Things That Go Beep In The Night...

How the planned winery might look at night - disturbing more than the nocturnal wildlife...?

I recently wrote about the pre-history of Cuxton and the Bronze Age burial site discovered at Barrow Hill in Upper Bush. I first found out about the details of the latter in September 2021, whilst wading through the planning application documentation associated with the Vineyard Farms proposed vinicultural theme park. I had long been intrigued by the name of “Barrow Hill” and was pleased (but not surprised) to learn that an ancient burial site in the area was a reality rather than a local myth. The hint is in the name, of course...

Google Maps view of Barrow Hill, 2018...

It transpired that Vineyard Farms had commissioned an archaeological study of the area as a result of some aerial photographs that had shown the outlines of mysterious circular structures etched into the hillside. A subsequent study dig unearthed some human remains, flint tools and pottery fragments, dating from around 2000 BC.

In a promotional video released early in their planning application campaign (and still available to view on their otherwise moribund “Kentish Wine Vault” website),Vineyard Farms CEO Gary Smith acknowledged the existence of these remains with a grudging snigger (see the 9 minute point in the video) saying that the company wanted to "celebrate Medway and Kent's heritage" (amongst some other things that, two years later, seem a wee bit hollow).

Indeed, VF’s “celebration” of part of our local heritage (when they are not actively reinventing it) will be to dig up a Bronze Age cemetery and fill it with concrete in order to build its vainglorious winery.

In fairness, the studies suggest that the Barrow Hill site is no Sutton Hoo (although I suspect construction would not be halted even if it turned out to be so). Whilst there are many, many reasons why Vineyard Farms’ vainglorious winery should not be built there, the finding of a few ancient remains is probably not one of them.

Given the number of historic finds in the Cuxton area, it almost seems to be very difficult to stick a shovel in the ground in the Cuxton area and not find historical artefacts, be they Palaeolithic hand-axes, Neolithic flint tools, Iron Age relics, Roman pottery, building materials and burials or Anglo-Saxon graves. That hasn’t stopped Cuxton being transformed by building works in the past hundred years or so and doubtless nor will it do so in the future. If we place too high a value on every piece of history we find in the ground, we would never be able to build anything. It is a judgement call, although in the case of the Bronze Age site at Upper Bush, it is arguable that insufficient evidence has been gathered to make that judgement. 

Archaeologist unearthing a Bronze Age inhumation on Barrow Hill...

I personally find the thought of disturbing and then destroying ancient graves, well, disturbing - especially for something as trivial and unnecessary as a rich man’s vinicultural Xanadu. It just doesn’t seem right. The dead should be left in peace unless there are very good reasons not to, even if that peace has gone on for 4000 years. I can’t quite understand why I think this way, as I do not regard myself as particularly religious or prone to mysticism. “Respect for the dead” is just part of the way I was brought up, I suppose. I certainly have no time for tales of ghosts, shades of the long-dead (maleficent or otherwise) nor any other sort of spiritualistic, supernatural nonsense.

Finding out about the Bronze Age burial site on Barrow Hill did make me reconsider some memories of a rather strange experience I had there back in 2015, however.

At night, Bush Valley, with Barrow Hill sheltering its north-eastern flank, currently offers some of the darkest skies available in our otherwise urbanised environment of North Kent. It is one of the few local places that you can (for example) appreciate the silvery, starry arc of the Milky Way in summer, a sight normally washed out by urban and industrial light pollution. These wonderful dark skies are one of the many things that will be destroyed by the advent of the winery building, which will undoubtedly be lit up like a year-round Christmas tree for the benefit of its late-evening posh restaurant customers and throughout the night for its own “security” (something we know Vineyard Farms take very seriously indeed…).

Astrophotography is a hobby of mine and on one clear, dark February evening in 2015, I set off to Barrow Hill in an attempt to photograph a phenomenon known as the “zodiacal light”. This is a very faint silvery glow that, at certain times of the year (and only from very dark skies) can be seen stretching up from the night-time horizon. It is thought to be caused by sunlight reflected off of dust from the planet Mars that has spread out along the path of its orbit.

Vineyard Farms even include a (somewhat exaggerated) picture of the zodiacal light in their promotional planning documentation, oblivious of the irony that the light pollution from their massive, lit-up winery on Barrow Hill at night will completely obliterate any chance you would have of ever seeing it from there!

From the VF Design and Access Statement, Part 1, p 28.

As the zodiacal light is quite faint, I decided in advance that I would need to take a series of long photographic exposures, probably around the 60-90 second mark. To prevent the stars in the final picture from “trailing” (due to the rotation of the earth during the long exposure time), I had mounted the camera on a battery-driven drive that could compensate for the speed of the sky’s rotation (about 15 degrees per hour).

I drove out to Upper Bush at around 6.30 in the evening, leaving my car by the old Bush Farm buildings. Normally I would walk from home to Upper Bush, but the camera, tripod, clock drive and battery/lantern pack add up to a fair bit of weight and so I took the lazy option. I had decided to set up right on top of Barrow Hill, overlooking the valley towards the western horizon. Even that in itself was a fair slog from the farm, carrying my equipment.

Once on top of the hill, I got set up. The sun had set about an hour or so beforehand and brilliant Venus was just starting to approach the western horizon. Away to the south, the constellations of Orion and his retinue were glittering high in the sky in the rapidly fading twilight. Over to the north-west, the Milky Way could even be glimpsed, a sure sign that the sky was promisingly free from clouds or haze.

Sunset over Bush Valley from Barrow Hill....

To make sure the camera drive tracked the sky properly, I had to line it up with the pole star. This involves squinting through a little telescope built into the drive unit, and adjusting the drive mount’s direction and elevation until the pole star can be seen in the middle of it. To help with this, there is a reticule in the telescope that can be lit up with a tiny LED so that you can see it against the dark sky (hopefully with Polaris, the pole star, somewhere in the view).

This LED wouldn’t light up however. This was strange, as I had only just recently fitted a new battery to it. Nevertheless, I managed to get a good alignment and carried on.

The telescope drive has a handset associated with it, that allows you set the time and to automatically point the camera at a specific star if you so wish. Normally, the handset “remembers” the time, but on this occasion, it wouldn’t. Not a problem, as you can set that manually via the handset key-pad. However, when I checked my watch by torchlight, that had also stopped! My watch is a solar-powered, self-charging one, which I had worn daily for several years and which had been supremely accurate and reliable. Its sudden failure didn’t matter too much in terms of the exercise in hand however, so I guessed the time to be around 7.30 pm, programmed that in to the handset and carried on.

