Journalists cover lots of meetings with angry people shouting. So it was a rare joy to attend August’s event in Knaresborough to mark the return of 60 acres of land to public use after 250 years, where people sang in the sun and there were smiles aplenty.

But £300,000 of the £864,000 raised for the Knaresborough Forest Park campaign came from a high-interest loan. The loan must be repaid by November 5 and there was still a £146,000 shortfall yesterday. The interest rate climbs to 9% and if the repayments can’t be met, some of the land, bought to protect it from development, may have to be sold. You can buy or gift shares here.

Media organisations also cover local fires, but you may have noticed fewer articles about them lately. That’s mainly because North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service has stopped publishing street names “to ensure people are not identifiable” and rarely gives much detail. Its twice-daily incident reports often say little more than ‘there was a car fire in Harrogate last night’.

There was a bad crash at Kex Gill last Sunday, which was listed as ‘Harrogate’ in the fire service’s brief incident report. The fire service later confirmed the incident was on the A59. We also asked North Yorkshire Police about the crash but didn’t get a response. Police and fire services are funded by taxpayers, but it seems they don’t want the taxpayer to know too much about what they do.

The Save Rotary Wood campaigners definitely want people to know more about what they're doing. I attended Monday night's gathering. Regardless of your views, you have to admire the tenacity of the campaigners who have been trying to stop Harrogate Spring Water from felling 500 trees for almost eight years now.

One of our most eyebrow-raising articles this week revealed that 16 million condoms are made by a Boroughbridge firm that supplies the NHS. LTC Healthcare, which also makes lubricants — and we are not talking Duckhams engine oil here — was in the news for environmental sustainability.

Finally, did you see the delightful article about a woman in Ferrensby spotting an otter in her garden on video? Not once, but twice. You can read more and watch the video of it here.