Skanky waters

 

With only a few exceptions the forest streams are running low, and in most cases they're running dry, or at least their flow runs beneath the gravel beds. With an occasional hop, skip and and a jump I could walk extended sections of the gravelly bed of Highland Water this morning, and seeing no running water on my travels. All that remains of the stream are ever decreasing and increasingly murky looking pools of motionless dark cloudy water, surfaces coated in dust, pollen and detritus. Skanky as.

Great Huntley Bank

In the last week we've walked the best part of Highland Water. Todays' section from the New Forest Gate House through Great Huntley Bank to Bolderford Bridge was lovely. Under a blue sky, bathed in dappled light, senses captured by the sights, sounds and smells of spring, we wandered through a wonderful pallet of verdance. Joyful. Still, at the back of your mind you know there'll be a price to pay for our mild, dry and rather agreeable winter/spring, and the degree of gravel on show suggests that without a watery respite payment will be coming due. Succinctly put, it's fecking dry out.

Great Huntley Bank

Great Huntley Bank, a route we used to take far more regularly than we do today, after the New Forest National Park Authority closed off the closest access which was a lay-by on the A35. I can maybe see the argument for doing it, though can't help but feel that the erasure of roadside parking spots, warning notices in other traditional spots and the apparent permanent closure of a number of car parks is shepherding us towards a pay to play future. I'm sure I recall something along those lines being mooted some years back. Anyway. Great Huntley Bank and the length of Highland Water that runs through it are beautiful. Deciduous woodland filled with veteran and ancient trees casting wonderful dappled shade over a verdant floor teeming with life and a favoured haunt of deer, especially during the rut. 

Autumn calling

I can't be the only one feeling it? As if Autumn is here. I know it's July but all my senses are questioning whether it's not autumn already?  Of course I know it can't be, but the forest is doing a bloody good impression. The smells, the sounds, the colour palette, the atmosphere amongst the stands, all suggest that transitional phase between late summer and autumn. It's probably an illusion created by the weather we've been experiencing; though I've long suggested that spring and autumn are extending their ranges, whilst summer and winter are contracted theirs into shorter seasons.

More fallen

I see them with such frequency that I thought I'd grown immune to seeing uprooted, truncated and otherwise slighted trees, I'd become hardened to the inevitable consequences of our erratic weather on the forest's veterans; I haven't though. The face of the forest is changing so rapidly. The trees in the photos above are just a couple of examples, two good sized oaks, one of them a veteran, both stood on the meandering bank of Highland Water not too far from each other, both had subsided and toppled over and into the stream. There were so many fallen or damaged trees, so many innumerable ripped and severed boughs on our walk  through Great Huntley Bank and Brinken Wood this morning; a good number of them large enough to have caused additional collateral to the trees about them as the fell; it was impossible not to be affected by the sight of such carnage.   

After the storm

All through Great Huntley Bank and Camel Green signs of storm Barra were apparent; branches and boughs litter the woodland floor, the canopy is all but empty beyond the usual culprits and I lost count of the trees I saw slighted. I see the aspect of the forest changing in light of the increased winds and weird weather we've experience over recent years, and I can't help but wonder/worry what the forest will look like as climate change continues to bed in. I'm assuming there that the changes are man made or that nature fluctuations are being amplified and exaggerated by human behaviours; behaviours I genuinely don't see changing in the foreseeable future...no matter what the comforting green-washed narratives suggest. I feel these changes viscerally. Still, the forest was lovely today as was our walk; and as with so much in life, you've got to take solace where you can.

Tree skeleton

Traditionally the standard practice was to remove deadwood from the managed enclosures of the New Forest on the grounds of woodland hygiene. They stopped that practice 30 years ago?, I don't know, years back anyway. As a consequence tree skeletons now litter many of the forest's stands, with new recruits gathered to their cause with each storm wind.

Highland Water

Highland Water, Great Huntley Bank.

