You might look at everyday items in a different light after this episode, as we hear best-selling author and Woodland Trust ambassador, Jonathan Drori CBE, reveal some of the fascinating things we make with plants. From the well-known coffee bean to the tree bark that's used in spacecraft, he shares some of the amazing relationships between familiar objects and the natural world as we meet beneath a beautiful beech tree on Parliament Hill in London.

These stories and more feature in Jonathan's latest book, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, which aims to spark an interest in nature for younger readers. He explains how discovering the wonder of nature in a fun, exciting way as a child can inspire a lifelong connection, just as it did for him. We also discover why fruit is sweet, the value of the mandrake plant, how beech is thought to resist lightning and more.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Jonathan Drori CBE, is a man of many talents. He's a trustee of the Eden Project and of Kew Gardens, a member of the Royal Institution, a man who used to be a senior commissioning editor at the BBC, and he's also an ambassador for the Woodland Trust and a best-selling author of books such as Around the World in 80 Trees and his latest, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, a book for younger people about the plants in their lives and the things they make which are all around them. And whereas these podcasts often take me on long journeys, this time, well, it's just a hop, skip and a jump away in London at Parliament Hill, where we met to talk about his book and the things we didn't know about the stuff around us all. Right, we are... it's a bit windy right here. It actually sounds windier than it is, but we are in Parliament Hill, or thereabouts, with Jonathan Drori, who has written the stuff that stuff is made of, and is also a big noise, essentially, in the Woodland Trust itself, of which we can talk lots about. But we're standing by a beech tree. So, Jonathan, why did you write this book?

Jonathan: I wanted to do something that would make kids kind of interested in the natural environment. Starting with the things they're interested in, which are kind of ice cream and chocolate and sport and dinosaurs and all that kind of thing. And use their own interests to sort of spark other interests in nature, in trees and plants, and also actually in history and folklore and culture, which are all sort of bound up with those things. One of the things I've tried to do with the book is to explain things from the plant's point of view as well as from a human point of view. So there are all these qualities that we desire plants for, whether that's sort of sweet things to eat or things to build with or things to make musical instruments out of. And they're all in the book and that's fine. But I've also tried to explain, you know, why has bamboo evolved in the way that it has? And why has a beech tree evolved the way it has? Why does chocolate have sweet mush around the seeds? You know, why do the grasses feed us? Why is sugar cane sweet? And why do we love it?

Adam: And so through this book, you're trying to attempt to do that by explaining stuff like tea and chocolate, indeed, where it comes from.

Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, there are 30 different species that I deal with in the book. And on the right-hand side of the page, there's a whole lot of information about the way that the plant grows, how it's cultivated, the relationships that it has with other plants, with the little critters that might pollinate it or disperse the seeds. And on the left-hand side, there's a whole lot of stories about the plant, all kinds of kind of fascinating facts and really about the human relationships with that plant.

Adam: Do you think we have lost that connection with the plants around us. So that this sort of stuff might have been really obvious a few generations ago or not.

Jonathan: *laughs* A leading question, m'lud! Yes, I mean, you know, with urban living and things being in packets at the supermarket, you know, we perhaps don't think very much about where the basic materials for our existence come from, whether it's things we eat or things we build with or things that we just sort of like looking at and playing with.

Adam: Is it important to know those connections? I mean, you as someone who likes nature, I can understand why you might feel that's important. But is it important for us all to rebuild that connection?

Jonathan: I think that my love and interest in nature came from my parents, actually, at the time, dragging me around Kew Gardens and Richmond Park and telling me stories about the trees and plants that were growing there. And they did that in such a way that I would be interested because they knew who I was and so they found the things that would sort of excite me. And I think I want to do the same for young people so that they grow up with a kind of interest and admiration and some sort of understanding of nature. But you can't sort of ram it down people's throats. It needs to be fun.

Adam: Yeah. But why is that important? I understand that's what you want to do, but why is it important?

Jonathan: Well, we've only got one planet. And if we don't look after it, then, you know, our lives and livelihoods are doomed. So that's the sort of very basic reason. And also we are part of nature, so just, not having an understanding or rejecting nature is kind of rejecting part of ourselves, I think.

Adam: So it's a soft environmental message here. And that's also seems to me important because, well, from my perspective anyway, it feels like a lot of environmental charities and environmentally minded people push a sort of narrative, the world could end, it's all a disaster. And actually, I worry that, although it's well-meaning, it might turn people off. Now that isn't what you're doing with this.