I soon got the camera to point towards the western horizon and started taking 60 second exposures. Annoyingly, I noticed that the sky seemed to be darkening, although it was a strange sort of darkness. Normally, any hint of haze or cloud gives the sky a yellowish tinge due to reflected town light, but this just seemed as if the stars themselves were getting dimmer.

Then the camera back screen started flashing up a “Low Battery” alarm. I was now getting seriously fed up, as I had only just recharged that battery this afternoon. And the sky was getting dimmer, almost grey, but also weirdly darker. It was now getting difficult to see the horizon, or indeed even the surrounding hillside. And although it was a cold February night, it also seemed to be getting warm and humid. The chilly wind had completely ceased and a thin, damp, cloying mist started to develop. A total silence had also descended on the hillside, with the faint background noise of the distant M2 now completely absent.

Finally, the hand-set on the camera beeped and the drive stopped. In the total silence, the “beep” seemed startlingly loud. Low battery.

I am not of a nervous disposition, at least as far as night-time heebie-jeebies are concerned. As a very experienced astrophotographer, I am well used to spending very dark, late nights alone, and for long times in remote places. Night-time noises, such as the rustlings of hedgehogs or the occasional nocturnal comings and goings or unearthly screeches of foxes, owls or badgers, can startle but never frighten me.

But I was beginning to get seriously spooked. By now, I could not see or hear anything up on Barrow Hill and I was starting to panic a little bit. I felt as if I was going deaf and blind. The cloying humidity and mist was even making it difficult to breathe. I started to wonder if I was having some sort of “medical episode”.

I picked up my lantern/battery pack but the built-in torchlight was dead. In desperation, I got out my mobile phone, just for some light. That too, was dead.

I abandoned my equipment and blundered blindly down the hillside. Towards the bottom of Barrow Hill, the mist began to clear and I could see stars again. Looking back up towards where I had been, I could see no trace of the mist that had appeared to surround me.

I went back to my car for a breather and pulled myself together. This was not the witching hour. I could see the headlights of the occasional car going along Warren Road. Civilisation was alive and well, and close by. It could only have been around 9.00pm at the absolute latest, after all.

The clock on the dashboard said 00.30. That could not be possible.

I got out and looked up at the night sky, now shining with cold, hard, starlit transparency. Orion had sunk down to the western horizon. Leo was high in the southern sky. It was indeed past midnight. I had somehow lost three hours. Had I passed out?

”I am not scared I am not scared I am not scared” I repeated to myself.

I got a torch out of the glove box. That was working fine. Right, I am now feeling just fine and I am going back up the hill to collect my equipment. There will be no fuss, no bother.

There wasn’t. There was a chilly breeze. The night sky was crystal clear and the light of the stars was beginning to be reflected off of a silvery dusting of frost forming on the muddy, frozen field. And on the western horizon, was that a trace of the zodiacal light?

I picked up my useless collection of still-electrically-dead equipment, walked back to the car, loaded up and went home.

My other half was a bit tetchy, as I had told her I would be in by ten. “Why didn’t you ring me?” she asked. I pointedly put my ‘phone on charge. The battery was completely flat but subsequently charged up just fine.

Ditto my power pack and lantern. Ditto my wristwatch. Ditto the camera battery. The little non-rechargeable button battery in my polar alignment unit was completely dead, as was the 3V lithium battery mounted on the circuit board of my drive unit handset (hence its inability to remember the time). Five minutes with a soldering iron and a new battery, and everything was working again.

I have had absolutely no trouble with any of that equipment since then. I have also been back to Bush Valley and Barrow Hill at night on several subsequent occasions. But not on my own…

View from Barrow Hill - during the day, winter 2022...

So I found the subsequent discovery of an ancient Bronze Age burial pit on Barrow Hill to be quite intriguing.

Do I think that the ghosts of long-dead Bronze Age chieftains were responsible for sucking the life out of my astronomy electronics? Of course not.

Do I think that some weird supernatural event caused me to lose three hours? No.

I think I might have flaked out due to my hill-climbing, lugging-heavy-equipment-type exertions and that I was a bit unlucky on the battery front. Damp has got into my sensitive astro-electronics in the past, but I must admit I have never had a total, across-the-board failure like that one. It would be so easy to pin a series of unusual events on some weird, supernatural shenanigans and I don’t intend to start that superstitious nonsense at my age. But I would be lying if I said I could totally ignore the tiny, credulous bit of me that says otherwise…

The one thing that really stuck in my mind about that evening was the feeling of stifling uneasiness. Curiously, the only other time I can ever remember feeling anything even remotely like that was when I visited Dode Church a few years back. I think that place has a slightly creepy vibe, even in broad daylight. It’s not the sort of place I would ordinarily imagine young folk getting married in somehow, but they do, in droves, and they all seem to be quite happy ever after about it. 

So it’s really just me...

As for Barrow Hill, I think it should be left alone, for lots of reasons.

So, Vineyard Farms, when you finally get your way and you get to build your billionaire’s stately pleasure dome up there, you only have yourselves to blame if your wine goes sour, your electrics play up or your staff or customers freak out.

I will only smile and say “been there, done that…”

Millington v. The Green Belt...

Way back in September 2021, I poured scorn on what I thought was an outrageous piece of sophistry by Vineyard Farms in their planning application for their luxury winery on green belt land at Upper Bush near Cuxton.

Central to the applicant’s case throughout the planning process has been the claim that the proposed 16,000m2 £30 million tourist, hospitality and manufacturing facility comprising of an above-ground restaurant, café, visitor’s centre, wine-tasting area and shop, designed to serve an initial 65,000 visitors a year, combined with a subterranean (and therefore not visible) wine factory having a capacity to produce up to 10m bottles of wines a year, is a mere “agricultural building”.

This argument is important to them, possibly because it’s the only one they have.

National planning guidelines state that:

“A local planning authority should regard the construction of new buildings as inappropriate in the Green Belt”.

…and that:

“When considering any planning application, local planning authorities should ensure that substantial weight is given to any harm to the Green Belt. ‘Very special circumstances’ will not exist unless the potential harm to the Green Belt by reason of inappropriateness, and any other harm resulting from the proposal, is clearly outweighed by other considerations”.

