Woodlands.co.uk is 'republishing' this blog, as contact details for the Jones family are now available and several people have expressed an interest in having a walking stick 'custom made'.  The blog originally appeared in 2014. Contact email address is pj451324(at)gmail.com Peter Jones and his sons make walking sticks on a serious scale using sticks they come across in the woods, where they do their forestry work.  They use chestnut, silver birch, oak and hazel.  But they avoid using willow, as it goes brittle once it's aged.  Apart from finding the right stick to work on they need a steamer for bending the tops of the walking sticks and a good supply of sealant and varnish for protecting the finished sticks. "Honeysuckle makes the best twist sticks" advises out Peter Jones, who comes across a lot of twisted stems in Kent and East Sussex.  As a result, he is able to trade these with fellow stick makers in more northern English areas - they give him carved tops for walking sticks in exchange for good twisted shanks.  But even among twisted sticks there is variety: the slower growing trees such as holly and oak twist more slowly whilst the fast-growing chestnut twists quickly.  Though he also corrected me pointing out that the maker of walking sticks should really be called a "stick dresser" Read more...

(The % of land covered by woodland or forests varies tremendously from country to country - throughout Europe.   The nordic countries such as Norway and Sweden, have large forests and therefore a high % cover, but others such as the U.K., Ireland and the Netherlands are amongst the least 'wooded'. At present, the % woodland in the Netherlands is about 11%.  In part, this is due to the fact that the Netherlands is Europe's most densely populated country (with 394 people per square kilometer).  There is a network of small and medium sized cities spread across the country; much of the land is used for agriculture.  However, the State Forestry Commision has developed a (3 billion euro) plan to increase the country's wooded / forested areas by some 100,000 hectares. Read more...

The Small Woods Association is a remarkable organisation with three unusual women at the core of it - Jude Walker, its CEO, Angle Pollard who runs their social forestry programme and Diane Wood - the SWA treasurer. For those who notice these things, it's interesting that that their surnames are all related to woodlands and what they do - encouraging walking and pollarding in woods - an illustration of aptronyms perhaps (names which are very apt for the job they do). These women, along with Phil Tidey and their team at the Greenwood Centre, have built up the Small Woods Association into a very effective charity which has turnover of almost 3/4 million pounds and a clear objective of promoting sustainable conservation of small woodlands, but in recent years it has developed a particular emphasis on social forestry, meaning woodland projects with health and social objectives. Read more...