Most regard woodlands as a beautiful and important part of our countryside, and feel that they can exert a profound and positive influence on our emotional state.    Time spent wandering through the woods can have a relaxing and calming effect. Woodland only forms a small percentage of our countryside (about 13%), and some of that is dominated by conifers planted in the post-war period for timber production; however, the area covered by broad leaved trees is now increasing.    Despite this, our woodlands do harbour a wonderful variety of wildlife (think of the red squirrel, the nightingale, the dormouse) but there is concern that woodland plants and animals face a number of threats - many species are in decline.   Why is this ? Read more...

Paul Stamets in his mycological bible Mycelium Running writes that “Mushrooms can be placed in 4 basic categories: saprophytic, parasitic, mycorrhizal, and endophytic, depending upon how they nourish themselves,” pointing out that many deploy a mixture of all these strategies. The woodlands blog has featured the mycorrhizal types such as the Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) that derive their energy by forming mutually-beneficial relationships through extending the root systems of trees and other plants. Both parasitic and endophytic types sustain themselves by living on or within other organisms, be they plant, animal or whatever, the former to the detriment of its host, the latter harmless and sometimes even beneficial. The pathogenic Honey Fungus (Armillariam sp.) is a good example of a parasitic type, while the relationship between Tar Spots and the leaves of the sycamores and acers that they appear on is best described as endophytic. Read more...

In principle as a freehold woodland owner you own the space above and below your woodland - from the centre of the earth to the highest heavens ("ad coelum et ad inferos" as the old latin legal phrase goes).  This means that for most woodland owners if they were to dig down one or two hundred metres they would go through many of layers of rock going back millions of years and probably containing numerous fossils.  Even though it's impractical to dig down very far some owners like the thought that they have rights over thousands of fossils, however inaccessible. In some woods these fossils are quite accessible and are actually near the surface.  Woodlands turn out to be a surprisingly promising place to study geology and look for fossils.  That's because they are a relatively undisturbed part of our countryside and rock faces are often left exposed.  Additionally rocky soils and steep slopes were unsuitable for agriculture and often kept as woodland.  Sometimes small quarries were dug in woods for building the nearby roads or forest tracks and these quarries reveal the underlying rock and occasionally fossils. Read more...

Gabriel Hemery of Sylva.org.uk is a researcher and entrepreneur in the British Woodlands sector.  He just announced the results of his British Woodlands Survey 2017 (BWS) where he asked hundreds of woodland owners how they see the future of their woods.  The survey covered 1.5 million acres of woodland - about a fifth of the UK wooded area and included forestry agents as well as 660 owners and looked at biodiversity, biosecurity, social attitudes and woodland creation.  The report is entitled, "Shaping the Future of Forestry". Most striking was that the majority of owners and agents reported making a financial loss on their woodland over the last five years.  Read more...

Our 4WD instructor, Paul, is a Falklands veteran as well as being a retired fireman. So he wasn’t phased by having to drive through one-metre deep puddles and reversing up very steep off-road slopes. For his off-road pupils, like me, it was a different story - we were discovering the limits of the Land Rover Explorer that we were driving around the Eastnor Castle estate at Ledbury in Herefordhsire. Most of the tracks on this 5,000 acre estate are through woodland with hundreds of yew trees, oaks and hazel coppice stools. It’s an SSSI (important scintifically) so you can’t drive off the tracks. The main woodland we used is actually called “Clenchers Wood” which is a very appropriate name considering how most drivers’ bottoms react to seeing the slopes they are about to drive down. Read more...

Some further woody related words to impress your scrabble playing friends with! I: Iceni: A tribe of ancient Britons inhabiting an area of south-eastern England in present-day Norfolk and Suffolk. Their queen, Boudicca, led an unsuccessful rebellion against the Romans in AD 60. SCORE = 7 Igneous :  A type of rock, formed from solidified lava or magma. SCORE : 8 Ingle: A domestic fire or fireplace. SCORE: 6 Inglenook: A small recess that adjoins a fireplace. SCORE: 14 Read more...

We’ve been lucky enough to have been residents in a beautiful 100 acre woodland in Ashford, Kent called March Woods for about a year now. My name is Craig Fordham and I run a company called Black Wolf Survival and I’ve been in the outdoor industry on and off for about 20 years mainly specialising in Bushcraft & Survival.  Aside from running sessions for schools, groups and individuals I am also a brand ambassador for Craghoppers clothing and write a few articles for various magazines. Our basecamp teaching site at March Woods was functional and basic, we’d initially cleared a large enough area to erect a 32ft parachute as a main teaching area and a couple of other tarps we utilise for a kitchen area etc. Read more...