However, they go on to state:

“Exceptions to this are…buildings for agriculture and forestry…”

This exception allows the applicants to bypass considerations of satisfying the “very special circumstances” that set a very high bar in terms of green belt development, one that even this design would probably not otherwise clear.

To “lay” people such as ourselves, it would seem that such a large facility, with its tourist elements so prominently placed on view in such a protected and environmentally-sensitive landscape, could hardly be considered to be an “agricultural building”.

It seems laughable. Indeed, Medway Council's planning officers should have thrown it all out at the pre-application stage and saved everyone (especially themselves) a load of unnecessary grief.

It all seems rather at odds with Gravesham Borough Council's unwillingness to support Meopham Vineyard's application to build a similar but much more modest winery overlooking Happy Valley in Meopham.

Nevertheless, a legal precedent exists that would appear to justify such a thing, one which has been extensively quoted by the applicant since pre-application days.

Just a farm shop, guv'nor, honest, just like wot you'd get on any other farm...

And when a guy like Mr. Sasha White KC (Vineyard Farms’ advocate and one of the leading legal planning experts in the UK) is telling you that this is indeed the case, then suddenly you have to take it very, very seriously indeed.

This legal precedent initially arose (perhaps somewhat ironically) out of a dispute around traffic. David Millington ran (and still runs, I think) the Wroxeter Roman Vineyard, which is located near Wroxeter, not far to the east of Shrewsbury in Shropshire.

Compared to the Vineyard Farms operation it is tiny, with a mere 12 acres under vines. To help his little vineyard along, Mr. Millington and his family started providing visitors with snacks and drinks in addition to making and selling his wine on site.

His little winery, a typical example of an agricultural “crinkly tin” shed, backs on to a few houses and it seems that the local residents started to object to the traffic that began to visit Mr. Millington’s increasingly popular venue.

Initially, the local authority tried to block Mr. Millington making, and then selling, his wines and eventually (as these things can do when you have the money to follow it through) it wound up going all the way up to, and then beyond, the Secretary of State, to be debated in the High Court by some of the most senior judges in the land.

The upshot was that Millington v. The Secretary of State (1999) established that:

“...the making and selling of wine from grapes grown on the premises (associated vineyard), including tours and tastings, are classified as ‘ancillary agricultural activities’ where the growing of grapes is the primary use. Therefore, winemaking is classified as an agricultural activity (and)… associated vineyard shops and other ancillary businesses on-site are just that; ancillary.” (see reference 1).

This precedent was evidenced in the applicant’s pre-application Planning Statement. It was uncritically accepted by Medway Council’s Planning department until after the planning committee meeting of 8 December 2021, when the planners finally stopped copying Vineyard Farms' homework and got some independent advice. This told them exactly what the scheme's objectors had been telling them for three months, i.e. that the applicant’s proposals constituted “inappropriate development”.

I suspect that by then, Medway Council’s planners, who had been passionate advocates of the Vineyard Farms’ billionaire Xanadu since pre-app days, were now in too deep to back away.

Thus, the planning officers still recommended that the Planning Committee should approve the scheme at the March 2022 meeting, something that the elected councillors of the committee declined to do.

In the subsequent formal rejection notification (written by Medway’s planning officers) green belt considerations were not cited as a reason for rejecting the applicant’s proposals, possibly because Medway Council didn’t fancy now challenging the High Court precedent it had previously accepted as valid.

The "Rule 6 parties" (i.e. Cuxton Parish Council and their supporters) were subsequently advised by the Planning Inspectorate not to formally contest green belt issues at the inquiry, as this may leave them liable for a cost award against them. Pay up or shut up is how major planning applications seem to be decided these days.

On the opening day of the planning inquiry the Vineyard Farms advocate, Mr. Sasha White KC, spelt out that in his legal opinion, a ruling applied to a family-run business operating out of a shed was equally applicable to a Lord Foster £30m pleasure dome, 16,000m2 in total floor area and requiring a staff of 80 to run it.

As “lay” people, we are obviously in no position whatsoever to question Mr. Sasha White KC’s expert opinion on this matter. I certainly wouldn’t dare to. Jesus, that guy would have me on toast...

Nevertheless, I have to repeat that it just seems incredible that a principle applied (not unreasonably) to a small family winery operating out of a modest tin shed is now being used to justify the building of a £30m restaurant, café and hospitality complex with an above-ground area of approximately 4500m2 (and where 80% its projected 82 staff are involved in hospitality activities rather than bottled wine production) on protected green belt land.

Farmyard animals settling down for the evening in their "agricultural building..."

Towards the end of the formal transcript of the Millington case, Lord Justice Schiemann was recorded as making the following observation, however:

“My own instinctive view on the arguments which we have heard is that the making of wine or cider or apple juice on the scale with which we are concerned is a perfectly normal activity for a farmer engaged in growing wine grapes or apples…” (my emphasis).

This seems to imply that some consideration does indeed need to be given to the scale of winery operation in the context of the above judgement. i.e. what is “perfectly normal” for a vineyard of a dozen or so acres working out of a tin shed may not be for one of, say, 1200 acres and a winery with a total floor area of 1.6 hectares in green belt land.

As stated earlier, the winery that was the subject of the above dispute is the Wroxeter Roman Vineyard, which is located in the Shropshire Hills AONB but is obviously not designated green belt land.

Aerial views that compare the scale of the Wroxeter Roman Vineyard to that of the appeal scheme are shown below.

Google maps screen grab of the Wroxeter vineyard area. The winery building is just visible at centre

.

Google maps screen grab of the VF winery, same scale.

From Google maps, it can be estimated that the size of the Wroxeter winery building is approximately 370m2. At approximately 4500m2, the visible part of the appeal scheme is an order of magnitude greater than the winery that was the subject of the above judgement.

In terms of scale, I really suspect that Mr. Sasha White KC is pushing the envelope on this one. Not that I’d dare tell him that to his face, of course.

It has been said that, given that the manufacturing part of the appeal scheme comprises 85% of the building’s operational space and is below the ground line, the winery can be compared to an iceberg. In terms of its visible impact, all that can be seen are the hospitality areas.

And as the Titanic found out, it’s the bit you can see that really has the impact.

It’s not just the scale of operation that casts doubt over the applicability of the Millington judgement to the VF winery. There are additional green belt sensitivities to consider. The Wroxeter winery is not sited in green belt land. 