Jonathan: No, there's none of that in the book, none of it at all. What I've tried to do is to excite people about the stories of pollination, of the little critters that live in and around plants, the relationships that the plants have with other plants and so on in the environment, and make that sort of exciting and fun and interesting enough that people will just say, say to themselves, that's kind of something that's worth protecting. Maybe they won't think that for 10 or 15 years.

Adam: There's lots of interesting stories here. I think the one that really struck me, I think, was about vanilla. So vanilla, obviously, people use it in cooking, they might use essence of it or whatever. But am I right in saying, you think it's in the book, you actually go, there was a boy, and you name this boy... oh sorry is that a bird I can hear? *laughs* sorry!

Jonathan: It's the parakeets.

Adam: Oh it's the parakeets, I thought there was a squeaky wheel behind me! No no. All right, parakeets in the background. A named boy who taught the world how to pollinate vanilla. Tell me that story.

Jonathan: Yes, it was an amazing story actually about vanilla that in about the sort of 1840s, when they brought vanilla plants over from Mexico where they were native, to Africa where they wanted the plantations to grow and the little bee that pollinates vanilla didn't really travel. And so they had to find something else that would pollinate the vanilla plants so that the vanilla plants would propagate and grow. And sadly, they couldn't find any insect that would do that. No local insects would do this in Africa or outside Mexico. So all the vanilla plants had to be pollinated by hand. And it was a 12-year-old boy, Edmond Albius, who worked out how to do this. And by basically sort of cutting a bit of membrane and then squidging the two bits together and right to this present day, that's the way that vanilla is pollinated, by hand. And that's why it's so expensive.

Adam: It's amazing, isn't it? Apart from the vanilla story, do any others stand out in your mind? Is there ones your favourites?

Jonathan: Oh, it's like asking your favourite children, isn't it? I mean, there are all sorts of things in there that I notice when I talk to young people, to sort of eight, nine-year-olds, they sort of come alive. Those who've read the Hogwarts stories and Harry Potter, they're amazed to discover that mandrake is actually a real plant. And of course, mandrake used to be very, very valuable because it was one of the very few plants that could be used as an anaesthetic. And people used to, back in the Roman days, they used to mix it with wine and then sort of do minor operations and things. Don't try this at home! It's actually a real plant. It grows somewhat, I've seen this in this country, but it grows in Italy quite well and it has these rather sort of mind-altering attributes to it, which are a bit odd.

Adam: So it might be used by people who want that sort of druggy effect, but does it have any other purpose?

Jonathan: Well, not now, but it was an anaesthetic, and anaesthetics were so sort of unlikely, you know, if you think about it, you take something and it makes the pain go away, that people associated the plant with witchcraft, especially as it gave you the impression of flying. And so a plant that could alter your outlook and the way that you see the world so profoundly, and the way you perceive it so profoundly, was associated with witchcraft. And people made all sorts of stories about the mandrakes that they, that when you pulled it out of the ground, they said, that you could hear it scream because sometimes the roots look a bit like a person, especially with a bit of judicious whittling. And so people would say you've got to get a dog, tie the dog to the mandrake root and then kick the dog or throw it some food and it pulls it out. And the scream, they said, of a mandrake root could make you, could kill you.

Adam: And weren't they doing that to stop people, scaring people away from getting their valuable mandrake?

Jonathan: That's right. It was such a valuable plant that the ideal thing to do would be to put these superstitions around, these notions around, so people wouldn't pull them out, because it's very valuable.

Adam: Hippy dragon sort of thing. Well, look, we are here in London, a park in London, a beautiful park. But you've taken me to one of the few trees that actually appears in the book, because so many of the, well, I think almost all the trees really, you wouldn't find in the UK, is that right?

Jonathan: Well, you can certainly find eucalyptus. You can, you know, it's not a native, but you can find them here. And any other trees that are in there, you'd certainly find in botanic gardens. And there are fir trees, Christmas trees in there as well. But here we are by a lovely, lovely beech. And I mean, there are lots of reasons I love beech trees. In the book, one of the reasons that it's in there is because beech wood is made for, is used for veneer and it's used for making furniture and so on in a sustainable way, so it's a very pleasing wood.

