I have the privilege of being able to drive from Wycombe to Marlow two or three times a week to my place of work. I leave early to avoid the school runs and the 8 o’clock scramble. This enables me to enjoy, for a short time, the wonders of our countryside.

This morning I saw a hawk take a pigeon in flight right in front of me and for the hawk to then sit in the road and properly dispatch its prey. A few mornings earlier I had to wait for a flock of red-legged partridges to amble up the road in front of me. A month or two back, a group of deer, young and old, crossed my path, from hedge to hedge, and one evening a fox, just sitting in the road, looked around and walked off, and so on.

All this on the way to and from work. So what is the problem? Rubbish. Almost every week now someone dumps something in the roadway verges. The road, up from Winchbottom Lane to Handy Cross and Burroughs Grove Hill – this time an old mattress! And not a stone’s throw from the BCC domestic waste tip. Someone must recognise this and know who it was who dumped it here. How much money does this cost the council tax payer? What damage does this do to our countryside? The week before it was a sofa and two armchairs, and the week before that a pile of bagged household waste. Why do people do this? I just despair. — Anthony Mealing, High Wycombe