As stated earlier, NPPF green belt development criteria set a “high bar” of “very special circumstances” to permit new developments within green belt land. If the appeal scheme was not considered to be an agricultural building, it is unlikely that it would meet the “very special circumstances” criteria.

While “Gross Value Added” (GVA) estimates provided by the applicant’s clever-clever accounting agents look superficially impressive, when assessed against the overall local economic activity, they are trivial.

Provision of perhaps 150 largely low-skilled jobs of a low-end type (hospitality or agricultural) that employers are already struggling to fill, and in areas of low unemployment like Cuxton, Cobham or Luddesdown, hardly suggest “very special circumstances”.

Similarly, the VF winery is looking (so it says) to bring in 65,000 visitors a year. Medway annual tourism figures are around 4.5 million. An overall increase to Medway’s tourist visitor numbers of 1.4% hardly seems significant.

Other planning guidelines talk about the “need” for a facility that justifies the sacrifice of green belt AONB.

Wine is hardly an essential and there are plenty of other suppliers in the UK in terms of meeting any national “need” anyway. Having planted 700 acres of vines in such a hurry, VF definitely need a manufacturing base, but why at the Upper Bush AONB? 

Because they want their visitors to enjoy the view out of their restaurant window across the Bush Valley, that’s why. That’s hardly a “need” in terms of national or local requirements. 

Other local vineyards, such as Meopham or Chapel Down, are quite happy to manufacture away from point of harvest. Why can’t Vineyard Farms?

Another factor is that the Millington precedent was established over 20 years ago. The world has changed much since then. Perception of the value of unspoiled green belt AONB land (and indeed, protection of the environment in general), especially in a crowded and highly-developed area such as North Kent, has become much sharpened, and particularly as a result of Covid lockdowns.

The use of an elderly legal precedent to justify what is essentially the construction of a viticultural theme park in precious green belt land seems inappropriate by the standards of today.

There are implications for green belt in general as well. Approval of this scheme could set a precedent that would open up all green belt/AONB land to other such developments. If one billionaire tax-exile is allowed to build a vanity winery on green belt land, then they’ll all want one. Is this a good thing?

Mr. Sasha White KC is arguing the case for upholding the Millington precedent because he is being paid to by his client. He is advancing that argument because he considers it to be a strong one, for sure, but that doesn’t necessarily make it right.

Unfortunately, the local community was unable to afford to engage the legal services required to argue otherwise at this inquiry. The threat of having costs awarded against them also helped to silence any formal community argument against green belt development.  Even then, can the issue really be resolved at this planning inquiry?

Given this question of the exact applicability of the Millington precedent to the vast scale of the appeal scheme and its criticality in this appeal, it may need a legal debate that is perhaps outside the scope of this inquiry.

It’s hard to see quite what is going on in the background to all this. Neither Medway Council nor Vineyard Farms wanted green belt issues on the agenda, for obvious reasons. It was the Planning Inspectorate that raised them for discussion.

Vineyard Farms simply have too many highly-paid and highly-polished subject matter experts arguing for them on their behalf for them not to win their appeal under normal circumstances. But this is an extraordinary development, and one that may set a potentially disastrous precedent for green belt/AONB landscapes across the whole of the UK.

Ultimately this will go before the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, for final approval. One would hope that he might refer this case to m’learned friends, in order to debate the assertion of Mr. Sasha White KC that in the eyes of the law, a small tin shed serving 12 acres of vines is just the same as a £30m 16,000m2 luxury vinicultural theme park set in 900 acres of a green belt AONB.

Let's see...

References:

1)    South Downs Local Plan, Viticulture Technical Advice Note, April 2021, p10, 3.6.

https://www.southdowns.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SDNPA-Viticulture-Technical-Advice-Note-TAN.pdf

Winery public inquiry - some observations from the second day...

The second day of the public inquiry was hosted in the main hall (pictured above) of the Corn Exchange, Rochester on Friday 24th March.

Use of main hall seemed like a nice idea compared to the stuffy room of yesterday, but it soon became apparent that the acoustics were terrible, it being impossible to hear anyone speaking from more than a few feet away. The council staff couldn’t have been more helpful, but unfortunately their two available radio microphones didn't seem to work unless you virtually swallowed them, and even then not that well.

The morning was taken up with a “round table” discussion of traffic issues affecting Cuxton, and how the advent of the winery might make things worse.

This was always going to be a hiding to nothing, and not just because of the acoustics. Indeed, part of the reason Medway Council did not cite traffic as a reason for refusing the original application is that the various transport guidelines are so broad that attempting to defend a planning refusal on traffic grounds alone is virtually impossible from a legal perspective.

Nevertheless, Cuxton Parish Council felt they had to give it a try given the strength of feeling in the village.

It is a fact of life that councils and traffic planners aren’t that bothered about anyone’s inconvenience. If it takes you ten minutes of get out of the end of Bush Road in the morning, it matters not to them. Safety is (quite rightly) the only consideration.

We put across the argument that we felt the A228 junction with Bush Road is a dangerous one, and why.

We talked about how large lorries and HGVs cause constant problems along Bush Road, especially at school run times.

We asked why our “lived experience” of traffic in Bush Road seemed so different to the expert’s view that there wasn’t a problem, and wondered if an urban traffic model was suitable for application to Cuxton’s semi-rural location.

We mentioned that the Vineyard Farms had hinted at expansion plans that could give rise to traffic volumes way beyond those covered by their assessments.

Vineyard Farm’s transport consultant, James Bevis listened to it all quite patiently and just smiled. His message was quite simple.

Like it or not, folks, all the survey numbers say that there isn’t a traffic problem in Cuxton, at least, not when judged against national guidelines for that sort of thing. The winery traffic won’t make a jot of difference to that. All the HGVs we see in the village are nothing to do with Vineyard Farms’ existing operations at Luddesdown, apparently. And the junction isn’t classed as “dangerous” because enough people haven’t been killed to call it so.

Mr. Bevis was quite pleasant and almost apologetic about it all. Indeed, he showed that you didn’t necessarily have to be a shouty bully in order to put your client’s case across effectively.

"... but our numbers say..."

He stopped short of saying that any congestion we see in Bush Road must therefore be a hallucination upon our part, but I kind of got the impression that he would have just loved to have done.

There were one or two emotional observations from residents, which Mr. Bevis dealt with politely but firmly. Sorry, folks, it is what it is. Lorry headlights giving you problems? Buy some curtains, they work really well...

