Bent out of shape

The little tree on the cover has been flailed since it was a tiny sapling, with any branches growing into the light brutally torn off. It can't grow back into the dark wood and so it has grown in horizontal branches along the tree line.

I have this idea that it would be great to let the wood expand into the light and cut it from the middle. So you fell out the trees in the dark and dying centre and let succession do as it wishes on the edges.

Of course, this is not practical, but it would allow a new deciduous wood to form.

I have another idea that like the Pleistocene Park guys, you use a tank to tear through a patch of woodland - like a mechanical mammoth - and then let the browsers and grazers in for a while to finish the job. Open up rides and glades in the seemingly random pathways of a giant mammal, tearing through the woodland.

This is even less practical.

Two of the volunteers today commented on how nice it would be to be able to roam through the woodland at Pitsford. Now, they also mentioned the lakeside. There are issues with scaring the birds - not for the birders, but for the sake of the actual birds. But, saying that, we're only talking a few little track detours here and there, off the mown main drag.

Mostly there's no access because either the trees and their fallen brethren are packed in like sardines or the scrub has made a series of impenetrable barriers. So you are stuck on a kind of grass road between... well, hedges... for seven miles. Not a great sense of wonder and wilderness about the place. Where you walk is like a highway of park through a reserve. It's a little odd. It might as well have flower borders along it and vending machines.

That's a little harsh.

But always this compromise between access and habitat plays out. At Pitsford, there is a lot of habitat so the access is incredibly managed. That said, large tracts of the habitat - like the pine plantations - are pretty dead. Dark and dreary.

We did see some glorious lichen on hawthorn - but I didn't have my phone so no pictures.