cutting under the bushes around the edge too, and at the end of the month planted lots of groundcover plants in the new area to fill in gaps. These are a number of different wild, flowering or herbal plants, and we’d like to thank Blackdown Garden Centre for the remaining £300 of their £2,000 grant which we spent on lungwort, day lillies, and other flowers, for £300 in donations from you which we spent on wild plug plants which our volunteers have been growing on since May, and to the Town Council who filled up our new waterbutt so we can water them more easily in the coming months. July’s tasks will be to keep the new plants weeded and watered, to finish weeding the herb area and reinstating paths, and to continue moving old hay bales for the next area to plant up next year! Longacre Just one session in June due to holidays, but in this month we scythed the first section you come to, in order to make picking the soft fruit bushes easier. We’ve got 3 sessions in July to get ready for the summer picnic on Saturday 26th July, so we’ll be doing more scything plus using shears and mulch to maintain the raspberry, wineberry, cultivated blackberry and loganberry patches. Linden Meadow Our monthly scything session was done with help from staff of Somerset Council on a team building/volunteering day. We got a good patch done so we won’t be returning until the end of July. Post Close The community orchard at Post Close has been maintained by two of our volunteers (many thanks to them), who have been regularly mowing the path through the meadow and the path edges. We’ll be doing a community session in July to cut the area at the back which wasn’t cut in autumn (which provided overwintering habitat), to remove any docks to prevent them seeding, and to prune the cherry and plum trees if they need it. Everyone is welcome to help at our gardening sessions, no prior experience needed. For more information and directions visit www.ttw.org.uk/calendar July Community Gardening Session Dates Tuesday 1st 9am-12noon @ Longacre Friday 4th 9am-12noon @ Fox’s Field Monday 7th 9am-12noon @ Longacre Friday 11th 9am-12noon @ Fox’s Field Wednesday 16th 9am-12noon @ Post Close Friday 18th 9am-12noon @ Fox’s Field Tuesday 22 July 9am-12noon @ Longacre Friday 25th 9am-12noon @ Fox’s Field Tuesday 29th 9am-12noon @ Linden Meadow Water GuardiansLots of events from the team this month! Thursday 3rd July 10.30am Water Guardians Meeting Location; Braziers Coffee shop, Tonedale Mill, TA21 0AW The water guardians are a group of volunteers who each undertake citizen science to monitor a specific stretch of our local waterway: to find out more visit https://ttw.org.uk/groups/water/#scientists. We’d love more people to get involved so if you’re interested, please come along to a meeting, which are help on the first Thursday of every month. For more information or if you’d like to get involved but can’t make this time, contact Sue on tel 07896 031236 or email suerickard234@gmail.com Monday 14th-Saturday 19th July 10am-4pm daily TTW’s Water Week Exhibition Location; the Pop-Up Shop, Fore Street, Wellington Do pop in and learn more about our waterways, check out the artwork and chat to the water guardian team. Saturday 19th July 2-7pm Wellington Waterways Location; Wellington Arts Centre, Eight Acre Lane Wellington TA21 8PS. There will be talks with time for questions and answers 2-4.30pm. Speakers will be: Gideon Amos MP, Zoe Connelly, Evidence and Engagement Officer for Westcountry Rivers Trust, Vicky Whitworth of Kit Brook Restoration Project and Friends of the River Axe and Gill Westcott of Friends of the River Exe. Then 5-7pm there will be a film “I am the River, The River is Me” concluding with a discussion session about the “Rights for Nature” movement. Refreshments will be available and everyone is welcome. Tickets can be obtained from Eventbrite. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celebrating-wellingtons-waterways-tickets-1357643481199 Tickets are free, but if possible a donation of £10 (cash on the door) will help to cover costs and support the work of the Water Guardians. You can find more information for here; https://ttw.org.uk/wellingtons-waterways/ Saturday 5th July 10am-12.30pmWellington Repair Cafe Location; The Scout’s Hall, 6 Fore St, Wellington Somerset, TA21 8AQ At the Repair Cafe, you can bring things to be fixed or repaired, for free! A team of volunteers will be on hand to help prevent items ending up in landfill. Donations are welcome and there is cake, tea and coffee available while you wait. Trades available: electrics, sewing/textiles, sharpening, jewellery repair, clocks, general stuff, laptops, mobiles and tablets. Note there will be no bookbinding this month. If you are bringing something that needs a new zip, you need to bring the new zip with you! If any sewing job needs something to be unpicked first, it would also help if you can do that at home rather than leaving it to the sewing ladies, as it takes a long time and means that they can mend fewer items in the time available. Thanks! Contact Holly 07818 247795 for further info. TTW’s Arts and Crafts GroupUnfortunately last month's workshop was cancelled as there weren't enough bookings. It seems a very popular day/time of year to do all sorts of other things! So many thanks to Ruth Fielder for offering to run a workshop in peg looming. Thursday 17th July 7-9pm TTW Arts & Crafts (A&C) Group: Workshop: Collage Location: Wellington Community Centre, White Hart Lane, TA21 8HN. Meets every third Thursday of the month. 