And after a couple of hours, that was that. I don’t think we made much of an impression.

One can only hope that the inspector perhaps made a note of the observation that in their submission documents, Vineyard Farms stated that they saw this application as being just the first part of an “estate-wide strategy”. This implies expansion plans not included in any transport assessment. Similarly, their Transport Assessment states that they could double wine production from 5 to 10 million bottles a year. This doubling of output was not considered in any “worst case” traffic scenario.

It was the one argument Mr. Bevis seemed a bit evasive about. I hope the inspector noted that.

The afternoon session saw us give up on the main hall and return to the stuffy room of yesterday. At least it was possible to hear everyone speak and with far fewer audience members, it was at least bearable.

The topic was one of “landscaping” and was part of the AONB defence being made by Medway Council. The council’s expert was a Mr. Etchells, who spent about 30 minutes calmly going through numerous arcane examples of how, in his opinion, Vineyard Farms had underestimated the adverse impact that the winery building would have on the appearance and tranquillity of a previously undeveloped and unspoilt AONB.

To me, his arguments all seemed pretty reasonable.

However, they seemed (to me) to make Mr. Sasha White KC quite angry (on his client’s behalf, I assume). He piled into the unfortunate Mr, Etchells, asking complex questions in machine-gun fashion and demanding “yes or no” answers. One had to admire Mr. Sasha White KC's grasp of the material and I can only assume (having had no experience of this sort of thing) that this is how top KCs normally operate. It all seemed unnecessarily aggressive, intimidating and confrontational to me.

To begin with, Mr. Etchells handled it all quite well, but the relentless onslaught from Mr. Sasha White KC clearly began to fluster him after a while. In the end, the inspector intervened and said he was quite happy to hear “qualified” answers to complex questions, and Mr. Sasha White KC subsequently dialled it down a little.

Quite what the planning inspector made of it all, I don’t know. I suppose he must be used to it.

I certainly couldn’t work out what the conclusion was. I suppose we will have to wait until the end of the inquiry.

Unfortunately and rather frustratingly for me, I tested positive for Covid over the weekend and so I shall be unable witness further proceedings. I hope others will keep me up to date. 

Winery public inquiry – some observations from the first day…

The main hall, Corn Exchange, Rochester...

The public inquiry into Medway Council’s rejection of the Vineyard Farm plans to build a massive viticultural theme park on green belt land at Upper Bush began at Rochester’s Corn Exchange on Thursday.

There seemed to be quite a good turn-out of Cuxton residents, maybe around 40 people. It was a shame that they were crowded into a stuffy side room rather than the rather splendid main hall pictured above, but the latter had been pre-booked in the late afternoon for a wake for a popular local businessman.

The opening session saw the protagonists introduce themselves to the inspector, a Mr. Stephen Wilkinson. Representing the cast of doubtlessly highly-paid experts from Vineyard Farms was Mr Sasha White, KC (King’s Council, and definitely and most certainly nothing to do with the Sunshine Band). Mr. White is one of the top KCs in the UK, hugely experienced, highly successful and a highly-regarded (amongst his peers, at least) planning law specialist.

If ever you needed evidence of the infinitely deep pockets of the owner of Vineyard Farms, then the mere presence of someone like Mr. White KC in the room on their behalf was it. And you’d better hope that Mr. White KC was on your side if you ever had to present such evidence.

He quickly established the case for the winery and it became apparent that much hinged on being able to demonstrate that the massive luxury restaurant, visitor’s centre etc. etc. was in fact, merely an agricultural building such as you might find on any working farm.

Of this, Mr. White KC was ferociously certain. There could be no doubt at all, for Mr. White KC was in full and unalienable freehold possession of A Legal Precedent. Thus, there could be no credible arguments against his client’s magnificent and iconic winery. The End.

I’ll give an explanation of, and a few observations upon, “The Precedent” a bit later.

Medway Council were represented by their own brief, who was a one-day stand in for the usual chap, a Dr. Rouse. They would be contesting the applicant’s appeal on grounds of Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) conservation only, given that Medway’s council’s planners had excluded other arguments from the formal rejection notice.

And, on behalf of Cuxton’s residents, Paul Pattison spoke for the “Rule Six parties”, a trio of plucky local people who have bravely put themselves in the way of the clenched fist of the Silverhand Estate to try and fight off this development.

They had already been advised that they could not “formally” contest green belt issues unless they were prepared to take the risk of having costs awarded against them (something they naturally declined to do) and so their case would be (as I understand it) confined to presenting their views to the inspector on certain topics, rather than attempting to argue directly against the applicant’s case.

Also in the audience was KentOnLine’s Local Democracy Reporter, although whether our high-quality local news outlet will be able to make room for her copy in amongst its normal click-bait of Brexit, immigrants in boats, “compo” faces and advertorials for Wetherspoons is another matter.

Around 90 minutes had been set aside for people to make presentations as “interested parties” to the planning inspector.

The inspector naturally needed to have an idea of how many people wanted to speak, with would-be presenters having to register their interest with Medway Council in advance. It seemed, however, that Medway Council had not passed the list on to the inspector who, unsurprisingly, was a little taken aback by this.

As might be expected though, Mr. Wilkinson has a reassuring air of not being readily rattled by anything and he soon organised the speakers, although presentation time for each was rather curtailed.

First, we got to hear from Councillor Simon Curry, who spoke about the conflict of the winery development with the history of the area, its unclear local benefits and the adverse impact upon the local traffic. Our own ward councillor, Matt Fearn, was obviously unable to attend and Simon was speaking as an “interested party” and private individual rather than as a councillor.

This did not stop the fearsome Mr. Sasha White KC from tearing into him at the end, quizzing him about his decision to vote against the winery development at the March 2022 planning committee meeting. Simon was a bit taken aback (as anyone would be) but handled it pretty well, I thought.

Not surprisingly, this made the subsequent speakers rather nervous.

Fortunately, Mr White KC remained quiescent thereafter and we got to hear about the behaviour of the applicants towards residents of Upper Bush and the adverse impact we are already seeing upon the local area as a result of their activities. To me, this was the most powerful presentation of the day: I had no idea just how the behaviour and activities of Vineyard Farms' operators had degraded the quality of Upper Bush resident's lives. "Living in fear" was one shocking phrase that stuck in my mind, and hopefully in that of the Planning Inspector's as well. 

