The last ice age endured for about 100,000 yrs.  Some 18,000 yrs ago, mammoths, sabre-toothed tiger and woolly rhino (preyed on by prehistoric man) roamed our land.  Thick ice sheets lay to the North, whilst to the South was tundra - much like that now seen in Northern Siberia. Then 10,000 years later, the ice sheets started to melt and the tundra receded; sea levels rose and low lying areas were flooded.   The North Sea and English Channel formed, cutting us off from mainland Europe. This was a gradual process (in our terms) and as Europe warmed,  trees migrated northwards - some reaching the UK before we were cut off from the rest of Europe.  Most plant colonisation was by seed and spores, animals followed bringing with them other taxa. Read more...

Have you ever wanted to know how to stop fence posts rotting, how to choose which trees to plant, or how to build a pond so that it holds water?  This guidebook, originally written in the early 1980s, is packed with tips and explanations based on John Seymour’s own experience of improving his wooded smallholding in Pembrokeshire.  Lazy readers like me can follow the explanations through the drawings that Seymour’s wife, Sally, has scattered through the book.  But it’s not just a guide on how to manage woodlands and improve a smallholding – it’s also a whole philosophy of life……. “The reason”, says Seymour, “why our land is so desperately badly husbanded now is that it is held in too large units.”  Read more...

Founded in 1981 by a small group of people, the Durham County Badger Group (DCBG) exists to protect and study the badger in its natural environment with the purposes of ensuring its long term safety and educating the public. What the group does: Records the distribution and status of badgers in County Durham and their setts (and has comprehensive database) Monitors setts regularly and records details of activity or disturbance Assists the Police, RSPCA etc in respect of criminal activity relating to badgers or their setts Read more...

Some twenty five years, the U.K. was battered by a storm – said to have been the worst that this country has experienced in three hundred years.  Hurricane force winds raged across southern England and the Midlands before the storm finally exited via the Wash.  It is often referred to as “The Great Storm” **. Millions of trees were uprooted, woodlands flattened, parks and gardens destroyed, the National Grid damaged, cars hit by falling branches and 18 people died.  Places like Wakehurst Place, the Sussex outpost of the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew) had lost some 60% of their tree collection as a result of the storm. Read more...

We British like our hedges - perhaps it's part of the British reserve, keeping people at arms' length, or maybe it's because they are very functional for keeping stock in fields and marking boundaries. For wildlife, hedgerows have long been important avenues of local migration and hedges represent their own distinct habitat. The attitude of the authorities towards hedges has undergone a roller coaster ride over the last 50 years. In the 1970s, the government were paying grants for the removal of hedges with the objective of encouraging the creation of larger fields to make agriculture more efficient - these were bad times for conservation - Oliver Rackham describes these as "the locust years".  More recently grants have been available for planting hedges and their unauthorised removal in the countryside has become a criminal offence with the Hedgerow Regulations of 1997. Read more...

The other day I had a bit of an unusual email request:  "Could I run a spoon carving workshop for a stag party with nine blokes as part of pre-nuptial celebrations?"  I was straight on the phone to woodlands.co.uk HQ, who readily agreed to the use of a woodland, Hellbeck Wood, for the event.  Friends, Mark and Ben,  were quickly roped in to be assistants and to create their own spoon as part of the bargain. Prayers were offered to the rain god for a fine day, but all bets were hedged and a couple of tarps were erected beneath the trees. The prompt arrival of the stag party group brought another surprise - a woman in their midst!  She was to be an honorary man for the weekend, I was informed.   A short walk led through the wood, to our prepared camp with a small fire and a brew on the go Read more...