Just enjoying the colours
These are brambles
After the wrestling match the other day I was a little apprehensive of taking Fred back into the woods this morning, but my worries of a repeat performance didn’t happen.
I saw a very autumnal yellowy orange tree which seemed more advanced in its autumnal colouring compared to the others around it. It was very striking and the colours really attracted me and I looked really closely to find out what kind of tree it actually was? It looked like some kind of maple tree but turned out to be The Wild Service Tree. I had heard of this tree as being quite rare and historically significant. It turns out this tree is an indicator that you are in an ‘ancient woodland’. I know the wider Blean complex of woodlansds were Henry VIII’s hunting forests when he visited Canterbury and that these woodlands have Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) status. It’s not often I become so struck by a particular tree and I wanted to research it further. The colour attracted me so much I had to know more. It has berries called chequer berries that if eaten need to be ‘bletted’ some kind of over ripening? They were used to flavour beer before hops were used and somehow ‘Chequer boards’ used to symbolize pubs? Also a herbal remedy for colic stomach pains. Apparently the wood is very close grained and hard and was used to make screw threads on wine presses and parts of musical instruments. I saw four of these trees on our walk this morning.
My companion on these woodland walks is Fred (Irish Terrier) and he has a very different agenda from mine, he is able to engage more directly than me immersing all his senses into the experience. We are both equally immersed in our own way. He runs off out of sight exploring looking for squirrels, I hold conversations with myself plot, plan and review situations in my life. Fred has no such worries, its all about the moment, the here and now for Fred. Intermittently I see him and often hear him nearby moving through the understory or shrub layer of the woods while I walk along the single track which is a mountain bike term for the narrow winding paths over tree roots, between the trees and across streams. We do communicate sometimes whereby if we reach a fork or junction I whistle very loudly and shout ‘wego thisone Fred’ which has become just a sound he recognises the words are totally meaningless. Fred will run by just to show me that he is not lost, and see which way I have actually gone. Sometimes I whistle loudly at a junction and what I get back is a couple of squeaky barks, this means, ‘I’m not coming now I’m busy’. I have to make a decision whether to carry on or wait at the junction till he comes. Usually, I carry on a little way whistle again and he runs up and checks in, all is well and we carry on.
However sometimes the bark sounds a little more intense and he does not run past after whistling 2-3 times, 4-5 times this is the signal that the ‘Squirrel Button’ has been pressed! When pressed it stays on. Sometimes I can turn it off with a dog treat and a little encouragement. But now and again it jams and I can’t turn it off. Today’s walk is one of those walks when the button has broken and JAMMED ON. In this situation from years of our relationship together I know Fred will not come to me for all the tea in China. I have to retrace my steps and follow the barking and eventually find the location where he has become fixated and utterly focused and obsessed. This will be ring 3-4 trees fairly close together where a squirrel has run up and passed across to another tree through the intertwining branches overhead. Fred rotates in a systematic routine barking up the trunk of each tree in turn, regardless of where the squirrel has gone. This circular loop cannot be broken and it is the record on the turn table that has become stuck.
As I approach Fred to put him on his lead he will run off to bark at another tree in his collection of targeted trees. I play piggy in the middle while he runs from tree to tree. I have in the past tried to wait till he gets bored and is just ready to move on. This has never worked and the length of wait remains unknown. So, I do wait by one tree patiently waiting my moment. Fred routinely checks this tree but on the opposite side of the trunk to where I am waiting and eventually when he is close enough and I feel the moment is right, I pounce and grab him and have to wrestle him down to the ground and get his lead on. In the past he has evaded me, or managed to wriggle free during the wrestling match and when this happens the whole thing has to start again and be repeated. Today I get him, squash him and hang on for dear life and get his lead on quick.
Success
But that is not the end of it. On previous occasions we have walked a quarter of a mile further on away from the ring of trees with Fred constantly stopping, pulling and wanting to turn back making any progress very slow, but gradually calming down and walking in the right direction. But as soon as I let him off the lead he has turned and run all the way back to continue rotating his patrol again. Not today. I pick him up and carry him across my shoulders like a Neolithic hunter carrying a deer out of the woods with me holding his legs on my chest. He wriggles now and then but I’m not giving in. It is about half a mile back to the car and as we get within a few hundred yards I put him on the ground and we walk the rest on the lead.
As I mentioned earlier these woods are being prepared for the arrival of European Bison and fences are being erected and the old ones being taken down. These older fences were from the previous era when Konic Ponies and Highland Cattle grazed in here. The enclosures for these had covered large areas and many woodland tracks I knew were shut off and inaccessible, shut off within the enclosures, and have been for about a decade.
Now these old fences are being removed as the new fence layout is installed. This provides the opportunity to re-walk old pathways I had not been along for 10 years. I have been enjoying re-discovering these paths and trying to match them to my original map. Today I set off along one of these forgotten paths into the interior of a section of woods I had not been in for so long. After several hundred yards the path dissolved and I was just walking through woods with no reference points at all. Large areas of bracken seemed to encroach from all sides. But in the end a series of fence posts emerged, no fence just the posts. This was a slight relief as things were getting dense and difficult to pass through. A machine/vehicle had passed through removing the wire and the enclosure edge was easy to follow. I knew if I followed these posts, I would come out somewhere I recognized eventually and sure enough I came out below the pylons. The bracken or is it Lady-Fern was really established combined with the brambles this fence corridor was the only way to navigate through the ‘interior’ there were no pathways at all. The sun was out and I enjoyed the colours and the early morning light. I was blissfully empty of thoughts just walking in a green and golden natural cathedral really.
Then it all went horribly wrong!
I have walked near enough every day for over fifteen years in West Blean and Thornden Woods with two different dogs and I have ridden my mountain bike with friends and explored these woods before the Highland Cattle and Konic Ponies were first introduced in 2010. I helped create the Wildart Sculpture Trail with the Kent Wildlife Trust and created illustration and interpretation panels here, made art, maps and written blogs about these woods and they have played a huge role in my life. I am sure I have changed over this period of time, as have the woods and there are further important changes ahead as the Wilder Blean Project is implemented which will impact heavily on my relationship to these woods.
Back in the year 2008 I drew a map of these woods as I remembered them from riding my mountain bike there with friends most weekends. The woods back then I had heard were an asset within the Midland Bank (HSBC) pension scheme and had been for many years.
My map shows the woods before The Kent Wildlife Trust were awarded lottery funds to own and manage these woods and implement the enclosures for grazing.
At the time I was interested in recording the different paths and landmarks in the woods. I am really glad I took the trouble to create it, as it records the wood before its current owner and subsequent changes. It was all created from memory and scale and proportion taking a back seat over place identification. Rather reminiscent of the medieval Gough Map http://www.goughmap.org/ where perimeter information is missing.