We also heard some well-thought-out (and well articulated) presentations on the loss of dark skies, the lack of value that the winery would actually bring to the local community, (questioning the “need” for such a thing and its claim to offer “very special circumstances”), and also the impact of the winery upon our poor old local badger population, a family of which have apparently been in residence in the area for over a hundred years.

All of these are regulatory reasons not to grant planning permission.

A few residents also made some passionate speeches around the traffic situation, something Medway Council did not want to make a case out of because it is difficult to argue from a planning perspective – and especially when you have been so supportive of the applicant’s plans in the past…

The inspector, Mr. Wilkinson, wound things up early as the “interested party” session had rather over-run, but I think the community of Cuxton (and particularly those of Upper Bush) took good advantage of the opportunity to get its views across.

 

Ploughshares To Swords...

Proposed winery site at Barrow Hill, June 2021...

The public inquiry into the Cuxton winery development at Upper Bush begins tomorrow (Thursday 23rd March) at the Corn Exchange in Rochester. It sees the hordes of highly-paid legal and subject matter experts (the best that a billionaire tax-exile’s money can buy, no doubt) pitted against a lonely-looking Medway Council brief and a few determined (if somewhat apprehensive) Cuxton residents.

One thing that has happened is that the Planning Inspector has put Green Belt protection issues back on the agenda. As I noted earlier, Medway Council’s planners had not cited this as a reason for refusal, a move which must have delighted the applicants. 

The problem is, of course, is that Medway's planners, having supported the applicant's plans and indicated that they didn't think traffic or green belts issues were a problem, have now put the Council in a cleft stick. It can hardly be seen to be arguing against what they so very clearly approved of, which is why they are confining their defence to issues around green belt conservation.

One can hardly blame Vineyard Farms for being aggrieved, perhaps.

Maybe the inspector feels he is legally bound to look at all aspects of the appeal scheme however, not just the ones the vineyard folk and Medway Council’s planners want him to.

In a small way, I feel a bit sorry for Vineyard Farms. During the early pre-application phase, it seemed that no-one within their cosy network had tried to inject a bit of local reality into the debate by taking a long, hard and critical look at the compatibility of the proposals with planning guidelines. The emphasis seemed to be all about getting around them, rather that coming up with a scheme that simply complied with them and could gain local support.

VF seems to be a “young” company in terms of its managers and personally, I think they’ve been poorly served by some of their advisors. It would have been nice to have been friends, rather than adversaries.

My own objection to their plans has always been on a point of principle, in that I think they violate the planning protections afforded to Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Green Belt.

Foster's Flying Saucer...

I really am not a NIMBY. I have to be honest and and say that I would have loved to have seen that wonderful Lord Foster flying saucer landing near me.

If only Bush Valley wasn’t AONB/Green Belt land. If only it wasn’t surrounded by precious SSSI woodland.

And if only the site of the proposed winery could be easily reached, instead of having to funnel all of its construction, servicing and tourist traffic down the narrow little residential cul-de-sac that is Cuxton’s Bush Road.

But despite what it suits all of the traffic experts to say, Bush Valley is hard to get to and most of all, is a peaceful, beautiful area, one afforded some of the highest levels of protection from development offered by existing national planning guidelines.

What the flying saucer might look like in late evening?  So much for dark skies...

To me, it seems incredible that Medway Council’s planning department have encouraged Vineyard Farms’ schemes since the early days of the pre-application process back at the start of 2021. The planners must have been aware from day one that a development of the proposed scale might just constitute “inappropriate development” under terms of national planning guidelines and that it flew in the face of many of their own guidelines spelt out in Medway’s Local Plan. Yet that key show-stopper didn’t seem to bother them until the very last minute. 

Of course, we don't know what went on in meetings with key stakeholders throughout the first half of 2021. Representatives of the local Cuxton community were not regarded as key stakeholders and they  were not invited to such discussions. We only live here, after all. 

But I suppose our local council planners are only human. After all, they must spend most of their days looking at plans for drab shop conversions, featureless housing developments or people’s garage extensions.

Perhaps you can understand a degree of bedazzlement in the face of Lord Foster’s glittering design. What a wonderful thing to have on “your patch”. And without meaning to impugn the professional judgement of Medway Council’s planners (who I hear are held in high esteem by most local councillors) perhaps, just perhaps, the siren voices of Foster and Partners, along with all of the other slick advisors being paid from the bottomless pockets of Vineyard Farms’ owner, beguiled our beleaguered local planners into just going along with the enchanted flow.

You have to contrast the enthusiasm of Medway planners for the Kentish Wine Vault with the refusal of neighbouring Gravesham Borough Council to support Meopham Vineyard’s plans for a much more modest winery overlooking Happy Valley.

Nope, GBC said. It’s a green belt AONB, and will send too much traffic down narrow residential roads. Does that situation sound familiar?

In the end, Meopham Vineyard withdrew their application. But of course, Meopham Vineyard didn't have the clout of a billionaire owner and the cachet of Lord Foster behind them...

Barrow Hill, July 2022 - "because we can"...

Had Medway Council’s planning advice to Vineyard Farms been perhaps just been a bit more cautious and critical, maybe the winery folk wouldn’t have been encouraged to put so much time, money and effort into grandiose plans that now face a remote but still-possible chance that they may all come to nothing.

If Vineyard Farms get their way, it could have wider implications, possibly setting a precedent for the industrial-scale development of green-belt/AONBs across the UK.

I’m sure that this is something the planning inspector (and his old/new boss, Michael Gove) has to consider. The possibility of such a precedent being set is why I am against these proposals.

Of course, there are no real winners in this situation now.

If Vineyard Farms are successful, the local, vocal supporters of the winery will doubtless be pleased to get an opportunity to take the mickey out of those they call the NIMBY tree-huggers.

Until the construction traffic starts rolling along Bush Road, that is, and they face an interminable wait to get their SUVs out onto the A228. And then when the noise, dust and congestion caused by construction is over after two or three years, things get even worse when the wine factory is turning out far more bottles than any traffic assessment ever allowed for, or the visitor’s centre is attracting five times as many visitors as they said it would. After all, you don’t spend £30m on a winery and not then wring every last drop of financial advantage out of it.

(And perhaps the traffic situation will backfire on Vineyard Farms as well. You can almost imagine the one star TripAdvisor ratings: “Nice place but a ‘mare to get to. Avoid!!!!”).

