Category: 2018

      Fresh back from Europe with food still fresh, Joao and Pete came to the wood for their first time. We drank Portuguese red wine that Joao knew, ate cheese and Sardines, talking of their days in Footsbarn Travelling Theatre (I had not realised named after Michael Foots son, Oliver). Tess swung by… Continue reading Spring in the wood

PLane Trees

The Romans set the scene. The first 12 centuries AD are undoubtedly the most period in the formation of the British countryside. Much of our landscape today was recognisable. Villages formed. Properties of farmland, moorland woodland demarked. The separation of woods from each other, the naming of woods   it is just possible that some… Continue reading Oliver Rackam: The Dark Ages of woodland

Two years ago hedge laid hazel, doing well on the boundary of the wood. We just made it, before the Beast from the East settled on us, and on our hazel cuttings and on the great leaning ash felled to the ground. Snow came and lay the next day, and took our little temperate island… Continue reading First coppicing group coppice

Sandwiched between Windsor Road gardening and the boys looking for a good time drinking at the Woodbine, I walked from Epping Information centre to the pub, meeting the boys (Barry and Dave) half way - amazingly we found each other. Sunday the wood was full of families, walking, or on cycles, with and without maps. … Continue reading Epping Beech Pollards

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09r3nwl I particularly liked the moment when one of the fungi experts, sourced by BBC radio 4,  announced that they were everywhere 'Yes, even here in the BBC studio there would be fungal spoors floating around. What are they up to asked Melvyn Bragg a little more animated than usual. Looking to find a suitable substrait… Continue reading Plant or Animal? Fungi

The pride of [Epping] Forest is its hornbeams. There is no larger forest of hornbeams in England, nor perhaps in the world. Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England It's difficult to imagine now where I am in little India, Forest Gate, was once the entrance to Epping Forest, and where I run each morning, Wanstead Flats, was the… Continue reading Grimeston’s Oak in Epping Forest