04 - Cracks in the System - Subsidence, Climate and the Hidden Role of Trees with Dr Tim Farewell

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr Tim Farewell, Director of MapleSky Environment and Infrastructure, to explore the invisible forces beneath our feet. We dig into the science of subsidence, the role of clay soils, and how climate change is reshaping risk across the UK.

We also talk about infrastructure resilience, insurance models, public perception, and the complex relationship between trees, property and heat. From the rise of wildfires to the limits of AI in subsidence cases, this episode brings together law, data and lived experience.

If you’ve ever wondered how a tree might be saving your street or cracking your foundations, this one’s for you.

Useful Links
• The Response of Three Soils to Water (YouTube Video) – A simple, visual explanation of how different soils shrink and swell with moisture, featuring Tim and his daughter.

• MapleSky Environment & Infrastructure – Learn more about Tim Farewell’s work in subsidence modelling, infrastructure resilience and environmental data.

• Extreme Heat and Mortality in Europe (Nature Medicine) – A research article exploring the health impacts of rising temperatures across Europe.

🎙️ Enjoying the podcast?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can leave me a voice message at www.speakpipe.com/treelaw – your questions or reflections might even feature in a future episode.

🎧 Huge thanks to Mike at Making Digital Real for producing and editing this episode to such a high standard.

Transcript

Today on Trees in a Pod, I'm speaking to Dr Tim Farewell. Tim is a director of Maple Sky Environment and Infrastructure. They do, amongst other things, models for subsidence damage caused by trees. 

Tim launched Maple Sky back in 2020, so he's in his fifth year of business and they've already won three awards, two of which being Research and Innovation and one as an Anglian Water Supplier of the Year. So I had a great conversation with Tim about ground movement and how that can damage things from pipes, roads to houses. So over to the conversation.

Tim, so we'll speak about subsidence and obviously, as you know, my experience really focuses on tree root induced subsidence, but do you want to tell the listeners a little bit more about where your interest in subsidence lies? Sure. Well, I think there's a lot of crossover between your world and mine, because tree related subsidence is almost synonymous with clay shrinkage. It's the same mechanism and that's the dominant form of subsidence in the UK by a country mile. 

So for the last 20, over 20 years now, I've really enjoyed looking at soil maps and geology maps, which most people find really nerdy, but I found it really interesting to look at the ground conditions and see how soil and geology, these hidden layers in the earth, impact on people's lives, be it through cracks in their houses or cracks in pipes, leaking pipes, broken roads. So many of these things are related to ground movement or subsidence. I think in your space, it's where the ground moves under a house and leads to cracks, subsidence, but it impacts across a number of different systems. 

So yes, I started out as a geologist turned soil scientist, and more and more, my world has been in this world of ground movement in all its guises really. So what sort of clients do you work for then? So if you're doing things such as modelling ground movement, who's interested in that data? What's really interesting is it's these big companies, be it insurance companies or utilities, who have either assets, so pipes or networks distributed across large regions, or huge investments. So think of an insurance company that they're insuring many thousands of properties. 

They want to understand which properties are at risk from ground movement, subsidence, and similarly with water companies, they want to understand which pipes are at risk from these kinds of ground movements. So most of my clients are operating in those spaces of either dealing with hidden pipes or houses, so insurance companies, lenders, and the big utilities. Is this an issue which only affects the UK? I know that that's perhaps a bit of an unusual question, but is subsidence something that impacts other countries as well? So it does, but you're also right that when we're talking about clay-related subsidence, there has to be this special combination of shrinkable clay soils. 

You need a climate where in the winter the soils are wet, and in the summer those soils are dry, and then you also need houses that have been built in a way that makes them brittle. So let's take London, for example, and the southeast of England. There's some geological units called the London Clay. 

They have some very shrinkable clay minerals within these units which develop into clay soils. We know that winters in the UK can be very drizzly, very cold, wet, and summers can be hot and dry. So what happens is these clay soils have a large volume in the wintertime, because clay when it's wet takes a larger volume, and then as they dry, those clay soils and the underlying rocks, they shrink.

And the houses, imagine a typical house in London, particularly if it was built in the 1960s, 70s, the mortar which people used was very, very brittle. So any movement will lead to cracking. So when we think about other countries, either the climate might not be as wet in the winter, or even if you go to the north of Scotland, potentially if you had the same soils that you have in London, in the north of Scotland, just because the summers aren't as hot and dry there, you don't get the soils drinking as much because they don't lose as much water.