Great Huntley Bank

Another gorgeous day in the forest. Walking along Highland Water again today, though a few miles down stream as it snakes beside Great Huntley Bank. Autumn marches on and many of the stands through here are almost bare, fall is nearly complete.  We never really got the autumn show of colour we were predicted, the wind and rain arrived at precisely the wrong moment.  Meh though, the forest's always glorious, anything beyond is a bonus cherry on an already magnificent cake. 

Forgotten bridge

No discernible paths lead to or from this forgotten bridge across a backwoods drain.

Camel Green Blossom

We usually see Hawthorn as a hedgerow shrub, regularly controlled and contained by the hedge layer and flail. Or as a manicured and tamed garden feature, like yesterday's Crimson Hawthorn. Out here in the forest though they've no such constraints, and make the most of their freedom, filling the understory with clusters of white flowers, reaching their blooms towards the sky.  You notice that through the year everything has it's moment to shine in the forest. Now it's the Hawthorn's time.

Great Huntley Oak

We visited the Great Huntley Oak this morning, it's always a pleasure to spend time with him. As ever, whatever troubles I bring to him, he's seen them all before, and covid's no different. At over 500 years old or more he's seen it all, he was about for the many plagues of the 16th and 17th centuries and he remembers the Spanish Flu too. Plagues aren't new, they're as old as the hills, we used to think them sent by maleficent Gods and malignant spirits, although it appears in this case, and in one way or another, we've become the maleficent Gods. In the past all we had was superstition and prayer to defend us, though today science gives us the ability to prepare for and mitigate such epidemic and pandemic plagues. I wondered why we hadn't. Even with his hundreds of years of experience the Great Huntley Oak couldn't answer that one.

Highland Water

The streams in the forest rise and fall swiftly in wet weather, quiet now, though you'd be amazed at what the forest streams can move when roused, hefty chunks of trunk and bough can be carried some distance.

Great Huntley

Great Huntley Bank

Bind Runes?

These look like Runes or maybe Bind Runes? I'll have to do some investigating.

Great Huntley Bank bridge

The light and aspect of the forest this morning were just so gorgeous. It was impossible not to be walking along grinning like a fool in awe and wonderment at the magnificence of it all. Uplifting walk. 

Bracken

With the bracken at it's zenith the forest is finally fully transformed. Gone are the wide vistas through the stands, those long lines of sight, the openness. The forest has now closed in on herself, creating myriad hidden spaces, for the most part you can't see more than a few meters around of you, and even in the woods you know well, it's easy to loose track.  The woods are different place when they're like this, full of secret places and magical spaces. Love it.

Highland Water

To my mind, the stretch of Highland Water which runs through Great Huntley Bank, Brinken Wood and Camel Green represents some of the best stream walking in the forest. This section of forest stream is about a mile and a half long, a mix of high cut banks where the Kingfisher can be seen fishing and low bank floodplain where the deer and ponies graze, along the banks gnarly exposed roots keep a tight grip as the trees come down to drink, sometimes they're careless and topple across the stream, and throughout, frequent gravel beaches appear and disappear as the flow  decrees.  It feels wonderfully natural as it meanders wildly through a geography partly of its own creation. And, although much of the Camel Green section was restored in recent years, it too feels natural. I suppose that's because it has been restored to it's natural course. Highland water has run through the landscape for,....I don't know how many years, for ever (relatively of course)?  Throughout the streams environs are the meander scars and withered oxbows created over the centuries of subtle course change which have shaped this river corridor. It's a lovely bit of stream, especially in the dappled light of the stands. That's what really sets it off, the predominantly deciduous ancient woodland through which Highland Water runs, open woodland with occasional clearings created by tree falls, mostly of oak and beech, although with diverse shrub and ground flora communities.  It's a rich environment, perfect for immersive walking. Love it.

Great Huntley Oak

Great Huntley Oak

Flow

It hasn't taken much rain to have the forest streams flowing again. Only a week ago I was thinking how low Highland Water was, it was more bare gravel beds than stream, you could cross it at will for the most part.  Today it was flowing well again, and all of those easy crossings were gone, back to slippery fallen trunks or leaps of faith.