The Glorious Twelfth

If you are into walking in the wild and open spaces on our doorstep in the Peak District, today is a day to give it a miss. Firstly the weather is grim and secondly while avoiding getting peppered with buckshot you will be tormented by incessant banging as numerous shotguns are fired throughout the day because today is The Glorious Twelfth. I personally cannot see the attraction of blasting innocent and beautiful Red Grouse out of the sky. It is supposedly a ‘sport’, but so was the massacre of elephants and lions on the plains of Africa.

Another issue must surely be contamination from the millions of lead pellets released from the thousands of shotgun cartridges used. Bleaklow, despite its wild beauty is a very heavily contaminated area as result of heavy metal exposure that occurred as a result of our industrial past, and countless millions of tiny lead balls released from activities during the grouse shooting season can only make the contamination worse.