7.00 - 7.30 Business Mtg: Please send items for the agenda to Lindy or bring them to the meeting. 7.30 - 9.00 Collage Workshop Come with materials, ideas & resources for yourselves & to share if enough! Further details to follow nearer the time. If you’d like to book a place please contact Lindy Roy; lindy@yogamala.co.uk or text 07805099408 Cost: £5, cash only. (Bring your own beverages) TTW Water Guardian’s Exhibition@ the Pop Up Shop.Week beginning July 14thIf anyone would like to exhibit any of their work (not for sale) related to water/ wildlife etc. please could they get in touch with Sue via her email Saturday 26th July 11am-3pmLongacre PicnicEveryone is welcome to join us for a family picnic at Longacre! We’ll have food available to sample for free made from the harvest you can pick here, plus music from Wellington Ukuleles from 1.30pm. We’ll do a tour of the site to both show what’s growing and to check out some of the wildlife onsite using iNaturalist to record our sightings, and have some activities for children. Do bring a rug to sit on and we’ll cross fingers for sunshine! For more information and directions visit www.ttw.org.uk/calendar TTW Bookworms GroupOn the 18th June the Bookworms group met up to discuss 'The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World" by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It was a full house; thank you to everyone who came, brought yummy food and wine, and joined in with an interesting and enriching discussion. Just fab!! It was so good we’re going to continue discussing this important subject at our next meeting on Wednesday 20th August 7.30-9pm A Big Thankyou to Sue and Stewart for hosting. Please ring Sue beforehand on 07896 031236 if you’d like to come. Future Dates for your Diary: Saturday 30th August: Picnic at Fox’s Field 2-6pm Transport and Active Travel Group We’re very excited Charles Briscoe, the driving force behind the Grand Western Greenway, is coming to give a talk at our August Monthly Meeting on Wednesday 6th August 7-8pm. Anyone interested is welcome to join; if you’re not a regular to our meetings please email community.ttw@gmail.com so we can just keep an eye on the numbers and check there’s enough seats. Our normal monthly meeting will resume 8-9pm. Location: The Eco Lodge on Foxdown Hill what 3 words to the gate is ///marketing.uncle.lovely Transition Town Wellington ArticleTo be printed in the Welly Weekly It was National Insect Week from Monday 23rd June to Sunday 29th, a week where the Royal Entomological Society try and raise awareness on the plight of insects. So honestly; how much do you like insects? Are they annoying pests to swat away, are you scared of them, or are you fascinated by them? If you dislike insects you may be quite pleased their numbers are crashing. No more need for insect repellant, no more need to wash our windscreens after a drive. But most of us like birdsong don’t we? We definitely all need food. Insects are as under appreciated as soil, but both are the basis of all life on our planet, and therefore the ecosystems, water cycle and atmosphere on which we depend. This is not just a conservation issue. Protecting them means protecting ourselves. Those eagle eyed amongst you will know we wrote an article in August 2024 about what we can do to help insects, and some of the ways are more obvious than others. We wrote about growing wildflowers and native trees in your garden, not tidying away leaves and seedheads in the autumn, avoiding pesticides in your garden along with eating organic food, having outside lights on a timer and closing your curtains at night as some of the practical things we can do to help. But in this article I’m going to highlight some other ways we can help. The “Virtual Splatometer” within the “Bugs Matter” App relies on a nationwide network of volunteer citizen scientists who record insect splats on their vehicle number plates after journeys. Analysis of records from more than 25,000 journeys across the UK since 2021 shows an alarming decrease in bug splats. The latest data shows that the number of flying insects sampled on vehicle number plates, across the UK, has fallen by a staggering 63% since 2021. It’s really important for as many people as possible to get involved; let’s hope numbers have risen this year, local rumours suggest they may have. You can help with this project by visiting