Author: iainmcnabuk

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Wet woodland

This has been a week of flooding in Shropshire and much of the rest of the country. At Century Wood, the water levels have been higher as they usually are in winter, and our seasonal ponds where the water table breaks through the surface, are back.

Here are two contrasting photos of one of the boundary ditches: on the left, to show the depth of the ditch, here it is empty during the drought year of 2011 when I believe water was diverted for irrigation; and almost overflowing this week. That fallen log is the standing tree with the fork in the 2011 photo.

There is normally a foot or two of water in that ditch all year round. This next photo is of another drainage ditch which is normally dry but fills up and then starts flowing when there are floods. A bit back from the ditch is a dead tree with orange fruiting bodies from the fungi consuming the rotting timber inside. The fungus is something like Velvet Shank.

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Stopping by Woods, in France

I went for a walk on a snowy afternoon earlier this month in woods on the French/Swiss border. Naturally I took lots of photos and I’ve set them to a recording from 1952 of Robert Frost reciting his famous poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”.

Here are the stills used in the video, with some extras:

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Birds at the wood

I’ve never been a bird watcher, but one of the aspects of opened-ended activities like owning a wood is that you’re drawn outside your comfort zone. Early on I wanted to know what the “big birds” were (common buzzards) and I spent time trying to creep up on the woodpeckers I could hear drumming on tree trunks (great spotted woodpecker). As well as small songbirds, I’ve since seen or heard pheasants, pigeons, rooks, tawny owls, mallard ducks, and most recently a heron a couple of times by the South Ditch.

Common buzzard on a trail camera
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Holiday at Century Wood

We’ve had the Log Cabin at the wood for 12 years now and as well as being genuinely useful for forestry, it doubles up as a getaway we can use any time and without any notice. With all the travel disruption at home and abroad this summer we decided to have a couple of weekend breaks away, and spend a Monday to Friday week at the wood when the weather hadn’t gone haywire.

The setup is very similar to these pictures from solo stays when I’m doing forestry work. Camp beds, gas stove for cooking, and electric 12V lights or gas lanterns. You can see more in this video I did.

During the days we did touristy things, including the Ironbridge museums, Lilleshall Abbey and Lilleshall Hall National Sports Centre, Hoo Farm which now has an impressive woodland dinosaur park, and Wightwick Manor near Wolverhampton.

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Mid summer week

It’s now high summer in Century Wood and the place is full of life. I was here at the weekend, for the sun and the heat and the welcome downpours of rain. Today is Monday 20th of June 2022 and tonight will be the shortest night of the year. The Summer Solstice is tomorrow. At 10:14am BST the Sun will reach the end of its annual journey north, stop, and begin again to move southwards against the pattern of fixed stars and constellations in the sky. This makes tomorrow the longest day of the year.

Later in the week, the traditional Midsummer Day is on Friday 24th of June, which is also the saint’s day of St John the Baptist. Along with Christmas Day, the 25th of March and 29th of September, Midsummer Day was one of the Quarter Days which divided the year and on which rents were traditionally due. It was a day for many of our lost traditions of bonfires, maypoles, and fairs.

Mid summer features in one of my favourite Kipling poems, “Tree Song”, set to music by Peter Bellamy in the 1970s as “Oak and Ash and Thorn”. Of the trees the poem lists, Century Wood is only missing Yew and Beech. 

Of all the trees that grow so fair,
    Old England to adorn, 
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
    Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn. 
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,    
    All of a Midsummer morn! 
Surely we sing no little thing,
    In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
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A walk to Walden Pond

In this video from May 2022, I walk from the busy crossroads into Walden Woods and to the site of Thoreau’s cabin, where he lived for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days from July 1845. I add a stone brought from Century Wood to the cairn by the cabin site. I then look at the wildlife and views of the pond and the forest.

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Felling winter firewood

In this video I cut down hazel, wych elm and ash trees for firewood, as I clear the edge of a woodland ride at Century Wood to let in more light and provide more varied habitats. I use the wood tractor, trolley, and chainsaw, and bring the logs back to the drying barn to season.

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Snow walk through Dunham Massey

After the snow fall at the end of November 2021 I walked around the National Trust’s Dunham Massey estate in Cheshire, mostly in the oak woodland of the deer park. I made this video using a new iPhone Pro 13. We see fallen and decaying trees, fallow deer, the old brick slaughterhouse tower, ducks in the moat in front of the House.

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Forests of Dune

The release of Denis Villeneuve’s wonderful film of the first half of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” has coincided with the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, but few reviewers have made the connection because the book’s ecological themes are largely absent from the screen version.

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