Cycling back up the Promenade – another signpost for Pleasure Island – a place inside the secret Garden. This third Pleasure Island sign points towards a gate - left open - I can’t resist...
I enter along a muddy lane – if there’s a dog at the front – how likely is it that there’s a dog at the back?
I didn’t have the nerve to find out…
Back on me bike, through some trees and up onto a grassy hillock – great views across the River Mersey, the grasslands, and... the tarmac car park.
Fumes waft up my nostrils and rasp at the back of my throat…a building along the Promenade is the source, emitting acrid fumes that smell like car exhaust emissions - I don't know what gasses are grasping at my olfactory but I am reminded of another necessity for trees in our cities…
Car exhausts emit a cocktail of suffocating gasses and greenhouse gasses, including Carbon Dioxide - and tree canopies create effective green sinks – or green lungs – taking in the Carbon Dioxide. Plants naturally remove CO2 from the air through the process of photosynthesis and trees are particularly efficient when it comes to removing CO2 from the atmosphere. And I’m stood right next to one large “green sink”