https://www.buglife.org.uk/get-involved/surveys/bugs-matter/ The report from Bee:wild, a new science-led global campaign to save pollinators, identifies the top 12 emerging threats that could accelerate pollinator losses within the next 5-15 years, according to ten of the world’s leading experts. It also outlines steps we can take to protect them and reverse the decline. Alongside known threats of habitat loss and pesticide use, new threats including air pollution have been seen to affect insects. Ozone, nitrogen oxides and other gasses released when burning fossil fuels makes it harder for insects to survive and reproduce. So many of the things that we know would help reduce climate change, like switching to renewables, not using as much energy in our homes by increasing insulation, and reducing the amount of car journeys you make by transitioning to public transport, active travel, or sharing a lift, (or if it’s unavoidable for you not to use a car making your next one electric), would all reduce air pollution that can be harmful to pollinators. You can find out more about this here Anthropogenic air pollutants reduce insect-mediated pollination services - ScienceDirect and Air pollution disproportionately impairs beneficial invertebrates: a meta-analysis | Nature Communications Climate change and the extreme weather it brings is really affecting insects- especially in hotter parts of the world, with dry seasons lasting longer and plant flowering cycles disrupted. Insects are struggling to survive in droughts. For insects, staying hydrated is a unique physiological challenge: rather than lungs, their bodies are riddled with holes, called spiracles, that carry oxygen directly into the tissue. They’re all surface area, meaning insects can’t hold water. Even a brief drought lasting just a few days can wipe out millions of humidity-dependent insects. Providing sources of water in your garden or on your balcony with a basin, puddle, pond or bowl can help. Keep in mind that bees and many other flying insects can’t swim, so deeper water sources will need either a clear rim to drink from, or “islands” which can be made with stones. Research has also shown that bees get important nutrients from “dirty” water, where leaves or algae are breaking down, so don’t keep your bee pools pristine. The more research I do about insects the more fascinated I become. They are such complex little beings, with such variety in their shape, size and what they do- all part of an interlinked ecosystem which is so fragile and we are sadly affecting so much. I’d encourage everyone who has read this article to step up for these little creatures and do a bit more to help them. If you are someone that doesn’t like insects very much, then go and find a flowerbed and just sit and watch to see their fascinating variety. This may take a few visits and a bit of time but keep your eye out for a shiny beetle or a colourful fly. Once we have an appreciation for them, (and to realise that very few will bite or sting), then we naturally want to see more of them. If you already love bees and butterflies, then check out other invertebrates and see what else you can do that you’ve not thought of yet. There is always more we can do. Related articles August 2024’s TTW article for more ideas https://ttw.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/2024-08-worrying-insects-decline.pdf Even more ideas on how to help here https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/17/insects-dying-25-easy-and-effective-ways-you-can-help-aoe Study on bats and owls The economic impacts of ecosystem disruptions: Costs from substituting biological pest control | Science Micro plastics and bees Bee wild report bees facing new threats putting our survival and theirs at risk - University of Reading Bugs matter splatometer Bugs Matter survey shows ongoing decline in UK flying insects - Buglife latest news Butterfly decline https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/news/more-half-uk-butterflies-are-long-term-decline Natural History Museum’s work https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2025/april/to-save-insects-we-need-to-understand-their-decline.html Another article by the Guardian ‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects | Insects | The Guardian Events from other groupsWednesday 2nd-Thursday 3rd July Groundswell Festival Location: Lannock Farm, Hertfordshire. A brilliant festival celebrating regenerative agriculture. Whether you’re a farmer, grower, or simply passionate about sustainable food systems and the environment, there's plenty there to explore. Thursday 3rd July 10am-1pm Location: Brides Mound, Glastonbury Would you like to gain tree identification skills? Come along to a free tree ID walk with the Somerset Wildlife Trust. Thursday 3rd July 6.30pm-7.30pm Location: Online event by the North Wales Wildlife Trust An exciting broadcast all about the ospreys and other wildlife at Llyn Brenig, North Wales Saturday 5th July 