So it does occur in other places. France is a really, northern France, a good example, where this does occur. But you need this combination of the right soils, the right weather, and the right types of houses in order for subsidence to become a real issue as it is in the UK. 

I'm going to refer to that video that you and your daughter, I think, put together in lockdown, which is a brilliant visual of the shrinking and swelling of a clay soil using Lego bricks. And I think I can attach a link to the video below the podcast. So if people are interested in seeing the visual of what you're talking about, that's swelling of the soil in winter and the shrinking in the summer. 

I know that when I've seen you talk in the past, you have shared maps showing how the climate across the UK is changing and how true subsidence might have been typical of London in the southeast, but we're seeing that move to places in the UK that we haven't seen before, because summers there are getting hotter and drier. I know that I've had quite a few queries over the last couple of years from around the Newcastle area, which would have been unheard of when I was dealing with subsidence cases 20 years ago. So what sort of thing are you observing in terms of what your... well, insurers are based on risk, aren't they? And they tend to profile risk on what's happened in the past, but your model needs to tell them profile your risk on what's going to happen in the future, because patterns are changing. 

That's right, they absolutely are. And as I said, I work across industries. So when I work with the water companies, we're already seeing this summer, so we're recording this in 2025, water companies are experiencing very large numbers of bursts, particularly on old iron mains and mains which are cement based.

And in the last couple of hot, dry summers, we're seeing those bursts reaching up into the kind of areas that you're talking about. So, you know, the Northumbria, the Southern Trent area, Yorkshire area in particular, you wouldn't think of, as you're saying, go back 20 years ago when we started this, you wouldn't think these being issues of, you know, ground movement that far north. And indeed, even their soils are not as shrinkable as they are in the southeast. 

But we're already seeing these moderately shrinkable soils shrinking and leading to failures across the water networks. And, you know, these networks weren't designed for the kind of hot, dry conditions that we're seeing now. And they certainly weren't designed for the types of hot, dry conditions which are coming into the future. 

So while the networks are more vulnerable to ground movement than houses, they're a really good kind of warning sign or precursor of what is coming in terms of ground movements which will impact on properties, which are, you know, they take a little bit more movement in order to lead to a subsidence claim or subs claim than break a pipe. But we're already clearly seeing this pattern in the water networks and starting to also see it in terms of insurance claims as well. So just to wrap that question up and answer what you asked, yes, of course, historically, insurance companies would look at their past claim exposure and say, well, over the 20 years, this is where our claims have been. 

And indeed, that has been useful. But what we're finding more useful now is to inform our models based on past, you know, events like burst pipes or subs claims, whatever it is, but then update the models with more recent weather data or climate models. So we can see how the weather has changed, these patterns have changed, and provide clients in the insurance or water industry space with updated models based on the weather as it is today, and it will be over the next five or 10 years, rather than between baselines of 1961 to 1990, or, or even in the last 20 years, because the weather is changing so rapidly. 

And these extreme weather events are becoming more common. And I think that the large companies are shaping, you know, waking up to these emerging and developing risks. It's, what is it now, the second of July, and we're in a hot snap of a week, I think. 

It's interesting to see the reaction that people have to talk of, you know, a heatwave in the UK. Yeah, I was looking on social media as an example. And people were saying, oh, summers were always this hot back in the 70s. 

I don't know what all the fuss is about. Things aren't changing. That can be a difficult. 

Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this question. But that can be difficult to try and persuade people that things are changing when they're recalling how things were, and not relying on the data, which tells us how things were. Yeah, I'm not sure what point I'm making there. 

But I just observed that. It's a fair, it's a fair point. You know, you can say there were very hot and dry years in the 70s, one in particular. 

And I think what I would say to that is, I would always encourage people to actually look at the data, if possible, or do a quick search on the internet and look at climate records, or just even open up a newspaper on, you know, regular intervals, and you will soon see new records being set almost each year, there will be a, well, this is, I think, you know, yesterday, as you said, there was another record set, you know, for the hottest start to Wimbledon, or ever, you know, the driest June ever. So these, you know, it's clear that obviously, our summers are getting hotter and drier. So in 2022, we had temperatures over 40 degrees. 

There was nothing like that in the 70s. So these these records are a really good indication of how our climate is changing. But also the averages or the sustained hot and dry periods are also, and particularly in terms of the topic that we're on today, looking at ground movement, subsidence, it's the prolonged periods of low rainfall, and hot temperatures, which are becoming longer and more intense, you know, hotter and drier. 

