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

Silly season

Where the edible mushroom season this year was not as fruitful or as long as in years past; with an early crop of Ceps curtailed by unseasonably dry weather, Hedgehogs too shone brightly yet faded fast, whilst other mushroom species commonly found were far fewer in number. The change to damp weather, and the frosts holding off, have produced a late blooming of psilocybe semilanceata, the Liberty Cap or Magic Mushroom. Spy Holms is carpeted in little groups of these hallucinogenic mushroom.

Spindle Tree

The shrub like Spindle Tree Euonymus is not common in the forest although along a section of Avon Water it appears to have taken a foot hold, with several bushes adding bright colour to the developing mix of autumn tints. Care should be taken as poison is present throughout the plant, although it's the berries which most often cause harm.