Strike a light.

It's easy to neglect some of the basic bush craft skills. Walking today I gathered the materials required to build a fire, lit from a spark. I had my 'Strike Force' fire starter, for the bulk of the tinder ball wind dried fern (any remaining moisture rubbed off in a pocket), peeled and gathered a small amount of the papery outer bark of Birch (high in resin), some honeysuckle bark (papery) and a small bundle of graded (bone dry) Birch twigs. On finding a suitable gravel stream bank we had a fire going within 5 Min's; a skill worth keeping up. It was only damp today, add wind and rain and it's something else again; practice now and save the pain later.

Robin Hood?

Any old iron?

The coastline here was protected through World War Two with a thick layer of defences, scaffold, barbed wire, mines and pillboxes; every year remnants of scaffold bar and joint along with re enforcing bar and barbed wire fixings are dredged from just beyond the intertidal.

Fallen defenders

Soon to be lost to the elements, gone from sight, lost from memory. A hand full of concrete 'Dragons Teeth' slowly tumble down the cliff side in a line, as if following each other to oblivion. There once were over a dozen of these pyramid topped defenders blocking the shallow leading inland, now only these three and one other badly eroded in the intertidal remain.

Winter Solstice Morning

By Yule the Holly kings' reign is done; the Oak kings' reign is just begun.

Longest night yields longer days; the Sun reborn returns our way.

Gather round family and friends; to celebrate now darkness ends.
In our hearts, beneath our feet; the seeds of futures dreams await.
Our march to spring is just begun; wassail to all 'till journey's done.

5000 people gathered at Stonehenge to welcome the new Sun and the beginning of the Oak Kings reign, we were not let down, the Sun rose beautifully; a good omen maybe for the coming year?

Solstice Moon

Solstice card 2011

Burley Old Winter

Picket Post clouds

Three Counties

Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire and maybe beyond.

Linford shade

The late afternoon threw long shadows across Linford Bottom from a low winter Sun, through the scene Linford Brook flows again, replenished from recent rains; inland an ominus grey blanket threatens the forest.

Making a splash

The winds blew white capped waves towards the shore at the beach today, as banks of bubbly cloud crossed the distant horizon, moving with purpose.

Sex

Graffiti never ceases to illuminate, educate and more often than not surprise and entertain me. Off a track through Wilverely enclosure (1809) is this masterpiece in human expression. On seeing this literary wonder a broad smile over took me as I thought about the motivation behind its creation; grateful, desperate or obsessed were my conclusions.

Old graffiti small tree

1856 reads the date, scribed inside a box with other, now illegible, words or figures; old graffiti, on what would appear to be a much younger tree. The graffiti, in style and form, is definitely 1800's, so the tree must not have grown with the vigour of its contemporaries.

Hengistbury

From Highcliffe the Sun goes down over Hengistbury Head, with the faint line of the Purbecks visible in the far distance.

Misty Holmhill

This spooky scene wasn't created by rolling mists nor was it taken it early morning or at twilight, rather the smoke from huge fires, the result of timber harvesting and clearance. A section of Holmhill enclosure, first created in 1681, is being cleared of a much later crop of mature coniferous trees; felled, stripped and stacked on the track side the bare trunks ready for removal.

Pollards past

Pollarding of trees in the New Forest was stopped in 1698 under the direction of the Royal Navy needing the Oak and Beech timber for shipbuilding in the ‘Act for the Increase and Preservation of Timber in the New Forest’. So, when you see trees of this nature they are well in excess 300 years old; these majestic Beeches at Mark Ash were already a good few years old when this act came in to force.

Fossil folly

Found a fossil, picked it up, tried to be clever and came unstuck. The autumn seas have reshaped the fluid clay cliffs of the Barton Beds; fossil rich deposits some 40 million years old laid down when the region was a expansive inland sea. Scouring the freshly exposed clay horizons I spied a fair sized sharks tooth from striatolamia macrota; a good example, it had survived unscathed throughout its geological journey. Trying to be clever I thought it would make a good photo placed amongst the shells and pebbles of the intertidal; and it would have, had a rouge wave not swept it up and returned it from whence it came all those millions of years before. I had to laugh, but will I have learnt the lesson?

