The former is only known from four sites in all of Britain

The former is only known from four sites in all of Britain.Through the intervention of English Nature, the Government’s conservation agency, the Canvey Island bee sites have been saved from supermarket redevelopment, but many others are at risk, Professor Benton warns. “We need to value and protect urban nature, especially because so much of our countryside has been rendered sterile by industrialised agriculture,” he says.Professor Benton sounds the alarm about vanishing brownfield bee havens at the end of his monumental study, entitled Bumblebees, which has just been published as part of a long-running (and much-collected) series of weighty wildlife books, the Collins New Naturalists. ‘Independent’ book offer Independent readers can obtain a 15 per cent discount on the cover price of Collins New Naturalist Bumblebees by Ted Benton – which is regarded as the most authoritative work on British bumblebees ever published – while directly helping the new Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BBCT). The £45 hardback is available for £38.25, while the £25 paperback is available for £21.25, both with free postage and packing on all UK orders. For every copy sold through The Independent, the BBCT will also receive 15 per cent of the cover price. To take advantage of this offer, please call Independent Books Direct on 08700 798897 or visit our online bookshop at www.independentbooks direct.co.uk. 1.

GETTING STARTED

Have you a bike mouldering in a shed, or do you need to invest? Either way, your first stop is your local bike shop, which will make sure the machine is safe to ride and offer advice and service that no chain store or online retailer can match.. I’ve been riding bikes for well over 20 years (which is not the same as riding bikes well), but I don’t recall ever becoming a cyclist. Despite getting on a battered hybrid most days to make the short but hairy inner-city journey from home to work, I don’t recognise myself in most of the clich?of the earnest, yoghurt-hugging, two-wheeled eco-warrior. And now that I also pull on extremely hip Rapha gear and display the family jewels in lycra, while training to do stages of the Tour de France on my sleek Roberts racer, I’m even more aware that there is not one homogenous – and apparently to many, hateful beast – “the cyclist”.

The maiden aunt on her sit-up-and-beg is not the same as the boys doing wheelies on their BMXs, or the honed athletes whizzing past me as I wheeze through Regent’s Park every morning. Quite why those of us who sometimes rely on pedal power should all be lumped together and so rigidly defined and regularly derided because of our chosen form of transport is a complete mystery to me. I’m sick of people going on about cyclists, as if the very word is a shorthand, which will tell you everything about us. It’s not like becoming a vegan or a Scientologist, it’s not a cult. I no more define myself by the fact that I cycle than my wife does by the fact that she has an Oyster card. For me this has always been a sensible and sometimes enjoyable way of getting from A to B, except when it’s wet.. When the Prix de Diane was first run in 1843 there were, according to contemporary reports, only three females present in the members’ grandstand.

Yesterday, there were rather more madames and mademoiselles posing and preening beneath their big hats in the Chantilly sunshine. But the most important lady by far was out there on the track. Confidential Lady gave long-serving trainer Sir Mark Prescott his first success in a Classic as she romped home in the French version of the Oaks. Newmarket-based Prescott was delighted, but typically self-deprecating, after the filly’s ears-pricked length-and-a-half defeat of the favourite Germance and Ballydoyle raider Queen Cleopatra.