A wrinkled land

The Chase is a mighty diverse landscape, high open chalk grasslands, rolling agricultural land, dramatic wooded valleys and extensive conifer and deciduous woodland can all be found in abundance. It's diversity makes it great walking, sometimes arduous walking, mind. Walks which can take you though all the mentioned environmentally different worlds. The western end of the Chase is a particularly wrinkled and puckered landscape, like a scuffed rug. Walking you move quickly through one environment then another, the landscape's condensed, it's full of suprises.  A good number of the areas narrow valleys and hollows are far too severe for most farming, beyond grazing sheep, so many have been turned over to woodland, particularly forestry. Much of the forestry is predictably coniferous, with their relatively quick return they're a very popular choice, although still a good proportion are deciduous, and of course Hazel coppice is always well represented. Obviously taking it's name from a previous time,  Washer Pit Coppice is now planted with rows of the tall straight Beech, indicative of the deciduous plantations in the area. They may look sterile in their uniformity but they bristle with activity, the naked canopies house a chorus of bird song, groups of Roe Deer watch you from the ridges of the steep slopes, a large yellow butterfly sails drunkenly by, squirrels scurry and all around there's the sounds of movement and activity. And, it must really be spring...I even saw a bumble bee this afternoon; it looked off it's head, mind. You really are hidden away in many of these deeply cut wooded valley. I bet there's a lot of folklore and legend to these parts. This would have been a wild landscape back in the day. Right back in the day, it would a landscape you could easily get disorientated, if you didn't know it. I love it.