Barton Beach

The common

Island Thorns Autumn

Names, what can they tell us?

'Reg and Celia', they were here in the forest, enjoying a lovers picnic maybe? Dating graffiti is always a challenge and I'm constantly looking for clues to age. Reg and Celia aren't common names of my generation or later, so would it be too easy to assume that they predate me, say people born in the 1940's or 1950's? Assumptions continue, the letters are precisely cut, maybe Reg has a job in engineering, a craftsman or something, assuming of course, which I do, that it was he that cut them as men usually create love based graffiti in an attempt to court favour. I'll never know unless one of them sees this post and contacts me to tell the story behind their engraved names, now that would be trip!

St Aldhelms' Head

Clouds race above the Jurassic coast, casting rippling shadows across the undulant hills which frame rocky promontories and bays against the foam crested waves of the channel. Harrying winds buffet Emmett Hill, clearing any accumulated cobwebs. Below St Aldhelms' Head evidence of man lust for Purbeck Stone, mined faces and huge scree slopes created from stone working detritus; a post industrial landscape. All about the signs of past activity, steel ropes, barbed wires rolls, the occasional .303 cartridge, evidence of the Wartime activities nearby.Venturing further round the coast we tread where few, if any go, no paths, a few animal tracks which disappear into 5ft walls of thorn and bramble; the only option is to skirt the cliff edge where tuff low growing shrubs have been shaped by the relentlessness of the place offer access and security. The reward, spending time in a wild place.

Golden globes

One of the apple trees that I gathered fruit from to make cider still has a fair quantity of apples on it, whilst others are now bare.

Military Grafitti

For some time I'd speculated that the arrows found on some trees were military in origin; I'd often seen them on trees near what I believe to be evidence of tank training in the forest. Although, increasingly I've seen them beyond wartime training areas. A recent conversation with a couple of old forest fellows shed further light on the question. The arrows are military marks, marks usually used by the Navy to identify timber; over a dozen or so have been identified so far.

Late Season

It's been a strange mushroom season, promising start, followed by a dry barren period and finally a small short lived resurgence; now at the end of November Ceps are still being found, not too maggoty either. Todays' little hoard should satisfy 3 or 4 breakfasts.

Autumn late afternoon

Autumn afternoon

In the late afternoon Sun Autumns' pallet comes into its own; an orange hue tints the land as the now weakening Sun sinks below the horizon. Across Warwick Slade a column of New Forest ponies emerges from the canopy of Birkin Wood, striding with purpose, attracted by a woman calling her pony as commoners have done for generations; she has her pockets filled with apples, but has no luck. The timeless forest.

Stink Horn

Stink Horn hunting in the 1800's. 'Aunt Etty, armed with a basket and a pointed stick, and wearing special hunting cloak and gloves, she would sniff her way round the wood, pausing here and there, her nostrils twitching, when she caught a whiff of her prey; then at last, with a deadly pounce, she would fall upon her victim, and poke his putrid carcass into her basket. At the end of the day's sport, the catch was brought back and burnt in the deepest secrecy on the drawing-room fire, with the door locked; because of the morals of the maids'. Victorian Britain was a funny place.

Wood Blewit

Fairly common throughout the mixed woodland areas of the forest Wood Blewits are medium sized purplish grey mushrooms which usually grow in small groups. Both wood Blewits and their close relatives field Blewits are regarded as edible, but have been known to cause allergic reactions in some folk.

Leaf

Like a babbling brook, the wind through the lingering leafs of a solitary Silver Birch sang a mesmerising song as I approached across open heath. Pausing on a grassy knoll beside the Birch the leaf song becomes hypnotic, carrying you through flowing sound-scapes of tone as they whisper their secrets.

Hill Bottom

Hill Bottom is what it says, a steep sided wooded gully through which a shallow brook flows which is nestled at the base of West Hill. I've been to Chapmans Pool more times than I can remember and have never stumbled on this magical space. I should imagine the nature of the place would be indicative of the coast before the advent of human intervention and farming; wild and wondrous. Just goes to show even with eyes wide open we can miss so much.