These are less obvious to people. But if you look at the data, you can see a line kind of going up and up as we go through time. And for me, that is, it's something which over the last five or 10 years, for me, I've just realized the the huge importance that we as, as humans, will need to put to addressing climate change, because I see the impact on homeowners, I see the impact on water networks, who are now having spent literally hundreds of millions of pounds, replacing networks, and we're in an affluent country. 

So yeah, yes, we did have the occasional hot summer in the past. Yes, they are becoming a lot more common now. And they are set to become even hotter and even drier.

I had a telephone call the client yesterday, so the first of July. And that was the first client I've spoken to this year, who was talking about crack damage, which had occurred to his home this year. And that's the first one that I've spoken to. 

And I reflect back on past surge years, where it tends to hit the press around mid July, if claims numbers are going up and up. I'm, I'm not close enough to know whether that's happening yet. At the moment, I'm presuming it is. 

And that insurers are starting to see an increasing number of claims. But I also observed, I also observe as a, well, not not as a lawyer, but somebody that speaks to lots of people about trees and the impact that trees can have on properties for various reasons. You can have exactly the same scenario, and one person will think in one way, and one, and another person will think in another way. 

It's funny, I was, you know, I was speaking to somebody yesterday, and they said, I just need the local authority to take that tree down. It doesn't need to be there. We don't need trees on the streets in London, there's plenty of trees in parks. 

And that is an opinion. And that's one that I've heard more than once. And yet, I've also heard the opinion and the one that I also share, which is that actually, for London to be a space in which humans live in there is sustainable. 

We do need trees on the streets, because trees will actually keep the environment one in which we can live in safely, and not be suffering from summer, you know, summer fatalities due to hot temperatures. And I know that sounds really extreme. But I don't think you need to go very far away from the UK to see those sorts of fatalities. 

Do you? I'm sure that there are fatalities from hot summer temperatures in the likes of Paris, and other cities that aren't too far away. I've seen. Yeah, I've seen three fatalities reported just this morning, from Southern Europe, from the 40 ish, maybe even high 30s, that were recorded there. 

And what's normal with summer heatwave related fatalities is they're rarely logged as due to the heat. So it's more that it's in the elderly people who die, women more likely to die, as the body cannot cope with the extreme temperature, it kind of exacerbates underlying health conditions for vulnerable groups. And rarely is he put down as the cause of death, except, you know, as I said, I saw three reports this morning, which are clearly linked to the death. 

And they were typically in young children, left in situations they should not have been in. And those are very attributed to it. But again, thinking back to summer of 22, yeah, I think there were 40,000 excess deaths. 

And by measuring excess death, which is number of deaths over and above of what you would normally see in that in that week or that month, you can get a sense of the impact of these hotter, drier conditions. And it's this, this hidden cost in terms of life, suffering, that my world of data science often uncovers. And it's not so much an acute risk, like a tower catching on fire and hundreds of people dying, which is terrible. 

It's this distributed risk across the population. So many, many, many more people may die as a result of an event, but it's spread through the population. And so it goes less noticed by the general population than if a bus crashes or something like that.

I know this isn't something that we've spoken about in the past, but I think it's only in the last couple of years that wildfire risk is something that's really hit my radar. Yeah. And obviously, the increase in risks of properties from from wildfires, that seemed to be something that wouldn't have been part of the discussion probably three, four, five years ago. 

But it is something that I'm hearing more and more about. Again, I remember in 2021, sitting in a meeting with another company who was developing one of the first wildfire maps for the UK. And look, I'm a climate scientist. 

I was sitting there going, really? In the UK? And then we had December of 22. And I was proved absolutely wrong. There in London were wildfires that took out real people's real houses. 

And I'm going, Oh, my goodness, this is the world in which I operate. And I didn't see this coming. And this morning, I saw another wildfire map across all of Europe, which another company has built and looks really good. 

And again, that was trained and based on past data. And you see the south of Europe, you know, lit up literally with wildfire risk. England, not so much.

But again, I just wonder how much they've looked at what is coming in terms of future climate and how much more at risk we will be over the next couple of decades. And maybe that's something that they're working on at the moment. But it's another reference to what you said earlier of not just looking back and seeing where things have occurred. 