Adam: And why is it good for furniture then?

Jonathan: It's stable, it doesn't shrink too much.

Adam: Is it bendable, is it one of those trees that you can...

Jonathan: Yeah and you can sort of use steam to bend it into the shapes that you want. And there are these fantastic machines that make veneer by sort of peeling off a kind of onion ring, rotating the trunk and then sort of peeling off the wood underneath to make veneer. As I say, using sustainable beech forests. But one of the things that I love about the beech is the link with superstition because in Germany, and actually in quite a few countries in Europe, there's this saying that lightning never strikes a beech tree. And in actual fact, lightning strikes beech trees just as often as any other trees that are of similar height. But beech trees seem to survive. And the reason they survive is because of this wonderfully smooth bark. The bark continually renews itself, unlike other trees. And so you've got a layer that is sloughing off all the time and leaving this very smooth bark. And that smoothness means that during wet weather, during a storm, the outside of the tree has a continuous film of water on it. It's wet all the way and that can act as a lightning conductor, whereas the craggy old oak, that has dry bits in it and so the electricity from a lightning strike is diverted through the middle of the tree and would blow it asunder. So the beech tree can survive.

Adam: Fantastic. Talking about the bark on the tree, one of the other things I spotted in your book was, I think it's cork trees and how the bark of that is special in the way we use it, but also in the way that the tree regenerates, just explain a bit about that.

Jonathan: Yes, I mean, most trees, if you sort of cut a whole ring around the tree, it'll die. But cork actually regenerates itself. So you can harvest the cork every 10, 12 years or so. And cork forests in the Iberian Peninsula, in Portugal and in Spain have a fantastic sort of ecosystem around them. The lynx and wild eagles and all sorts of wonderful things that live in and around. And also pigs go rooting for the for the acorns. And that ecosystem is a very important one. And it depends on us all using cork. So don't use plastic cork.

Adam: Right. Oh, I was going to say, unfortunately, a lot of wines now have plastic.

Jonathan: Try and go to the ones which are made out of proper traditional cork. And you're doing the planet a service by doing that. Another interesting thing about cork is that it's a fantastic insulator and it's actually used in the nose cones of spacecraft.

Adam: So why? That is, I did read that and that was extraordinary that something as advanced as a spacecraft would be using cork. It seems unbelievable.

Jonathan: Well, you know, millions of years of evolution have given the cork oak this way of resisting fire. So it's got tiny, tiny air pockets, minuscule microscopic air pockets in a non-flammable kind of medium. And that is an amazing insulator. And it's light, it chars on the outside and then flames just can't get through.

Adam: And it's soundproofing isn't it?

Jonathan: Yes, it's used in recording studios.

Adam: Yes. Well, when I was 17, I took a fancy to corking my whole bedroom in cork tiles, which looked terrible to be honest *laughs*. It took my father years to pry it off the wall again.

Jonathan: Was that in the seventies perhaps?

Adam: Yes exactly. It was trendy then for a short period.

Jonathan: Roman women used to wear cork-soled sandals, which you can still get, but so they didn't sort of walk in the poo and whatnot. But they're very good, very light, very insulating.

Adam: One of the ones I suppose we should talk about, interesting, is cotton, because it has an interesting background, a natural background, but also one, of course, deeply connected with slavery and everything.

Jonathan: So, you know, it was used in... South America among the Aztecs and so on to make armour actually. They made very, very thick cotton twill that they used as armour. And then it became fabulously valuable in the sort of 17th, 18th century especially, as a textile for our clothing. And unfortunately, as you say, it's got this link with slavery along with sugarcane and tobacco, these were the big crops that people grew, slave owners grew, in the Caribbean and in the southern states of North America, and then made the finished products in Britain that were then sold all over the world.

Adam: And I mean, you have some nice, lovely illustrations here of actually the cotton on the plant and it's a puffball. It doesn't look real, actually.

Jonathan: It's bonkers! It's an absolutely bonkers plant.

Adam: Yes but didn't people, when they first saw it, thought they were actually little sheep or something?

Jonathan: Yes *laughs* Well, the writers of the time, you know, they were all sort of knew that they would get a big audience if they made up some stuff so I'm not sure whether they really believed it. But certainly there was a textbook of the, I think it was the 17th century or early or late 16th century, where they sort of wrote, had diagrams of, because they thought it must be some kind of wool, they had diagrams showing little tiny sheep at the end of twigs on the plant *laughs* which supposedly would, you know, sort of the twigs would reach the ground in the evening and then the little sheep would, I don't know, wander off or something.

