Ecosal Meeting at Bournemouth

Group photo of a visit to the Waterfront Museum, Poole to meet Clare Randall and look at the museum exhibits. Members of Ecosal visiting were myself, Renato Neves, Portugal; Belen Escobar, Spain;  Benoit Poitevin, France; and Mark Brisbane, Michael Fradley, Bournemouth University.
The team also met with Roger Herbert, ecologist at Bournemouth University who has been working on bio-diversity and habitat surveys of salines as part of the Ecosal research agenda.

Clare Randall, Renato Neves, Belen Escobar, Benoit Poitevin, Mark Brisbane, Michael Fradley

As well as holding business meetings about the development of the Ecosal network the group visited Brownsea Island, Poole Harbour, St Barbes Museum and Lymington salt marshes.

During my flight down to Bournemouth from Manchester the plane flew over salt marshes at the Solent end of the Beaulieu River in Hampshire, and on the return journey over the area known as Ashton and Neumans Flashes at Northwich, Cheshire where rock salt mines collapsed in the nineteenth century and were later infilled with lime waste to create present day habitats for wading birds and is the home of calcarious grassland loving species such as the Dingy Skipper not otherwise to be found in Cheshire.
The Lion Salt Works is in the village of Marston, middle right of the picture on the Trent and Mersey Canal, which can also be seen.

Beaulieu River, looking north. Salt marshes at the mouth of the river where it enters The Solent. 

Ashton and Neumans Flashes, Northwich, looking north west.