But also going, well, wildfires didn't really occur in London, up until, you know, this century. But now they are. And now we need to take this emerging risk really seriously, or more people will lose their houses.

Yeah, I had a wildfire, a wildfire issue that cropped up on one of the cases I was dealing with, which led me to instruct somebody who was an expert on wildfires and the relation with trees, which has led me to being involved with a group that are focusing on wildfires. And yeah, it's really, really interesting stuff. I can put, it's probably worth me telling you a flying should probably be interested in them and like the way they're doing.

Sounds great. Yeah, like increased risk with doing stuff like leaving, you know, like rewilding and leaving, leaving, leaving areas to sort of grow, yeah, to grow wild. And one thing that I didn't realize is wildfire doesn't necessarily mean that fire has started just through the power of the sun.

We know wildfire as a definition, obviously includes like, you know, discarded cigarettes, barbecues that go AWOL, things like that, which was something that I didn't understand before. Yeah. Which is why they often are associated where people are.

Yeah. And yeah, people and therefore houses. Yeah, interesting stuff.

Sure. One question I get asked a lot is, you know, like what, what power do people have to protect themselves in this sort of situation? You know, as a homeowner, what can you do? Because I think some people are panicking and I get panicked calls a lot, which is, I'm worried that tree is going to cause my house to subside, or I've seen that tree blowing in the wind and I'm worried it's going to fall on my house. It's very much like out, you know, people's anxiety because something's potentially out of their control and they don't know what they can do to safeguard themselves. 

So they panic and think, well, let's just get that chopped down. And at least that risk's gone. Usually preface with, I love trees, but just not that one. 

And I don't know, do you think people have got, is there anything that people can do to safeguard their property? Okay. So the first thing I would say to that is, you know, don't rush out and chop down a tree. No, that's not, that's, yeah, that's absolutely not what we're saying.

And the reason I say that is, well, there's so many reasons behind that. First of all, it really depends on the soil that you're on. So I've done some analysis looking at the impact of trees on, in this case, it was water pipes. 

And we found that trees did increase the rate of failure to burst on water pipes, but only really in areas where we have shrinkable clay soils. So if you're not on a shrinkable clay soil, you know, that tree is going to be having negligible impact in terms of ground movement on your property, unless it's like physically interacting with the foundations, which is highly unlikely. Yeah. 

And that's a direct damage point Yeah, that's a direct damage. Exactly. So it's not, it's not ground movement. 

Secondly, many trees actually increase the value of the property, particularly deciduous trees will increase the value of a property. So you might not want to really remove it for that reason. Thirdly, in terms of, you know, protecting yourself, um, trees are one of the best ways of cooling your local environment. 

So having, you know, if you measure the temperature above a tree, sometimes it's 10 degrees cooler, that you know, right above the tree, then, you know, 50 meters off to the side, they have a have a massive cooling and that's not the shade under the tree that's, that's above the tree just from the evapotranspiration that's going on. So that's, that's not to say that you should never take down a tree. I'm not saying that either. 

Just saying don't rush out and do it without getting some really good advice before you take that step. And also trees are a massive supporter of local biodiversity. There's whole ecosystems that develop in trees. 

So they're a really important part of what I think we need to do more of, which is green the urban environment. So you see how we can get more trees into urban spaces, because this is increasingly important. And we see countries across Europe, big cities across Europe, going, how do we reimagine this space, which already exists, we've got roads here, what can we do in terms of actually, you know, maybe digging up some of these roads and planting tree corridors, and pedestrianizing these spaces rather than having, you know, this very, you know, impermeable, solid road base, which is which is causing real health issues for people.

I was in Malaga, a couple of years ago, really early in the spring, it was like April, and we were stood under the shade of these huge trees. I can't remember what they were, that was a huge treeline streets. And I thought, without these in the full force of summer, this would simply be impossible to be sort of standing around here because it was already hot in April, and we already needed the shade of those trees. 

Yeah. And and that's that is what is coming our currently, if we continue down the trajectory that we are currently on. I think it was interesting what you said, you said don't rush out and fell trees, because, you know, you and I will both agree, there are situations in which a tree might have to come down for one reason or another. 

But I think the point where the likes of insurance companies perhaps get criticised, and perhaps local authority tree owners as well, is where a request is made for tree removal, where perhaps all of the evidence linking a tree to damage hasn't been obtained, or alternative solutions to ongoing movement to the property haven't been considered. That's, that's my observation. I feel that there's quite a traditional process driven subsidence model, which perhaps observes what trees are nearby.

