Brockholes nature reserve opens by M6, offering weary travellers a break among bird hides and a floating visitor centre
A green service station has opened beside one of the UK's busiest motorways, offering a bird hide and floating "eco village" alongside tea and cake.
The �10m project is located in a nature reserve flanked by the M6 at Preston, Lancashire, and is making a pitch for travellers "who don't know the difference between a reed bed and an unmade bed", as well as nature lovers.
Housed in flooded gravel pits at Brockholes, it features one of the few floating buildings in the UK, a cluster of shingled, high-roofed structures inspired by houses in south-east Asia and the wetlands of southern Iraq. Offerings not usually available on motorway stop-offs include lavatories flushed with lake water and the curious cry of the water rail.
"It sounds like someone being strangled," says a cheerful caption beside a press-button display which fills the reception area with the water rail's squawks, the piping of sedge warblers or skylark song.
"We think there's real potential here to re-engage people with nature," says Lindsey Poole of Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside Wildlife Trust, which raised an unprecedented �10m for the project. "Our research found that too many people are almost scared of nature reserves, thinking they're only for specialists.
"We had more than 5,000 people at our opening weekend over Easter and the message was: it doesn't matter a jot if you don't know your Canada goose from your whimbrel. This is a place to enjoy, have a break and have fun."
The floating island, essential for a flood plain regularly inundated by the nearby River Ribble, is at least half made-up of shopping and eating places, with floor-to-ceiling views over the former sand and gravel quarries. Budget forecasts estimate that the "village" will be self-sustaining, with architect Adam Khan drawing on high roof spaces and floods of natural light to cut down on power bills.
Successfully floated just before Easter, when the quarry was reflooded, the 400-tonne concrete pontoons can rise by up to four metres. The island has two drawbridges which are raised at night and it will eventually be surrounded by a fringe of reeds, bulrushes and other water plants.
Named after badger colonies historically associated with the soft, sandy soil, Brockholes is less than four miles from the centre of Preston, as well as drawing potentially on the streams of north-south traffic on the M6 and other nearby motorways to Blackpool and the mid-Lancashire towns. The site was spotted back in 1992 by the trust's chief executive, Anne Selby, and chair, Ted Jackson, when it was a working quarry, providing aggregate for the motorway network from which the floating village now hopes to profit.
"To start with, we were thinking in terms of a straightforward nature reserve to join the 45 or so which we administer," says Poole. "But the fact that the motorway runs right past the site gave us the confidence to go for something much bigger.
"Our whole purpose is to protect the natural world for the future, but to do that, we need to involve as many people as possible. Here they all were, but rushing past."
The trust has 18,500 members and 800 active volunteers, of whom 100 are being deployed to Brockholes. The centre is free but with a �1 charge for an hour's parking and is working with the nearby Tickle Trout services which offer more conventional services, such as fuel. Both are just off the M6's junction 31 with the A59 at Preston.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/27/service-station-m6-nature-motorists
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