Loch Hyne (pronounced ‘Loch Ine’) was Europe’s first marine nature reserve, a strange and beautiful square kilometre of partly tidal inland lake about as far South and West as you can go in Ireland – ‘the next parish is Brooklyn’, they say.
It’s also about a mile from my parents’ house (over a steep, wooded hill and past an almost hidden roadside shrine where people go to pray if there’s something wrong with their eyes), so I got pretty excited when I heard a whole radio programme about the lake’s special ecology on Radio 4 the other day. It also looks like they’re archiving the programmes – in a series called Wild Europe – properly so this one won’t be overwritten by next week’s. Are you listening, Analysis?)