Fly-tipping has turned rambling into a weirdly retro activity | Patrick Barkham

Dumping has surely reached tipping point when a countryside walk involves white goods as well as green grass

I've been continuing a lovely long walk through the ordinary British countryside in recent days. Apart from being struck by the absence of people, and the correspondingly overgrown footpaths (as mentioned in previous Notebooks) , I've spotted an astonishing number of green woodpeckers, and quite a few fridges.

There are many more woodpeckers than dumped fridges so perhaps I should rhapsodise about the former, but the randomly dumped refrigerators chime with new figures showing another increase in fly-tipping. After years of decline, last year the government recorded a 20% rise in illegally dumped rubbish. The latest figures are not comparable, coming from council responses to a freedom of information request, but still show an upward trend.

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