Eddy's Good News: A life-saving off-duty policeman, and cataloguing ancient trees

Virgin Radio

30 Aug 2023, 09:32

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 10am and 1pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Wednesday 30th August 2023

Good news from here in the UK and the wonderful volunteers that are helping us catalogue every ancient tree to help safeguard our woodland future.

Say hello to The Woodland Trust, who you might recall from last week, are running a quest to find the UK’s favourite ancient urban tree and who are very much focused on the ancient grandmother and grandfather trees of this once great forested nation.

In the stone age and bronze age, the UK was basically a giant forest, but waves of immigration from celts, romans, viking, saxons and later industrialisation meant it almost all disappeared under the axes of so called progress. Nevertheless there are still thousands of trees that are hundreds of years old, and trees like this are being catalogued by enthusiasts, then verified via The Woodland Trust and measured, not just by size and age, but by the biodiversity that lives in or on them. 

We are heading for 250,000 trees now and if you know of an ancient tree, in your garden, on your local common, on a walk you do, then do make sure they know about it by visiting the Woodland Trust.

Heroic news from Canada as an off-duty policeman saves the life of a swimmer who was about to drown under a waterfall.

Say hello to the rather aptly named Bruce Lake, a Canadian policeman hiking with friends in the Fundy National Park, New Brunswick, when he was alerted to a group of friends who’d been swimming in a pool under a waterfall. These sorts of pools can have really dangerous, swirling eddies that can suck a person under very easily. I got caught in one once and it was really scary. 

This swimmer briefly came up for air after she was pulled under, she looked frightened, then when she went down a second time and didn’t resurface, Bruce took that as a cue to dive in and help her, at the risk of his own life. 

The churning white water made it impossible to see so he had to just use his arms and legs to feel underwater and thank the river gods that his hand brushed her arm, he was able to grab her, yank her up and they were both pulled ashore, because at this point he could feel himself being sucked under by the same twisting whirlpool. Both are now fine and Bruce is being quite rightly hailed as a hero for risking his life for a total stranger.