Bolton rugby club hosts Sicily players targeted by mobsters

A Bolton rugby club has lent its support to the fight against organised crime in Sicily, by hosting 50 players and coaches from a club targeted by local Mafia. The Briganti club was first attacked in 2018, when its clubhouse was torched in a suspected revenge strike by mobsters resentful of the loss of potential recruits. When Bolton RUFC heard about the players’ plight, they got in touch. As well as offering bed and board for five days, the club has set up matches and a trip to a funfair.

Wainwright’s walk gains National Trail status

Alfred Wainwright’s coast-to-coast walk, which winds through the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, is to be turned into a National Trail. The 197-mile route starts at St Bees in Cumbria and finishes at Robin Hood’s Bay, and passes lakes, bogs, mountains, castles and plenty of pubs. It was first set out in a book by Wainwright, a renowned fell-wanderer and writer, in 1973, and has been popular with walkers ever since, despite its unofficial status. The National Trail designation means that more than £5m of public money will be invested in the trail to make it safe and accessible, and to ensure more people know about it.

Fossil hunter makes extremely rare find

A fossil hunter who opened a museum in Sheffield to house his collection has learnt that it includes the oldest known example of an ichthyosaur embryo in Britain. James Hogg, 23, invited several dinosaur experts to the launch of his one-room museum, including Dean Lomax, an authority on ichthyosaurs. When Hogg told Lomax he thought he’d found a fossil of a pregnant ichthyosaur, Lomax inspected it. “His face lit up like a kid in a candy shop,” Hogg recalled. “He found an entire embryo within an adult, only a few inches long.”

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