Cuxton as a nice place to live will be downgraded by all of this, but then that’ll all be the parish council’s fault for not fighting hard enough, won’t it?

And if the winery folk don’t get what they want, then we know what will happen.

We know they aren’t good losers.

After their original planning application was rejected by the councillors of Medway Council’s planning committee, that was when the “keep to the footpaths” signs went up, the soil and spoil started getting piled everywhere and their security patrols started policing the mythically-named “Silverhand Estate”.

“If we can’t have what we want, neither can you,” seemed to be the message. And if their appeal is rejected, they’ve made it clear (in the "Proof Of Evidence" documentation prepared for the inquiry) just what they are going to do as a result...

Drawings taken from Vineyard Farms "Proof of Evidence" appendices...

They’ve threatened to build a series of huge sheds to house their wine factory, 12m high and 1000m2 in area, right on the edge of Bush Road overshadowing residents houses down near the bottom of Tomlins Lane, under “permitted development rights”. They've thrown some scary traffic numbers at us as well, which involves doing stuff that they didn't need to do when they had a swanky winery in the offering. 

Somehow, sheds mean they have to bring their harvest down the road instead of across fields. Why? It also means that apparently, they can't compost their grape waste somewhere on their massive 1200 acre estate and it will have to be taken through the village for composting offsite instead. Seems rather desperate stuff to me. Most farms have compost heaps, after all. And none of this solves infrastructure issues such as water supply or drains, which are restricted.

Of course, Medway Council's planning committee could put a stop to this nonsense by refusing to give planning permission for the access road... 

Sure, they need a factory to make their wine. But for something as important to their business as a manufacturing base is, perhaps they should have made absolutely certain where it could go before planting 700 acres of vines in such a hurry.

Of course, the drawings of their “sheds” show masses of buildings and I'm not sure they could build them all at once under said permitted development rights from what I can see, but then I guess they just want to fire warning shots at the moment.

You just know what some folk will say.

“See what you protesters have done!? We could have had a beautiful winery, now we’ve just got a load of big ugly barns!”, forgetting of course that it’s the winery folk who would actually be doing the building.

They have 1200 acres of land to play with. With a bit of thought, they could put their factory sheds anywhere. And they could make them a lot prettier, too, if they wanted to. 

Chapel Down has no problem with building their new wine factory on a business park 20 miles away from their main vineyards. Traffic and infrastructure issues solved, easy. But VF just won't back off.

So let the appeal inquiries commence.

I’m sure it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

The Fourth Estate...

Local media, especially dear old local click-bait "news" site KentOnLine, have been strangely quiet about the winery lately. It's not as if there is nothing going on, but then it seems that Vineyard Farms haven't quite been getting it all their own way, despite the resources (which includes Medway Council's planning department) at their disposal.

You'd think some of the stories would be worth reporting.

There was the business about Vineyard Farms putting up a national Facebook ad, begging for public backing and encouraging people to fill in a proforma that would be sent to the council as a letter of support. One can't blame them in a way. Before their ad, there were around 300 objections and only about 20 letters of support on the council's planning portal. Despite the propaganda blanket-bombing, it still seems that most people (with the exception of those working in Medway Council's planning department) aren't in favour of letting a billionaire tax exile build a concrete bunker on protected green belt land in a Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (ANOB) for (his) pleasure and profit. 

Unfortunately, it seems that someone used the name and address of our local MP, Kelly Tolhurst, to submit a phoney letter of support on her behalf using the Vineyard Farms e-mail template. Kelly wasn't best pleased about that, and wrote to some of her constituents telling them so. It appears she absolutely hates the idea that anyone might think she has an opinion on it. 

Now I hear that the planning department have asked Vineyard Farms to take down their "pleeese vote for us" template, given that it has been proven beyond doubt that fake letters of support can be submitted by its use.

You'd think that a funny little story about "democracy" (and its abuse) like that would be worth reporting, wouldn't you?

Perhaps a local reporter might also wonder about the curious silence of said MP, Kelly Tolhurst, on the issue of the winery development. After all, Kelly was quick to support Hoo villagers in their campaign to prevent the development of the old Deangate Ride golf course, and yet she has tied herself in knots trying to avoid a public stance on the far more damaging development that is the Upper Bush winery.

You'd think a curious local press reporter would want to know why.  

Maybe such a reporter would even go the trouble of finding out what Kelly Tolhurst does for the £15,000's-worth of donations her office received in 2021 from a mysterious association called Businessfore - other than to attend a Christmas party hosted by them at the House of Lords where she had a cosy chat with the bosses of a Businessfore client, a civil engineering contracting company called the VGC Group (check out their Facebook page and put "Tolhurst" in the search bar...).

It's the sort of thing you'd think a keen reporter would be swarming all over.

Especially funny is the protest web page that sprung up as a repost to the VF Facebook advertising campaign. Rather cheekily, the protest group bagged the kentishwinevault.com domain name, which the Vineyard Farms PR team had rather carelessly left unclaimed. Now, if you type "Kentish Wine Vault" into any Microsoft search engine (e.g. Edge or Bing), the first site that comes up is the protest site rather than VF's one for the Kentish Wine Vault (Google is a bit clunky and has some catching up to do, I'm told).  Apparently, ".com" outranks ".co.uk" in search engine preferences (again, so I'm told: IT isn't my "thing") and so the protestors, despite not having zillions of pounds and a PR team to help them, have managed to make Vineyard Farms look a bit silly.

Worth a few tongue-in-cheek lines in the local rag, maybe? Nah. Zip.

Then there's the more serious business of Medway Council pre-empting the result of the scheduled planning committee meeting of March 9th to approve or reject the winery scheme, giving the impression that it is already a done deal.

What faith can anyone have in the planning process when Medway Council boasts that it will “soon be home” to the KWV in its vainglorious bid for city status (see p.16) weeks before the application is actually up for approval?

Extract from Medway Council's 2022 city status bid, p16, published January 2022

This is in addition to Medway Council using Vineyard Farms own propaganda to publicise the development on the council web page. You'd think something like all this would be worth a few lines in the local press, wouldn't you?