And step one can be, do those need to come down before we even consider step two, three, four, etc. And I think now, now more than ever, insurers and local authorities are being held to account over decisions in claims such as that. And actually yesterday, for the first time, I had a potential client or somebody who was a client who'd had a case involving tree root subsidence, which had hit the press, showed me that they'd had a letter from their insurer, which said, based on further investigations, we can confirm we are no longer pursuing tree removal, and we will be going ahead with an alternative solution, which that's the first time I've seen a letter like that. 

And I wonder whether it's the first of many. Well, I think, you know, honestly, I do think these large companies who obviously I work with, they sometimes get a bad rap for legitimate reasons, and other times, maybe not so much. But they are protecting their interests. 

And in the long term, having a community that is still healthy, and living there is better for many of these companies. And so I think they also do sit down and go, actually, is this approach that we've taken in the past, sensible? And if not, you know, they are human too, they can change, right, and change the approach, and think longer term, actually, this is what we need to do as a community or as a business, to make our country, our community, more resilient to these extreme weather conditions, which are becoming more common. And trees are a huge part of that. 

Trees are just, they're so powerful, as nature's air conditioning units. They also have links towards, you know, better mental health, better physical health. There's so many positives that trees can bring that, that chopping them down is, is not always the best and not, yeah, not always the best decision, let's put it mildly.

I, after going to the Sycamore Gap trial a couple of months ago, and being asked by members of the press a couple of times, international press, why do Brits love trees so much? That was a question I got asked a lot. So many times, actually, I thought I couldn't give an answer, because it sounds like a straightforward question, but I knew it was a big answer. So afterwards, I reached out to my network and said, you know, why is it that us Brits love trees so much? And I got such a variety of responses that I actually put them all into a document, put it into ChatGPT and said, ChatGPT, split this into common, you know, split it into groups and categories and tell me like, are there common categories? I think there were like eight or 10 different categories as to why, you know, why they are so important, and why people feel they're so important. 

You know, yeah, it's just so multifaceted. It's what makes it so interesting, because it is not an easy answer. It's not, and it builds on so many cultural aspects and our history here in the UK. 

So if you compare England and France, and maybe one of your contributors mentioned this, but you know, while in France, there was the French Revolution, the aristocracy didn't do as well as it did in the UK. You will find that one of the hidden impacts of that is that actually in terms of really large, mature oak trees, these majestic trees, we have far more per square kilometre in the UK than there are in France, because, you know, the people in France, as they rose up, they were like, well, you know, the landed gentry, they had these big parklands, these big estates, but we're just going to chop down the trees, you know, we're taking it back. Whereas in the UK, rightly or wrongly, the rich people have kept these majestic trees on their private property. 

And now we kind of, you know, for National Trust members or similar, you can go and enjoy these majestic, ancient trees. So I just find it fascinating how these trees can outlive us by many, many years, and have an impact hundreds of years later still. Yeah, I've been doing a little bit of work recently to look into the work that's being done to give increased protection to heritage trees, you know, those ancient, veteran and notable trees. 

There's talk of or campaign for a new heritage tree preservation order to give additional tree protection to those super old trees. And you know, it's the 2nd of July now, the Sycamore, well, I know I talk about the Sycamore Gap a lot, but the Sycamore Gap sentencing hearing is going ahead on the 15th of July. And although that's sort of totally different in terms of background that relates to an old tree and a felling and a potential for two individuals to get a custodial sentence, and whilst that's totally different in terms of law from what we're talking about, I think if there is a custodial sentence, it's really, in my opinion, is starting to show that perhaps the legal system is giving additional weight to the environment, something that perhaps in the past may not have, you know, that sort of crime may not have been pursued by the CPS, you know, the crime prosecution system, and a custodial sentence might not have been given. 

I think, in my opinion, it's sort of setting a tone as to what we can expect to start to see in these legal cases in the future. And I think, yeah, I don't know really where I'm going with that, because it's pretty... No, it's an interesting point. I could be wrong. 

I wonder whether it's so much the environment that the legal system is protecting there, or is it the cultural heritage of the tree? I know it appeared in numerous films. I know it was beloved by hundreds of people on their walks. It was iconic. 

If another tree in a less well-known tree was cut down, would the same force of law be brought to bear? I don't know. So I wonder whether it's the environment or the culture. But again, the two things are linked, aren't they? I think the sentencing here is going to be live-streamed, which is only the 35th, hearing to have been live-streamed in the UK. 