Emmetts Hill

Bubbling clouds race across azure autumn skies driven by fierce chill winds, then, the clouds have passed and the Suns reigns over the Jurassic coast below, the chill subsides as the air warms, the winds though remain. At sea level they cut the crests of rolling waves pushing them faster towards the rocky shore and oblivion. Just as quickly the clouds are back, Sun's obscured, the winds regain their chill and we are returned to the world of dancing shadows. White capped foamy waves crash across the grey rock boulders which mark out the shore of St Aldhelms' Head, high above the Portland stone escarpment of Emmetts Hill which is carpeted in lush green grass. Today is marked by contrasts.

Misty early morning

Jack's coming!

Crossing Spy Holms the chill winds remind you that the wheel still turns, the shadow of Jacks icy fingers today haunt the land, his frozen digits probe the heather and gorse, across the wet heath, on into the open stands and the enclosures beyond; tentatively perhaps now, but soon enough Jack will come to rule.

Evening beach

Reposi-tree

As I wander from trunk to trunk, focused on my quest, my mind too begins to wander. Trees are repositories, storing emotional history; if only they could talk, if only we would listen. Ocknell woods experienced floods of emotion during its nearly 250 years (enclosed 1768); in the last century alone I can site three periods of intense human use. Throughout, the woodland would have absorbed sadness and fear during the war years with Stony Cross Airfield, hope as the former airfield was used to house homeless families through the immediate post war years and the joy experienced by all those thousands who've enjoyed holidaying on the camp site. Evidence of these periods can be seen in some lingering physical remains, but more emotively the very high clustering of graffiti found throughout the woodland. Does this graffiti in some way amplify any emotional resonance? Couple that with the trees inherent natural ability to absorb emotional energy and is that why Ocknell feels so strange, why I don't feel alone, checking over my shoulder like nowhere else, as if the woodland is teeming with unseen people? Not maybe, as I've written before that Ocknell has a foreboding aura, but an emotionally intense one.

Ocknell

I set out to locate some Wartime graffiti said to be found in Ocknell Enclosure, which apparently reads 'Americans were here in 1944' or some such. I was given rough directs by an old chap who'd been told about the site but had been unable to find any trace himself. Unfortunately, although large quantities of graffiti of several periods were represented, I was also unsuccessful. As I make my way I can think of no other place in the forest which solicits the same feelings as Ocknell Enclosure; the woods feel different here from others, shadowy, saturated in an unspecified force or malaise.

Rememberance

Remembrance Day, sombrely dressed, those in power parade in front of cenotaphs and memorials around our land, 'lest we forget' they say, that those on the roll calls of honour gave their lives to secure our rights and freedoms. I remember that, I appreciate that, I show due respect, but does the government? Whilst ministers sanctimoniously bow their heads in a minutes silence they and their minions ruthlessly disrespect the war dead by systematically eroding the rights and freedoms the government tell us they died to create.

Lucas Castle

Just out of frame is a tractor, with a farmer on board rounding up some wayward cows. As we pass I comment to the farmer that he has a great office, I got back 'You think', why's that then?' Well, look at that beautiful view 'suppose so' he replied with a rye smile. It is a top view.

Stag Horn Fungus

70's Summers

Hannah and Marie passed this way in March 1975, reads the graffiti on a tree near the Cub Scout centre in Wilverely Enclosure. I too would have been here around that period, well the early to mid 1970's anyway, when I camped as a Cub. I wonder if they remember their time in the woods as well as I do?

Baby Fly Agaric

Lifes a Beech

Not so lonesome Pine

Remember Remember the 5th of November!

The only person to enter Parliament with honest intentions they say, tonight we light fires in memory of Guy Fawkes.

Timber!

Even in the cold and rain forestry work continues, this time in Great Linford Enclosure, where foresters have been thinning out the stands of maturing conifers. Two men with chainsaws and a third in grab armed vehicle, collecting the sawn lengths, made short shrift of the 30 to 40 metre trees which crowd the enclosure.

Rockford Common