What happens when a journalism lecturer gets inspired to share his love of his community? He launches an online magazine!
The Beyonder
Andrew Knight launched The Beyonder in late 2017 with the intention to create ”a gateway to exploring the great outdoors” for those in Buckinghamshire, England.
In talking about The Beyonder, Andrew says, “The website explores local history and folklore, colourful characters living in the area and local businesses and artists who share a fascination for the great outdoors.”(1) With over 200 articles, the website is full of stories about the people and place that make this area unique.
Recent Articles
The articles included in The Beyonder range from mushrooms to movies. So there truly is something for everyone here.
A recent article that I found interesting talked about ”corpse roads”. A corpse road is a path that was used in medieval times to carry the dead from the remote parishes to the main church. These roads could be anywhere from one mile to twenty miles long. Alan Cleaver and Lesley Park have been investigating these roads for the past couple of years and uncovered 30 of these paths in Cumbria. As they began tracing these roads they also found many artifacts such as coffin rests and crosses. You can find out more about this topic by reading “Rediscovering our ancient coffin paths”.
Not to long ago, Andrew emailed me and wanted to know if I was okay with him including some of my work on his site. After reviewing his website, I was more than happy to be a part of this project. Andrew wrote up this great post titled “Misunderstood moths are little marvels”. In this post he references some of my posts including: “Poetry of Moths”, “Death of a Moth”, and “Moths in the Movies”. His article concludes by highlighting the decline in moth populations and how Butterfly Conservation is raising awareness about the loss of habitat, light pollution, and harmful agricultural practices.
(If you want to take a deeper dive into the topic of moth conservation in the UK, check out Much Ado About Mothing by James Lowan.)
To support The Beyonder
If you are interested in learning more about The Beyonder, visit their website and check out all the articles that they have available. You can also visit their “Get Involved” page to learn about their community-based initiatives.
Make sure you let Andrew know that you heard about his page on NaturalistWeekly!
As we embark on our own journey with The Beyonder, we hope it will encourage other people to embark on a journey too – whether that just means getting the family out of the house together for an outdoors adventure or discovering a new hobby, sport or enthusiasm.
We look forward to hearing your stories and seeing your pictures – and hope that they will help to inspire others to take a renewed interest in the world around them too.
Andrew and Olivia, The Beyonder
Resources
Naturalist Weekly 
A very interesting post! I have already followed the links and The Beyonder looks like something I will follow. The area covered by the main items is the Chilterns which I knew very well in my early days as we lived in Hertfordshire for about 25 years. Many thanks for the link 👍🙋♂️
Hi Ashley! That is great that you know about the area. Andrew and I have talked a few times, but the geography was a little challenging for me because I am not familiar with the area. I am glad this was useful.
This sounds interesting, Mark. I’ll look forward to follow the link after I’ve fed and watered the old man tonight. 😀
Hi Lesley, I hope you find something of interest! There is a lot of content on that site.
It’s a fantastic website and such a great project!
Here you go again, Mark, making connections to bring people and nature together. Thank you for this post.
Thanks Tracy!
This is very interesting. If I still lived in Buckinghamshire I’d jump on this! I’m a few thousand miles away in Japan now, so not much chance of that happening unfortunately.
That would be one long commute! Thanks for the comment.