Morning along Avon Water

 

Morning along Avon Water.

Rainbow flying high

It's feeling more like autumn every day.

 

Avon Water

Wandering the meandering Avon Water this morning I took a moment to marvel at the streams growing diversity, post restoration. It's genuinely amazing. I remember when the old straight drain Avon Water was all steep cut sides and bare naked gravel bottoms, look at it now, sporting an ever increasing range of aquatic and wetland freshwater flora; and of course all the life that thrive there.

Bluebell

 

So indicative of spring woodland the humble Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta), a dainty drooping beauty which smells as sweet as it looks. There's an open stand of mainly oak alongside the course of the old Brockenhurst to Ringwood line near Osmonds Bushes, it's peppered with Bluebells, the scent as we passed this morning was heavenly. Their presence here indicates that the stand represents a pocket of ancient woodland.

Avon Water

 

Not that long ago Avon Water was the straightest of forest drains. If you didn't remember it, you'd never imagine it.

Water Mint

The scent of Water Mint (Mentha aquatica) fills the air of the forests streams environs; like others of its' genus it's a prolific colonizer and can also be used as a edible herb.

Avon Water

 

Since its' restoration Avon Water, for the most part, has become one of those streams you can only reliably navigate through the dry season. The restoration having slowed the flow, holding water back in the forest. During the wet season the Avons' environs have become a mess of watery hollows and sucking mud, a real quag. Horrible going. During the dry season though, one side of the stream becomes walk-able again with a path that follows the streams' meanders.  However, the other bank remains consistently boggy, a rich and diverse environment of carr, reed and sphagnum beds.  This dry season has been particularly beautiful walking.

Avon Water

 

Comfortable back in its' old meanders, Avon Water is unrecognisable from the straight drain it was forced to be. Returning the stream to its' former wandering course is certainly having the desired affect, the area is definitely much wetter and lusher.  It'll take time to fully restore the environs of Avon Water to what they must have been, this is promising though.

Carr wood

A lush sea of greens, the carr woodland running along side the restored length of Avon Water above Wootton Bridge is something to behold. They exert an allure over you, the call of the primeval maybe. We know from environmental archaeology that this type of environment would've been well known to our prehistoric ancestors, a favoured landscape as rich source of resource opportunities. We also know that these wet places were sacred to our ancestors through the numerous ritually deposited artefacts and burials associated with them. I think I'm going to have to go for an explore.

Avon Water

 

A meandering Avon Water.

Avon Water

Along the bank of Avon Water this morning.

Holmsley line

The Brockenhurst to Wimborne line was completed in 1847 and closed to passengers in May 1964 as part of the Beeching cuts. It must've been a lovely journey, with wonderful views throughout, no matter the season or weather. It's weird to think that up until the 1960's we had a better mass transit system than we do today. 

Orchids

In a wet corner of a lowland meadow near Ossemsley ford on Avon Water, Southern Marsh orchids (Dactylorhiza praetermissa) are just beginning to burst forth and open. If you fancy a challenge, there are 15 species of wild orchid in the New Forest to spot between now and Autumn. On your marks!

Avon Water

A straightened section of Avon Water near it's source on Stony Moors.

Frying tonight

Fry basking in the warm spring sun in one of the head water rivulettes of Avon Water in Holmsley enclosure. I think they're Brown/Sea Trout (Salmo trutta) fry, don't hold to that though. These fish born in the headwaters of small streams have an interesting life journey, some remain in the streams of their birth, others venture out into the sea where they morph into Sea Trout, returning to their stream of birth to spawn and die. Bonus point if you get the title reference 'frying tonight'.

Avon Water

 

Avon Water used to be a straightened drain until restored to it's previous course in the mid twenty teens. Now nearly a decade on the stream corridor is well on the way to returning to bog woodland, impassable without wellies through the wetter seasons and little better during the rest of the year; all signs of it's Victorian past have been erased, including the navigable path. It's weird, the forest streams played a major part in our children's childhood, we've got hundreds of photos and video clips along with countless memories of days spent on their banks; though through the restoration process many of those much loved spots we frequented now exist only in memory and media.

Avon Water

You'd never imagine that as recently as 2017 Avon Water was a broad straightened deep cut stream; now it's definitely one of the forest's stream restoration projects that has most quickly born results; today Avon Water is completely unrecognisable from the stream and landscape it was. A part of me embraces the change, positive as it is, although another part of me laments the loss of a loved stream side walk; nowadays at this time of year even defining where the stream flows is problematic, and even in the drier season the re-establishing carr/bog woodland environment remains soft and wet underfoot; though today with some judicious hops, skips and jumps, some nimble footwork across lain branches and sticks, and a bit of occasional clambering, a sort of stream side walk route was negotiable. Although 'walking' didn't really describe our outing this morning; still, nice out mind.

Early blossom

I spied my first Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) blossom of the year on the bank of Avon Water near Ossemsley Ford; ’twas the only I saw too, and there were plenty of Blackthorn around; just a handful of flowers brightening a solitary branch. Flowering way before the pollinators take flight, Blackthorn being hermaphrodites, can please themselves. 

Wet today

Man, it's bloody wet out in the forest at the moment. To clumsily paraphrase Ripping Yarn's Eric Olthwaite, 'forest's wet today, Mother, even the dry bits are wet'. Avon Water must be in the running for the most extensively restored stream in the forest; from the A35 to the base of Boundway Hill, the stream has been returned to it's pre-Victorian course; and the slowing of the flow has had the desired effect, water is being held back in the forest longer, subsequently the woodland which fringes Avon Water are becoming increasingly waterlogged, to the point of becoming seasonally impassable...especially after a period of rain. It's at times like these that I'm reminded what a forbidding landscape the New Forest must have been to the traveller in the past.

Avon Water crater

When they restored this section of Avon Water between Holmsley station and Wootton Bridge, the new course of the stream cut through what I believe to be a Second World War bomb crater (it exhibits all the characteristics and is adjacent to the old railway line, which would've been a wartime target). The restoration has brought the old bomb crater to life. The crater used to be seasonally wet, though for the most part quite the dank lifeless hole, now it's part of a rich and verdant developing wetland/carr woodland environment.  You'd be surprised at how many World War Two bomb craters pock the forest, not all of them the result of the enemy either.