10am-12pm & 1-3pm & Saturday 19th July 10:00am - 12:00pm Location: Avalon Marshes The Somerset Bat Group is offering the chance to build your own LOW cost, and HIGHLY capable bat detector. You can build your own ultrasonic detector, with features available on commercial devices Build Your Own Bat Detector PM session 19th July session: Build Your Own Bat Detector Monday 7th July 9.15pm-11.15pm Bat walk at Grand Western Canal, near Whipcott/Burlescombe Meeting at: Beech Car Park Want to get batty about bats? Join Devon Wildlife Trust to see and detect bats at this event which is part of the Saving Devon's Treescapes project. Wednesday 9th July Act Now, Change Forever mass lobby for climate and nature. From every corner of the UK, teachers, farmers, healthcare workers, parents, business leaders and community organisers will meet their MPs at the same time in Westminster to call on them to protect what matters most - our health, our nature, our communities, our climate, and our future. Register here; https://www.theclimatecoalition.org/act-now-change-forever Wednesday 9th July 1.30-2.15pm The Global Glyphosate Study (Free Webinar) New, ground breaking research linking Glyphosate to cancer is forcing governments to review their support for the world’s most popular weed killer. This webinar is an exclusive opportunity to hear about the most comprehensive, global study ever conducted on Glyphosate from its only UK-based contributor, Professor Michael Antoniou (Professor of Molecular Genetics and Toxicology at Kings College London). Published on the 10th June in the prestigious Environmental Health journal, the study confirms that Glyphosate and Glyphosate-based herbicides cause multiple types of cancer, even at exposure levels deemed to be “safe” by the EU. It was co-ordinated by the Ramazzini Institute in Italy and involved scientists from across the US, South America and Europe. Sign up to this free, one-off webinar There will also be a chance for questions. Wednesday 9th July 4.30-7.30pm Somerset Otter Farm Walk Location: Dillington Farms, Ilminster, TA19 9EG https://fwagsw.org.uk/somerset-otter-farm-walk/ Thursday 10th July 7-9.45pm Three Acres And A Cow Location: Red Brick Building, Glastonbury BA6 9FT Part TED talk, part history lecture, part folk club sing-a-long, part storytelling session! A history of land rights and protest in folk song and story, the show connects the Norman Conquest and Peasants’ Revolt with current issues like the housing crisis, reparations, climate breakdown and food sovereignty via the Enclosures, English Civil War and Industrial Revolution, drawing a compelling narrative through the radical people’s history of England in folk song, stories and poems. See http://threeacresandacow.co.uk/ for more information Also showing in Barnstaple on 24th July and Exeter on 2nd August. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/modifythevan Saturday 12th July 10am-2pm Location: Somerset Wildlife Trust, Taunton A walk focussing on beginner ecology skills including collecting fields notes and species recording you can use when you’re enjoying walks with wildlife Tuesday 15th July 4.30-7.30pm Beef & Birds Barn Owl Farm Walk Location: Maundrills Farm, West Huntspill, TA9 3QS https://fwagsw.org.uk/beef-birds-barn-owl-award-farm-walk/ Friday 18th - Sunday 27th July The Somerset Food Trail Festival A joyful ten-day celebration of the county’s most nature-friendly farmers, growers, artisan producers and chefs. There is a diverse line-up of experiences – from electric bike cheese and cider safaris to community picnics, and from farm tours to foraging walks. Finding out how food is made, and reconnecting with the land, with nature, with the people who grow and make our food with care. Uncover some of Somerset’s hidden gems – its orchid filled meadows, orchards, vineyards, kitchen gardens and vibrant community growing spaces – places where biodiversity flourishes and good food begins. Support Somerset's more sustainable and smaller-scale producers, an investment in ways of farming that make our food system more resilient: that regenerate soils, restore wildlife and reduce emissions & pollution, all while building stronger local economies, and nourishing us better. Tuesday 22nd July 6-7pm Location: Online A webinar to learn all about Cornwall Wildlife Trust's plans to release beavers into the wild Interesting Links and Articles News on Wellington’s Green Corridor Success for a long term conservation project The Gift Economy How to help insect populations recover Show your support to Nurture the Night Shift, Buglife’s campaign against light pollution. Pledge to close your curtains and blinds when you turn on your indoor lights, to keep the light inside and say Curtains for Light Pollution! If you have a few minutes to spare, please spend them doing this survey on Blackbirds! https://www.bto.org/get-involved/volunteer/projects/blackbirds-gardens |
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