Adam: No one actually ever believed this, you're saying?

Jonathan: Well, I mean, no, well, I think it was created as a spin, but I think a lot of people did believe it, actually, in the same way that they believed in sea monsters and all those sort of naval stories that were brought back. And it was a very, yes, people believed all sorts of kind of nonsense and about where cotton came from. But the plant itself is very real and quite an odd one because you have these lovely sort of pale creamy flowers. It's sort of quite big, the size of a walnut kind of thing, you know. And then you get the seed pod which is absolutely bursting with all the fibre inside and the fibre's there to help the seeds carry on the wind. That's what the plant wants it for. But these burst open with this sort of great wodge of, I suppose, it looks like cotton wool. And it pretty much is cotton wool. And then the seeds are removed in a process called ginning. And the fibre that's left is then spun into thread.

Adam: Amazing story. The last one I suppose I really want to talk about is something you started with saying, you know, engaging younger people in things they know like chocolate. Chocolate doesn't come from Tesco or Sainsbury's, it comes from the cacao plant. Now, tell me a bit about that, but specifically what surprised me, if I remember this correctly, you said the chocolate we know was invented in England, is that right?

Jonathan: Well, the chocolate bar was invented by Fry back in the middle of the 19th century. And before that, people would have chocolate drinks, which were quite popular, especially at the time when coffee houses were very sort of blokey places.

Adam: This is about the 1800s, is it?

Jonathan: Yeah. Coffee houses were places where, you know, men would go.

Adam: Yeah, they were they were risky places, they were sort of like pubs almost, you know, like...

Jonathan: Yes, whereas families and women would go to chocolate houses. And some of those chocolate houses then became, you know, well-known clubs in London around Pall Mall and so on. They, but chocolate originally from Central America was a drink that would be taken quite bitter, mixed with maize, very, very nourishing, and was sometimes coloured with red dye, sort of symbolizing blood. And it was part of kind of rituals that they had where they, some of them were quite unpleasant rituals actually and then when it came, when chocolate came through the Spanish to Europe in the sort of 16th century, people immediately started adding sugar and milk and things to it, made it a lot more palatable.

Adam: Right. So it wasn't just the chocolate bar, so we really made it into the sweet drink that everyone knows. Maybe not England, but Europe.

Jonathan: Yes, and the and the chocolate bar was, that started in Britain. That was a British thing, with Fry and I think you can still get Frys chocolate?

Adam: Yeah, I was going to say, I do see it every now and then. It's not as popular as Cadbury's and all the others, but one does still see it.

Jonathan: You know, if you think about it from the plant's point of view, the reason that it's got this amazing fruit, which is about the size of a junior rugby ball, that grows very peculiarly on the stem of the plant, on the tree trunk, the reason it's got this amazing fruit is so that it can find something to be attracted to it that will disperse the seeds. That's why fruit is sweet. And the original thing that dispersed these fruit were probably sort of large, large mammals, which may not be around anymore. But the fruit is, the seeds are in this sort of sweet mush inside the cocoa pod. But your sort of big mammal would come along and gulp the whole thing down because it's lovely and sweet and then poo out the seeds somewhere else or spit them out because the seeds themselves are very bitter. And with coffee and chocolate and quite a few other things like apples even, the seeds are very bitter but the actual fruit is lovely and sweet. And the reason for that is so that something gobbles it but doesn't chew up the seeds. And then those get either spat out or pooed out together with a bit of fertiliser.

Adam: Right, amazing. And also, I mean, we've talked a bit about the social aspects of a lot of these plants. Chocolate itself had a huge social impact, wasn't it? It was seen as sort of an alternative, wasn't it, to alcohol and sort of bringing people into the fold of the righteous living and away from terrible drinks.

Jonathan: Yes, yeah, and it's a much gentler drink than coffee, which would have been quite a strong stimulant. Chocolate also has stimulants in it, but it's a bit more gentle. Yeah.

Adam: So it's an interesting book. I know this is part of something very important in your life about reconnecting with nature and spreading that message. Are you optimistic that things are looking up in that way, that people are engaging more?

