To all friends and family who kindly supported my recent "bottom-right-to-top-left" charity ride from Dungeness Point to Cape Wrath.

Alarming news received from James Mather who, inter alia, runs the ferry over to the Cape Wrath peninsula.

Hi, Hello from a very cold Durness. I am writing in an almost desperate mode to let you all know that there is a chance that Cape Wrath will become precluded from public access. A letter from within MOD has been sent to our local Member of Parliament (Lord Thurso) saying that if the final percel of land at Cape Wrath can be bought by MOD, then we as communnity, visitors and users may not have access and the land we now freely walk on may not be available to us in future.

If you feel in any way interested in what I have just said, please email me and I will send you the letter by return.

Durness village is seriously under threat in my opinion,

Please forward this email to everyone you feel may also be interested,

Yours, James Mather

James Mather
01971 511 284/07742 670 196http://www.capewrath.org.uk/

You might say "Cape Wrath's a long way away" and you'd be quite right. It's a long way from anywhere; that's one of its charms.

You might say "I'll never go there," which may also be true, though you'd be missing a treat. Going to the corners of one's country at least once ought to be on everybody's bucket list, I feel. But even without that, it's a staggeringly beautiful place to go.

But my reason for passing this on to you all is that I think you might share my concern that we need to kick up a fuss when the bigwigs try to drive us off bits of our country. We largely won that battle against the rich land-owning bigwigs with the Right to Roam legislation. But we also need to keep an eye on corporate and governmental bigwigs; in this case, the MoD, who will chase us off great swathes of the country on the pretence of it being necessary for the defence of the realm. And just like my charity ride, this is enlightened self interest. If nobody stops them demanding the use of a bit of land there, who's going to stop them demanding the use of another bit of land here? A bit of beach near you might be just what they want for firing cannons; a heath just down the road might be "essential" for manouvres.

Visit the website above. (Visit Cape Wrath, too, some day, but a click on the link is easy enough to do right now!) Send James a message to let him know there are loads of people out there who are concerned.

John