Two years ago I went to the previous edition of the APF show and we went back this weekend when it returned to Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. The APF is the UK’s biggest show dedicated to forestry and related sectors. Despite its focus on “big forestry”, we found plenty to see as family woodland owners.
Alice Holt is one of those names that crops up again and again in British forestry as one of the three research stations of Forest Research (the other two are in Scotland and Wales.) It appears in papers and reports because it’s both a place forest scientists are based and a working forest where long term experiments in silviculture and tree health can be done. I finally managed to visit the forest in Hampshire this summer and took some photos.
We had a lovely holiday in Devon and Dorset this summer, with a visit to the Neolithic Sweet Track on the drive down from Cheshire. In Devon we stayed in a beautifully furnished cabin in Dartmoor, and we were also able to visit Thomas Hardy’s house with the study where he wrote “The Woodlanders” in 1886/7.
This week I went to Century Wood to get some jobs done and make a start on felling trees for the 2027-28 firewood. In the end I only got a token amount of firewood cut but at least it’s a start to this winter’s felling season. I also made the clearing around the Cairn bigger and tidied it up. There are now 504 stones on the Cairn from me, one for each visit, plus others from other people who have come here. I was mostly away from the Cabin so I just set up the Starlink mini dish for half an hour – on the ground, on its case, with a battery.
This summer I visited the Sweet Track on the Somerset Levels for the first time – a Neolithic wooden trackway across the marshes that is 5800 years old. The area is still wet today and was in stark contrast to the parched and brown fields we drove past on the drive down from Cheshire. The visit made me think about continuity with our ancestors who first managed the land, but also the changes in climate and land use which have happened over those thousands of years.
Today is the first day of meteorological autumn. Ever since I bought Century Wood I’ve paid a lot more attention to the seasons and when they “really” are. When does spring really start? When does it turn into summer? What about the distinction between autumn and winter? There are lots of definitions, but could I use the changes of the woodland itself as a guide to the four seasons? More recently, I think there is a much simpler way of looking at it.
At the end of July I spent a week staying in the Log Cabin at Century Wood, doing a few jobs and enjoying the woodland. The heat was a major factor, with temperatures above 30C most days and I could now see definite signs of drought with wilting leaves on some of the trees, and longer sight lines as undergrowth died back in July as it normally would in autumn.
We’ve been having a series of heatwaves in Britain since May and Shropshire is no different. Even in high summer the water table at Century Wood is only a metre or two below the surface as it sits on drained marshland. I’ve not seen signs of drought and things seems to be growing very well.
I expect you’ve heard of Robin Hood, and the usual versions where he fights unjust Norman/French oppression of English peasants. Maybe you’ve also heard of the historical figure Hereward the Wake who led a campaign of guerrilla warfare against William the Conqueror in the immediate aftermath of the Norman invasion in 1066. But far less famous is Eadric, Shropshire’s own woodland outlaw-rebel from the same period.
In May I had the chance to spend a couple of days in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Yellowstone became the world’s first national park in 1872, as federal land protected from the settlement and development that was beginning around it. It’s still the case that its official population is zero, and instead people travel in from towns near it boundaries, or camp or use motorhomes for recreational stays. I stayed in the small town of West Yellowstone just over the border in Montana.