Jonathan: I think, you know, I could make an argument for being pessimistic or optimistic, depending on the day, actually. But I do notice that young people have a kind of care for the environment that seems to be growing. And I think that's for obvious reasons, that they see it as their future. I'd say, essentially, I'm an optimist. And when you see plants growing and think about, the fact that they've been growing for zillions of years and will be growing for zillions of years, that is a sort of kind of optimistic thing. I think that young people are much more caring of the environment and sort of interested or I would say open to being interested. So if you kind of open their eyes to things, they're genuinely keen to know more and to do something. So all these schools projects that there are, all these things that the Woodland Trust actually does with schools are very, very valuable because I think with a lot of young people it just needs a little bit of a nudge and they're quite willing to go in a good direction.

Adam: That's a great note to end on and we've, I was worried this morning it looked like it would pour down but we've been spared that. So Jon, thank you very much.

Jonathan: Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of 5 minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special. Or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to [email protected] and we look forward to hearing from you.

Join us at Bradgate Park in Leicester with Jules Acton, author, former podcast guest and Trust ambassador, while our regular host Adam enjoys a summer holiday. We meet senior park ranger Matt who gives us a tour as he explains his role in caring for the site and its amazing trees. We've come to the park to see one in particular: a magnificent 830-year-old oak. It's in the running for Tree of the Year 2025. This year's contest celebrates our cultural connections with trees, shining a light on those that are local landmarks, sources of passion, inspiration and creativity. Find out what makes Bradgate Park's oldest oak special and vote for your favourite by 19 September.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Jules: Good morning. I'm Jules Acton. I'm an ambassador for the Woodland Trust. I've been in this job for 10 years this month and it's been a fantastic 10 years. I've loved every day because I get to meet some amazing trees and woods and even more than that, I also get to meet lots of amazing people who love trees and woods and who are inspired by them. So Woodland Trust members, other supporters, staff and volunteers. And I think one of the reasons people love trees so much is not just for the fact they provide all the wonderful services they they store our carbon, they provide fresh air, they can help filter pollution. But they're also absolutely entwined in our culture. And that's been taking place over hundreds and thousands of years. So our, particularly our native tree species tree species are absolutely embedded in our culture, and every old tree has a story to tell. Now, the reason we're here today is that we're going to talk about Tree of the Year and the theme of the Tree of the Year is culture and the way trees are embedded in culture. Ten magnificent trees have been chosen by a panel of experts. Each has a wonderful story to tell, and members of the public can go and vote for their favourite tree on the Woodland Trust website.

We are here in Bradgate Park car park. It is a golden morning and we're surrounded by trees. I can see oak trees, hawthorns, birches, hazels. It's absolutely gorgeous with the dappled sunlight falling down on us through the leaves. We're here to meet a particularly special tree. It's Bradgate Park's oldest oak tree, and it's about 20 minutes walk from the car park. So I see my colleague Natasha. She's over there waiting at the edge of the car park, waiting for Matt. Hello Natasha.

Natasha: Hello. Ohh hi!

Jules: Can you tell us a bit about your role, Natasha and what you do at the Woodland Trust?

Natasha: Yeah, I'm a social media officer, so I just help create and schedule all social media content, jump on whenever there's an opportunity like today.

Jules: And today you're going to be helping with the recording.

Natasha: Yeah, getting a few clips behind the scenes of how we record the podcast so we can share that and a few bits for our website as well and YouTube.

Jules: Thanks Natasha. Now I think we have just seen somebody drive up who might well be Matt. He's he's appeared in a very groovy looking buggy. And here we go. I believe this is Matt. Hello.

Matt: Good morning, Jules.

Jules: Hello, Matt, hi, lovely to meet you.

Matt: Nice to meet you. Welcome to Bradgate Park.

Jules: Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about your role, Matt?

Matt: So yeah so I've I've worked at Bradgate Park for just over 20 years now and main sort of roles on on the site are woodland management and caring for the ancient trees that we've got that that are of European importance. And I also get quite involved with the drystone walls and repairing them. I lead a a group of volunteers on a Thursday and as we go across the site, I'm sure I can show you some of the work that we've been doing.

Jules: Oh brilliant, and you're going to particularly show us a very special tree, I believe.

Matt: Yes, I believe we might be able to find that. Yeah, the tree is approximately 830 years old. It predates the Magna Carta and I'd certainly like to take you to the tree and tell you a bit more about it.

