Newport tip: A contradiction in terms

The crisp morning air pinches my nose, despite the warmth coursing through me on my brisk walk. It's the kind of autumnal morning on which you want to gulp lungfuls of the air - but you wouldn't want to do that here. Newport, the East Yorkshire village I grew up in, is cloaked by agricultural land. With its ponds and canal, it's a pretty spot. For me, it conjures memories of childhood. The setting is certainly different to the one that provides a setting for my brisk daily walks in Zurich. It's flatter, more unkempt and has unruly hedgerows that, today, look glorious set against the one-shade-of-blue sky.

But there's that problem of inhaling. If I mentioned the landscape were flat, that is true but for one patch of land to my left. Here, a grassy bulge rises beyond the field. It is covered in grass, as if to disguise its revolting nature. It cannot disguise the smell: a faint tinge of rot in the air, stronger when the wind gusts. The M62 rubbish tip operated by City Plant Ltd is filled with up to 70,000 tonnes of waste a year. Fresh waste is supposed to be covered by soil daily, but is often left open. The smell makes you want to hold your nose, or worse, vomit. It is unbelievable that waste is still being dumped there despite a ban by the environment agency. I feel so sorry for the people who live even closer to it, whose lives have been ruined by human wastefulness. The great irony is that to the left of the tip stands an army of wind turbines - an effort to clean up the energy in a country that fills its ground with rubbish.