fresh air – The Countryman's Daughter

Find your nesting instinct

Our fake wasp nest made from a brown paper bag hung on the gazebo to deter the buzzy pests

As I write this, I have just come back from a weekend away where one of my closest friends got married. It was a super occasion, small and informal, in which we celebrated the official union of two lovely people.

The day after they held a garden party where we could gather again to mull over the celebration. Several of us chose to sit in a spot under a gazebo while we chatted and enjoyed our drinks.

No sooner had we sat down than we began to be pestered by wasps. There were lots of them hovering around, determined to steal a sip of whatever we were drinking, or to take a closer look at our faces, our hairstyles or our clothes. It was extremely annoying and put a bit of a dampener on our enjoyment.

Some people are not troubled by wasps, calmly ignoring them or batting them away, while others shriek, leap from their chairs and flee as if pursued by wolves. I’m on the calmer end of the wasp-fear spectrum and my favourite dispersal method is waiting until they are close and then blowing at them as hard as I can so they are tossed away in a mini hurricane. This method is fine if they appear just once or twice, but if they are a persistent nuisance then the constant blowing makes it appear that my lung has collapsed.

Although wasps are more likely to sting than bees, they are still only supposed to do that when they feel threatened. However they are extremely territorial about their nests, and if they deem anyone or anything to be a danger to it, they will attack. I used to think it was an old wive’s tale that if you kill a wasp, its mates will come to take revenge, but in fact it is sort of true. A squished wasp emits a pheromone that alerts its comrades nearby who rush to the scene to leap into defensive action.

There are those who will defend this polarising insect. A few years ago I got talking to a country gentleman about wasps and mentioned my natural dislike of them. He insisted they got a bad press and went on to explain why they behave like they do in late summer, which I must admit, made me sympathise a bit with their irritating behaviour around this time of year. Although I have mentioned this tale before, it is worth repeating.

He explained that the wasps that annoy us are usually worker wasps and they are a bit Jekyll and Hyde. For the first half of the year, they are the benign Dr Jekyll, their job being to maintain the nest and provide food for the growing colony. In these early days of summer, insects and grubs are plentiful, and the busy wasp is too preoccupied finding enough protein to feed the ever-hungry brood so have no need to bother us humans. Once the colony is established, however, they are no longer of use and are cast out like a layer of surplus middle management. Suddenly they are homeless, and food supplies run thin. Competition with other redundant hungry wasps is fierce and in a desperate bid to survive, they will take whatever they need wherever they can find it. At this time of year, they crave sugar, and our penchant for al-fresco dining provides them with an oasis of sweetness in an otherwise barren landscape.

On the positive side, wasps are excellent pollinators for our fruits, flowers and crops, and also extremely efficient at pest control. Some sources I’ve read say that if it wasn’t for the wasp, we would be overrun with destructive insects that would make our lives misery.

Back to my garden party. One of the guests suggested a tactic to inflate a brown paper bag and hang it up nearby, shaping it to look like a nest. This then fools the wasps into thinking that they have infiltrated another colony’s territory, and so they buzz off in fear of being attacked to bother someone else.

So we did exactly that. We found a paper bag and hung it up. Sure enough, within a few minutes, the wasp botherers had vanished. Try it out for yourself and let me know your results!

What pest-deterring tactics do you recommend?

Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Get in touch with me using the ‘Contact’ button on the top right.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 18th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 16th July 2025

An air of mystery

What we believe is an ancient gatepost covered in moss and lichen spotted on the Cleveland Way by Paul Martin. But what is purpose of the hole at the top?

A ‘daisy-chain’ of padlocks at a BT site. Each contractor will have their own lock and key so they can gain access at any time.

I’ve had a lovely message from a reader following my recent column about love locks. If you remember I wrote about the padlocks that are attached to the metal walkway over the River Wharfe in Otley. The idea is that a courting couple declare their everlasting love by fixing a padlock on to the bridge and throwing the key into the waters below ensuring the lock can never be undone. The practice has become widespread all over the world, most famously on the Milvian Bridge in Rome, the Pont Des Arts in Paris, and on Mount Huangshan in China.There are a number of tales purporting to be the origin of the practice, but it is not known if any any of them are actually true.

Betty McDonald got in touch with me about a September 2013 trip she made with her late husband to the War Museum in Arnhem in the Netherlands, and to the German dams which were the target of the famous Dambusters Raid in May 1943. She wrote: “We did a tour of two of the bridges which where breached, Eder Dam and the Mohne Dam…It was a very proud moment to actually walk and stand on the dam which helped us to win the war, although sad too as many villages were swept away, destroying a German bomb-making factory.”

She added: “It was our very first sight of the padlocks of love on the Mohne Dam…We wish we had known about the love locks as we both knew the Mohne dam would be on our tour, and maybe one of our last tours. We stayed looking at the many locks of love and when we left I blew a kiss to the locks, with a lovely memory of being there together with my husband knowing our love was truly locked.”

It makes me wonder how many of you reading this have secured a love lock to a bridge, and was your love sealed forever?

On a slight tangent, I saw a Facebook post by Paul Martin who was walking the Cleveland Way. He included some pictures of what he had seen en route, and one was a secure gate outside a BT property which had three padlocks attached to it. He explained: “Each contractor who has access to the BT site will have their own padlock in the ‘daisy chain’ meaning any of them can get access at any time. It is not one of those lovers’ things on bridges.”

What a good idea, that each contractor has their own lock and key. It makes me think of when we get our oil tank filled up. We have one of those newer bunded ones where the outlet for filling it is under a manhole on top and you always need a key to access it. More often the not the delivery driver does not carry one, so we have to either make sure we are at home, or leave the key in a safe place. The keys are universal, a bit like those that open electric meter cupboards, so wouldn’t it make more sense if the drivers simply carried their own?

Paul included another picture from his walk of what looked like an ancient gatepost with a hole in the top. He wondered what it was for, and we surmised that the hole could be for tethering horses, or that another part of the gate mechanism would have once been attached to it. I’ve included a picture so you can see for yourself. Let me know what you think was the purpose of the hole.

The markings on the right-hand side of the post particularly caught my eye. They reminded me of those made by moorland stonemasons, often herringbone in style, which I have written about before in relation to traditional house building. This time they are a series of a vertical strikes in the stone, which look deliberate, but only decorate one half of the post. Was this the signature of a particular mason?

The post is covered in vivid green moss and lichen, as is another waymarker that lies high on the Cleveland Way that Paul photographed. He explains that this occurs when the air is particularly clean and free of pollution.

Let’s hope our precious North Yorkshire countryside air will remain this way for many centuries to come.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 27th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 25th Sept 2024.