Jules: All right. We're just getting ready to go and all around us are people enjoying the park, there are some people walking up hills. There are lots of dogs. There's one very cute little brown dog that's having a little dip in, in a little stream, a little brook, really at the edge of the park and it's already quite a warm day, so I think it's having a nice little cool down.

We're back en route towards the special tree with the beautiful drystone wall to our right and across to the left are, well there's a tree, there's a plantation, and then there's also a sort of a bit of a wood pasture environment would you call it Matt, with some native trees dotted around in the landscape?

Matt: Yeah, very much so. So this is Hallgates Valley. We're looking across to Dale Spinney. The park itself is 830 acres, of which spinneys represent about 10% of the parkland area, so it's quite a large proportion. All the spinneys were planted on the, on the hilltops across the park, that's that's not just by chance. And they were created around about 1830s-40s by the 6th early of Stamford and and now we see the spinneys that we've got here today so you've got quite a mature, mature standard trees. Quite a lot are softwood, but then we've got a mixture of hardwoods in there. We certainly replant hardwoods in the spinneys.

Jules: How would you define a spinney as opposed to, you know, other kinds of woods?

Matt: Nice easy question *laughs*. I would I would say you've obviously got different names of woodlands and you know we're, we're, we're in Charnwood Forest, but a a forest isn't just trees, it's clearings. And I would say a copse is a small woodland. I would say the spinney is is probably like slightly larger than that and then you go up towards a wood. I could be totally wrong! *both laugh*

Jules: I like it though. So Matt you say, you've you've been here 20 years.

Matt: Yeah, 22.

Jules: 22. So you obviously love it. And what is it that keeps you here?

Matt: I was born in Leicester and came here as a young child playing and you know to end up working here as a job, it's certainly a nice place to be coming to and huge, beautiful surroundings, fresh air and and then I've I've just got a real passion for particularly the a lot of the heritage crafts that we keep alive on the estate. So yes, we go down and we manage the woodlands, but we're actually carrying out coppicing operations and that, they go back to the Stone Age and and then other work on the site for instance drystone walling, which we're approaching a gap now that we've been repairing and is obviously another heritage craft, and for me, I I just think it's really important that we're passing on these skills, heritage crafts on to the next sort of generation.

Jules: That that's brilliant. And do you do you train sort of volunteers or or is it staff members in in this kind of thing?

Matt: I've trained up to Level 2 in walling. That's something I I went up to Derbyshire to do. We've actually got another chap on site now, Leon. He's, he was in the armed forces and and and Leon is doing his levels in walling as well. I believe he's already got Level 1 and 2. He's working towards his 3, we might be able to pop and see him in a bit, but I guess the focus should be trees today *laughs*.

Jules: Yeah, well if we have time, that'd be great. See how we go.

Matt: This is certainly a large gap of wall that we've been doing on the estate. We've got 17 miles of drystone wall to maintain. The deer park itself goes back to 1241, but it's, the boundaries changed slightly over over the years and the largest extent of the deer park was probably around about 1550 and that would have, certain parts of the boundary are drystone wall and and that's obviously what what we're left with today and we need to maintain that. Not only does it keep the deer inside the park, which is obviously beneficial for a deer park, it's fantastic habitat for various, you know, sort of reptiles to live in and adders, grass snakes, things like that.

Jules: Fantastic, so we're looking at at one of the drystone walls and it's I'd say about shoulder height, would you say and it's a grey sort of almost sort of slaty looking stone actually, do you, can you tell us what kind of the stone it is?

Matt: Yeah so on on this side of the park, it's it's it's it's a little bit more slaty towards Newtown Linford, that's that's more of a granite, the walling that we do on the, that we we do on the park is is called random coursed walling. So yes, as we build the wall up, you start with the larger stones at the bottom and as the as the wall tapers up, it angles in, that's called the batter of the wall, you can see the frame we've got and that that we're working to, we've got the building lines in. So this one is 80 centimetres at the bottom, tapering up to 40 centimetres at the top. Originally this was actually a lime mortar wall and a lot of walls on the park are lime mortar, but it is possible to rebuild dry, but we do a mix a mixture of both on the estate.

Jules: That's great and it's just lovely to see these heritage practices being kept alive and you mentioned the coppicing as well, which is absolutely very much part of woodland culture going back centuries. I believe it goes back to the Vikings, maybe even earlier, I don't know if you know anything about the history of it, Matt?

