Nature's Paths

It's harder now to find places where recent human interference is not evident. This naturalness is what many of us value and on this site particularly. Until the present regime, of course, run by those who rate a site for the scope it offers to provide them with jobs and projects, opportunities for fencing, chain-sawing and livestock management.

They will get here eventually of course but as of now this north facing slope above the southern stream offers some well needed respite.

The woodland here is not as old, complex and fascinating as that associated with the other stream valleys and gorges. But I've always liked the restorative feel of once seriously exploited land returning to nature with vigorous healthy tree and shrub growth.

The energy and innocence complements the quietness and gives the spring birdsong the stage it needs. Warblers were beyond expectation, cuckoo was calling and a solitary blackbird was mellow and complacent. As so often it was the virtuoso blackcap which claimed most attention.

I must have missed the growth in deer tracks across the side of the hill in previous visits. This time I went straight down so they were obvious. At least six of them run parallel with the stream equally spaced.

On the other side of the stream the tracks visible went obliquely up the hill

- where several hinds had been climbing up the previous day.

Trees are the usual rowan, birch and oak with holly and some excellent venerable hawthorn, always worth a visit on its own.

In one part, near the stream sycamore has made a home and on the eastern end close birch woodland has now reached a good height where it had established itself  after a heather fire in the eighties. This is where the wildlife trust has seen an opportunity to justify intervention. Thinning with chain saws and log piles left mostly tidy to give a reminder that "woods must be managed" - or we don't know what might happen.