The small triangle of land in the south east corner of Thrupp Lake, the largest of the Radley Lakes, is being cultivated as a wild flower meadow by The Earth Trust and has been called St David’s Meadow. I’m not sure why.

St David lived in Wales in the early days of Christianity. He set up churches and monasteries. His best known miracle (according to Wikipedia) was when he was preaching and the land on which he stood rose up to form a small hill.

It is a minor miracle that Thrupp Lake survived the plans to fill it with ash from Didcot A Power Station. The lakes are still here in 2014 as a wetland habitat – now managed by The Earth Trust, and Didcot A has been closed down.

The birds and fishes now have a good chance to increase and multiply in the lake, and the wild flowers should flourish in St David’s Meadow.

The Sutton Wick landfill site has been filled and landscaped and there is a footpath from Peep-o-Day Lane across to Drayton over the site.

Trees have been planted.

There is also a lake with an island at the centre

where birds are at home.

Lorries no longer come this way from the Drayton Road to the landfill site. The remote area just south of Abingdon is being left for nature to reclaim in a managed way.

In one corner of the site there is evidence that Cemex, the multinational company who took over the company that originally extracted gravel from this site, are generating electricity from the methane produced by our old waste.

Cemex work with RSPB on a number of old landfill sites.

At the end of 2013, there appears to have been no progress in finding a solution to the bins at the bottom of Bridge Street. At one time they were hidden away behind the Old Police Station, but once development started they lost their home, and have been in full view for about three years.

The barriers at the upper end of Stert Street have been there for two years now. Some partial work was done on stabilising the underground River Stert in 2012, at the lower end, but there has been no further progress since, and so that bus stop is still not in use.

A boat has been in a field next to the River Thames for about a year – since it got beached in last winter’s floods.

They may not be high priorities but they are all very noticeable.

Last Monday Greg Barker, the Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, came to look at community energy projects in the constituency of Nicola Blackwood MP, and was pictured at Abingdon Weir – where a grass roots Abingdon group have got Environment Agency and planning permission to harness the water power of the Thames.