Matt: Yeah, well, certainly the Stone Age coppicing going back, going back to the Stone Age, it's the process of cutting the tree down to ground level. Not all trees will coppice, certainly oak will. That's where Copt Oak gets the name from, coppiced oak. Hazel is the primary tree species that we are coppicing, certainly in Swithland Woods and we've got a management plan in place. We've we've just come to the end of a 10-year management plan that was supported by, there's a lady called Liz Sharkey who comes up with a great plan for us. We're just starting in, in November will be the next 10-year plan and the intention of that is to create the most diverse habitat that Swithland Woods is and it will create a mosaic of habitats, different age stands within the structure of the woodland and and part of that will be coppicing rotation and that will open up and the the the floor of the woodland, let light in and that will benefit bluebells and wood anemone and all the related bird species and invertebrates.

Jules: This is all music to our Woodland Trust ears. Thank you, Matt. Shall we continue on our little tour?

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will turn this very loud... *banging*

Jules: *laughs* I'm not actually sure how to get out the car, but ohh, OK, yeah, yeah. Natasha's on it. Thanks Natasha. OK, so we are walking up to not the tree we're here to see, but we couldn't resist this one because it's really special and it's a gnarly oak tree, kind of growing out of what looks like a big craggy load of rocks. Yeah, Matt, could you tell us a bit more about this tree?

Matt: Yes, I can. So it's English oak and some of the, it's growing out of granite and some of the rocks on the park are actually some of the oldest rocks, certainly in Britain and and the world, 560-million-year-old rocks that we've got on the park and it's all part part of the designation, actually, of the park, it's a SSSI, geological interest in the park and also the veteran trees are also part of that designation and we have just become a National Nature Reserve as well, Bradgate Park.

Jules: Well, congratulations! Could you just explain the SSSI to us just so people understand what the abbreviation means?

Matt: It's a Site of Special Scientific Interest, so there's many layers to Bradgate Park, people might just want to come have a nice walk, enjoy the views, and people that might be more interested in the geology of the park, so we get a lot of people that are coming out and looking at the rocks and looking for fossils and they're able to from that age, the rocks on the park and then other designations that we've got are related to the ancient trees and and that all forms a a bigger picture that makes the park so important that it has to be protected.

Jules: Fantastic. And one of the things that I've just noticed on both this very old oak tree and also on the rocks are, there's a lot of lichens. They're gorgeous. So they're sort of just splattered with them, some of them just look like, like, little sort of paint splats, don't they? They are different colours, we've got white ones, green ones on the rocks, I'm looking at, sort of greyish ones. Some are crusty, some are very flat, which is I think the nature of lichens. Do you know much about the lichens?

Matt: I certainly know that we need to keep the lichens exposed to the sunlight, so we have to clear bracken so they're not getting shaded out. They take a long time to form and I certainly know that they need good clean air. So that is a good sign, if you're seeing lichens, you're in a good place as a human being.

Jules: Yeah, absolutely. And and one of the things about oak trees as well is because they, they're long-lived trees, they provide particularly important habitat for lichens, cause some, many lichens are really, really slow growing, so they need a very slow, you know, stable habitat, so whether it be the rocks or or the very old tree and you'll get different species associated with the different environments as well.

Matt: Yeah, exactly right. And and you can see as well as the being lichens on the rock, you look up into the oak tree and in to the, up the, into the crown of the tree and we are seeing lichens on on the oak tree.

Jules: Yeah. Aed one of the other things about lichens is that they are also embedded in our culture as well, so we use them to to make dyes, some people cook with them, so again, a bit like bit like the oak trees and and other native trees, they're really entwined in our cultural history. This isn't the tree we're here to see, but it's absolutely marvellous! So I, gosh, I hope this becomes, goes on the Tree of the Year shortlist at some point because it deserves it!

Matt: Well, it's nice to have more than one entry.

Jules: Yeah, that would be good, wouldn't it?

Matt: I guess it would in in increase the chances of winning, but seeing as it's the first time you've come to the park, Jules, I thought you may as well see this.

Jules: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love it. It looks quite elephantine from this, elephantine I should say, from this angle with this sort of like this great, long limb sticking out, it's almost like a trunk isn't it and up into the into the blue.