So again, showing that for various reasons, it's grabbed everybody's attention. So I'm going to be really interested to reflect on what happens and the impact that that might have across the board for all sorts of tree cases. It's not an easy issue, is it? No, not at all. 

Not at all. I've written down one final thing, which was AI. That's what I've written down.

So I heard recently that actually, in the world of subsidence, that actually AI could start preparing reports, I presume, rather than actual investigations being carried out. My observation on that was perhaps AI will do a better job because it's probably going to be better than humans. I feel like AI is something that has really gathered pace in the area that I'm working in. 

It's probably something that I'm dealing with on a daily, you know, using, dealing with on a daily basis now. So my observations on that is AI is astonishing. And it's only as good as the information that it's trained on and that has access to. 

So to come back to what you were saying about investigations and reports, unless the AI is able to take root samples to identify which tree through genetic sequence, you know, analysis is actually causing damage, unless it's able to dig trial pits to look at the soil conditions and what's going on in the ground. Unless it's able to potentially dig down around the foundations and see what condition those foundations are in, how deep they are. I think it's one area where in terms of actually finding out what's going on, once you have a progressing subsidence case, I think it's a role where it's harder than other areas for AI to replace humans in the short term, at least. 

Now, of course, there are ways in which you can help speed up the creation of these reports, you know, once you feed it that information. But I think knowledgeable people on the ground who can look at trees, identify from DNA analysis, which trees are potentially causing an issue, or, you know, what's going on in terms of the design of the garden or the landscape or the housing development. I still think humans have the upper hand in this case. 

But yes, of course, you know, feeding that information into a report, or using AI to prompt inexperienced people to write, ask the right questions can be a useful way of using the tool as well. But I don't think it's there yet, that it will replace some boots and shovels and DNA sequencers at the moment. That's a good point about prompting the right, you know, the right questions, the right, you know, the right questions at the right time to make things as quickly as possible, as quick as possible. 

And I think, you know, I've been involved in subsidence claims for, you know, last 20 years or so. And there have been times where past data has been used to make presumptions in certain cases, you know, like we've had, yeah, I don't know, we've had 20 claims in the area in the past, and what we think will be the case is, and then writing reports on that basis, but they sort of come and go. And I just still have that stat in my mind, which is such a low percentage. 

I'm sure Kieran Hart of Tamla Trees has said that I think no one tree has got any more than a 2% chance of causing damage for property, even in a subsidence hotspot area. So those sorts of situations in which you, you know, look at the area, you look at the tree, you just look at everything above ground and say, well, it must be, you know, that tree is definitely going to be a risk in the future, that tree is definitely going to cause damage is just not possible. I frankly agree. 

And you have to come back again to this idea of acute risk. In this case, the acute risk would be damage to the property, you know, this specific property this year, and the long term or chronic benefits, in this case, of that tree, you know, in terms of enjoyment, in terms of increased health outcomes, cooling of the local environment, you know, for you and your family. Yeah, there are, as I say, there are so many benefits of trees.

And actually, that would be a really interesting point to hear a judge talk about, because in the civil law, it's all about balance and being reasonable and weighing up the pros and cons. And I want, I'm really interested to hear one day a judgment in which those pros and cons are actually discussed, because I think that is really going to make a huge difference as to how these cases are dealt with. And I don't think we're too far off.

No, and like so many things, subsidence as one issue within this broader fight against, you know, our developing climate crisis, it's a community response, isn't it? You know, community impact and community response, we like to think, you know, that, you know, this is, you know, my, you know, an Englishman's home is his castle, and you're in Wales, so you're more embracing of others. But I was gonna say, I thought you're gonna say we have more castles, we don't have more. Well, you do that as well. 

But, you know, we live in communities, and the way that we live our lives, the way that we care for our properties, our trees, you know, these can have positive or negative impacts for our families, and for those who live on our street. And more globally, the way we live our lives, have impacts on humans, you know, across the globe. So I think, you know, this very self-centered view of this is my tree, my property, my lifestyle, whatever it is, it's appealing. 

But it, you know, we are all part of this big system. And the way that we live does impact on others. And I think we have so many good choices of ways of, you know, making life a little bit better for everyone else around us.

Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. Thanks for coming on. 

I love speaking to you about stuff like this. You're such an interesting person. Great. 

Thanks very much for having me on, Sarah.