Eddy's Good News: England’s best kept secret and a great act of kindness

Virgin Radio

24 May 2024, 15:47

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio Anthems, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 2pm and 6pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Friday 24th May 2024

Today let’s meet England’s best kept secret, The Isle Of Purbeck in Dorset that claims to have the greatest biodiversity in England!

Aside from being a great place to live or visit as a tourist and boasting the charm of Swanage, Durlston Castle and Country Park, Durdle Door and the perfect horseshoe Kimmeridge Bay, the Isle of Purbeck has the amazing Arne Peninsula. This may be England’s best kept secret and jewel in its biodiversity crown. It’s where you’ll find protected natural habitats from heathland to ancient woods, unspoilt beaches, and estuaries full of birdlife. There’s an RSPB reserve that’s home to exciting raptors including harriers and goshawks, as well as waders, spoonbills, terns, plus ground-nesting reptiles and birds such as nightjars, stone chats, sand lizards and woodlarks. They’re saying Ospreys and White Tailed Eagles have been scoping it out with a view to nesting this year. 

You’ll routinely hear nightjars and maybe see them on Hyde’s Heath at dusk.

At Coombe Heath, walkers can enjoy good views of osprey feeding stations by the estuary, and ponds that are home to interesting creepie crawlies like wasp and raft spiders. Dorset is the county that inspired me to move out of London after a lifetime there, I can’t recommend it enough and can’t wait to go back.

Via: rspb.org

A story of great kindness and potato plenty from Canada now as we say hello to Isiah Hofer, who grows potatoes in Manitoba. 

His latest crop has been so vast, he’s never seen anything like it. Beyond a bumper crop, the ground was spitting them out like a never ending geyser. After he fulfilled all his normal deliveries and quotas he had a staggering 12 million pounds left over. 

The question was now what to do with them. If he released them onto the market really cheaply then the value of everybody else’s potatoes would go down. 

So what do you do with 120,000 bags of potatoes? He could have left them to rot and turned them into fertiliser, or animal feed but after much soul searching he decided to just give them away. 

Canada, much like the U.K. has never seen so much food poverty in modern times. 

His neighbours in the US tell a similar story. 

Food Banks and charities to redistribute food headed for landfill have cropped up across the country echoing many inspiring stories I’ve shared with you here from the U.K.  

So Isiah called one of the biggest, Farmlink, who started during the pandemic to tell them he had the biggest donation they’ve ever had. Now they had one hell of a logistical challenge but they’ve risen to it and Isiah witnessed 115 trucks fill up with his surplus spuds and take them to the needy everywhere from San Diego to Ottawa.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org