But then our "local democracy reporter" (and as a Cuxton lass, she certainly is local) has recently been exercising her own democratic rights, so it seems. Indeed, she has apparently filled in the Vineyard Farms dodgy template and sent in her letter of support for the winery to the council (although with the VF template, who knows if it really was her?). Good for her (if she has). Last time I looked, objections still outnumbered letters of support by three to one, even with Vineyard Farms' Facebook begging letter, so VF need every bit of support they can get. A tame journalist in their camp would be very welcome, I guess. 

Quite what that may do to any pretence of unbiased reporting on the winery development by KOL and its sister "dead-tree" news outlets is open to debate, of course.

"News You Can Trust" says KOL.  Yeah, right...

Update;  Wow, fame at last.  Seems the mighty KentOnline didn't think much of this tiny little mickey-take and have taken a break from attacking Kent's only Labour MP (ironically as a result of a hostile blog post) to turn their guns on little old me instead. They are even accusing me of libel, though I can't quite see what is libellous about anything I've written here. It certainly wasn't the intent. Heavy-handed and not very funny, maybe, but libellous? 

Thanks for the publicity, though. I really am a nobody and it seems kind of pathetic that KOL feel a need to go after a tiny dissenting squeak such as mine. Very few people read what I write but thanks to KOL, maybe they will now. 

This was just a little photo-blog to celebrate local history and wild-life. The advent of the winery and the side-stepping of green belt protections to enable its planning and likely construction has really upset a lot of folks who don't have a voice, so I've tried to use this obscure platform to argue back. Seems some people don't like that. It gets me down that those with power and influence seem to be all in favour of this development, despite it flying in the face of national planning guidelines designed to protect green belt land.

Still, I do owe our local democracy reporter an apology. It seems that she too is indeed a victim of the fake support letter scam I mentioned above (so she says), although I did indicate that I thought that may be the case. 

So I'm sorry if I have impugned the fearless impartiality of our local democracy reporter, and she and her chums at KOL are completely entitled to use their much bigger media reach to have a sneer back at me. 

Big Yellow Taxi...

Many of the Medway councillors who sit on the Planning Committee (and who will be supposedly adjudicating upon the Vineyard Farms application to build an enormous restaurant complex on Green Belt land at Upper Bush) took the trouble today (15th. January) to come and take a look at what our not-so-local billionaire tax exile wants to concrete over.

Getting them here was itself a minor victory for the small group of local activists who have taken the trouble to battle their way through the smokescreen of glossy propaganda that forms the bulk of the Vineyard Farms application.

An unfortunately foggy Saturday morning for Medway's planning committee's visit...

The timing of the council’s visit did not do them any favours. Freezing cold fog in the middle of January hardly showed Bush Valley at its beautiful best, but nevertheless the councillors came along and squelched around in the fog and the mud on Barrow Hill, and hopefully got a feel for the peace and quiet of the place.

...if only they'd chosen the day before. The view from the bunker spot...

The date of the visit was well-known in advance and the protestors decided to put up a few placards along the route into Cuxton along Bush Road from the A228 and around Upper Bush for our visitors to maybe look at.  Needless to say, our brave councillors drove in from the Cobham end, although they did drive out along Bush Road so the posters weren’t a complete waste of time from that perspective. 

Some of the protest posters put up at Upper Bush....

Despite misgivings from the local Parish Council, a few people also arranged to park their cars up along Bush Road, just to show our visitors how tricky the road can be to negotiate when cars get parked up as they do at school run times.

As protests go, it was all pretty mild. Nobody was gluing themselves to anything and nobody was chanting silly slogans or shouting abuse (except for one demented, angry, mud-splattered Catweasel look-alike on a mountain bike who cycled past a small group of bemused residents at Upper Bush, shouting foul-mouthed oaths at them and spitting on parked cars as he went by).

Posters on Bush Road...

I walked through Upper Bush and down Bush Road that Saturday morning, and I didn’t think it looked as bad in terms of parked cars as it does on a typical school run time. Indeed, I’d say there was less selfish and inconsiderate parking than usual.

That evening, I’d thought I’d visit the Cuxton Village Facebook page, just to see how this little protest had been received. 

By and large, most people seemed pretty supportive.

There were a few inexplicably irascible people on there, however, who tried to give the impression that a thousand “Insulate Britain” protestors had descended on Cuxton village, gluing themselves to the road, manning barricades, throwing firebombs, blockading ambulances and fire-engines, bringing (non-existent) public transport to a grid-locked halt and causing mayhem, disruption and destruction on a massive scale. Some took to naming individuals who had left their cars in the road rather than parking on their own drives (heinous crime!) thus ensuring that they received lots of unpleasant personal on-line abuse from their perennially angry Facebook chums.

Posters on Bush Road...

Of course, none of them would have been saying anything about “selfish, inconsiderate protest parking” if they hadn’t known there was a bit of a “protest” going on in the first place. They wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual at all. The road was certainly no worse than at school run time, but that didn’t stop them using it as an excuse to sneer at and abuse those who are trying to stop Joni Mitchell’s dystopian ballad from coming true for Cuxton.

It seems to me that all of the anger about the winery actually lies with those who are in favour of it.  Most local people who object to it are upset by it and are determined to try and stop it, but they are not angry about it as such. 

Instead, its local proponents are the angry ones; angry, it seems, at anyone who disagrees with them. They are the ones coming out with the insults and the sneers, the accusations of NIMBYism and (oblivious of the irony) moaning that people are always moaning about something. When you try and engage them on the scheme’s drawbacks, they just (angrily) repeat what they seem to have read in the Vineyards Farms leaflet.

The protesters, by contrast, seem quite polite and tolerant of views other than their own and certainly aren’t going around throwing sneering insults at those who think that the winery is going to be the shiny, eco-friendly, local-job-creating glory that Vineyard Farms say it will be.

It made me realise just how effective the “divide and conquer” aspect of the Vineyard Farms propaganda has been. 

Our sunlit uplands: soon to be lost to paying customers of Vineyard Farms...

It seems that some local people don’t care about the wider implications of giving permission to build a development such as the winery on green belt land. The irreplaceable sacrifice of over a thousand acres of beautiful, peaceful green belt farmland to the profit-driven aims of a private company and the whims of its billionaire tax-exile boss are not that important to them.

It’s “good for jobs”, isn’t it? Maybe their fizzy wine will be cheap. And it’ll be somewhere nice to go and have a nice meal now and then, won't it? How dare a bunch of moaning NIMBY protesters try to stop that from happening?

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone.

Big Yellow Taxi for Cuxton’s local winery supporters, please...