Latchmore Brook

 

The forest isn't as uniform as you might imagine, homogeneous blocks of woodland and heath it isn't; although many areas of heath or woodland may share a very similar floral make up, each has it's own distinct aspects and attributes. That's why it's so easy to end up with countless 'favourite' spots. Amberwood and Island Thorns are favourites of mine, they're quite unlike any other woods in the forest; overwhelmingly deciduous, mostly stands of Beech and Oak of varying degrees of spread; walking their myriad tracks and paths is magical, none more so than when following the Latchmore Brooks' bank-side path, and especially as it passes through the stands of Amberwood.  The stands here abouts have a certain air to them, a natural magic that's hard to describe.

Islands Thorns

We've spent our recent Sunday long walks amongst the glorious stands at the north of the forest, the extensive block of woodland created by Islands Thorns, Amberwood, Alderhill and Sloden enclosures and sprawling ancient woodland that surrounds them. What a wonderful tract of forest. It's one of those all too rare places where beyond the occasional aerial intrusion the sounds of modernity are absent, here you can really hear the woodland; quiet yourself and let your senses reach out, layer upon layer of sound will be revealed to you. I recommend the walking here, endless path permutations through splendid woodland with more sights and vistas than you could shake a stick at; what's not to like, so atmospheric here too.

Latchmore Brook

Like the other forest streams Latchmore Brook is showing a lot more gravelly bottom than you'd expect for the time of year; it's not so much the exposed gravel itself, the flow of the forest's waterways fluctuate with the weather, it's rather the scale and duration of the exposures;  a reflection of the continuing dry weather.  That aside, the stands through which the brook travels are, in my opinion, some the best woodland walking of the forest; replete with dells and groves all connected by myriad winding paths, it's woodland to lose yourself in.  

In a rut.

So many deer in the forest right now, more than I can ever remember, their population appears to have mushroomed in recent years. At the moment they're very visible. It's rutting season and throughout the woods the Fallow stags roar and bellow at each other, and occasionally lock antlers in displays of prowess, as they go through their mating rituals. Today I was in Amberwood again and you could hear the bucks bellowing wherever you walked, you could tell they were all around you, all staking their claims and shouting their worth. Throughout the enclosure bucks with small groups of does, bucks with harems and lone bucks show out. The stands they choose to rut in are worn bare and muddy with activity, the bigger the group the more extensive the damage. The rutting stand in the photo is quite a large one, you can see another one behind it, and all through the wood are small rutting platforms where lone bucks call. Usually around these rutting stands are stumps which have become the focus of antler rubbing, being mostly coniferous stumps their bright orange inner punk wood sticks out amongst the muddy stands. It's quite a spectacle out there at the moment.

Pot

As I made my through Amberwood Enclosure, through the fading bracken and over fallen limbs, I passed a toppled tree, and the archaeologist in me just couldn't resist having a look at the root ball and bole. As peered through the hanging roots I spied the shape of human agency in the form of a small pottery sherd. It's was what I'd been hoping to find looking into the root ball, and what I expected I might find. I knew Amberwood had been a site of pottery production during the Romano-British period, specifically in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. I'd found the occasional pottery sherd over the years walking here. A series of Roman kilns had been identified in the area, and excavated after timber extraction through 1969 to 1971. As I looked closer I found 2 more sherds, 1 reasonable sized and 1 fragment, none displayed any diagnostic features, and all I can say is that all were a sandy grey fabrics, the larger sherd and fragment are a sandy dark grey/brown fabric and appear to a have a black slip applied to them, the fragment also appears to be burnished, the small sherd (top and middle) is a sandy light grey fabric, though finer, and may have a thin white slip. I  need to give them a proper clean. Some of the pottery from these kilns may have travelled far across the South of England, although most sherds of Roman Mortaria (mixing/grinding bowls) produced in the New Forest identified on archaeological excavations have been in a fairly limited radius of say, 40 miles. These sherds represent wasters, and I imagine an investigation would show the area covered in a liberal distribution of these type of finds. You'd never know it today, but this area of the forest was once an industrial landscape, years later it's industry of another form which covers the land.