Matt: It certainly is, and I think that's certainly going to be the word of the day. I'm not, I'm not certainly going to try and trump that!

Jules: OK, yeah, let's, let's, let's try and use it again, in the next stop! *both laugh* OK. We're going back to the car now the the buggy, the T, TVA. No, the, what is it?

Matt: The ATV *both laugh* As we go back towards the ATV, we can see a absolutely stunning tower on a hill. It's gorgeous. It's kind of like, well it looks like it's in a fairytale to me. Could you tell us a bit about that?

Matt: So Old John Tower was, they started building it 1784 and and it is a folly and it was somewhere that the Greys, the owners, the Earls of Stamford could entertain guests and around the base of the tower, the rear is the remnants of an old racetrack, at the side of the tower, there's an old stable block and the Greys were certainly great horse fanciers and they entered racehorses into various events and along the the the old racetrack there's still remnants of old furlong markers and they were able to entertain the guests, stand up on the the roof of the of the tower and get an idea of of how good the how well the horses were performing.

Jules: Brilliant. And and the the Greys being the family of Lady Jane Grey, is that right?

Matt: Yes, that's right yeah.

Jules: OK. So it's it's absolutely stunning. It looks like the sort of, yeah, if you're drawing a scene in a fairytale, you'd be drawing a little turrety round tower on top of a hill, wouldn't you? And there'd be probably Rapunzel at the top, letting down her hair. On this occasion we've got a, on this occasion we've got a a very fit looking person who's just run a ring around the bottom of the tower and is now running towards us, obviously making use of this wonderful environment to to keep up their fantastic fitness. Right. OK. Now we are going back to the vehicle. And I think is next stop the the tree, our destination?

Matt: Yes it certainly is.

Jules: OK, OK, brilliant. I think I've actually worked out how to get in this time, which is ohh no, Matt's letting me in, thank you, what a gent, thank you. Right, we are now out of the vehicle and we are walking towards the special tree. And how long, how much of a walk is it from here?

Matt: So I can see it already and I'd say we're only about 200 yards away from it.

Jules: *laughs* Ohh, I still haven't seen it!

Matt: I'm I'm I'm deliberately walking in a way that it's going to appear.

Jules: Oh he's hiding it from us.

Matt: Yeah. There we go, fallow deer.

Jules: Ohh, there's ohh my goodness two fallow deer. The beautiful spotty backs, sort of trotting away. And then they've stopped and have given, they're looking at us. They're not too shy, actually are they?

Matt: No, no, they're not.

Jules: They look just like double Bambi. They're very beautiful.

Matt: You'll you'll you'll notice on all the trees, and there's about a dozen smaller oak trees that we planted, and these are about 30 years old now. Again, you can see how we've we've literally topped the smaller trees and and that's because we don't want to leave these trees just to get huge a. and maidens and straight and tall. So we want these to be stunted and more open grown. And so we've cut the tops off and and thinned them slightly. And then, again, we're hoping that that will make them longer lived.

Jules: Yeah, yeah. And of course, the oak trees love a lot of light, don't they? And these have got quite a lot of light and space around them.

Matt: Yes.

Jules: Ohh, I can see it now. Oh my goodness. What a beast. How fantastic. So it does, so it's the Bradgate Park's oldest oak, isn't it, so does it have a name, another name beyond that?

Matt: I think people people give it various names but it's just 'the oldest tree in the park' *laughs*

Jules: Yeah, yeah.

Matt: Trying, I suppose for many years we've tried to keep it a bit bit sort of secret. That's probably for the benefit of the tree and certainly, the fact that it's within a spinney, people aren't walking up to it, and that's helped the tree. I feel that it's in a, it's obviously found some good growing conditions and despite the general habitat of the park being poor, upland soil, shallow, it's found some incredible growing conditions here it's been sheltered so that it's not being exposed to too much, too much wind force. And also it's it's nice and open so as the, as you know sort of from midday to right through into the evening, it's gonna get plenty of light as well. So there's I think there's been a number of factors that have certainly helped to prolong the life of the tree.

Jules: Yes, absolutely. Wow, it is a stunner. So just to try and describe this tree, it it's immensely tall. It's probably about the size of a, what about the height of a house would you say?

Matt: Yeah it's a good, good 45 feet.

Jules: Yeah. And it's got a very gnarly bole. I call it a bole rather than a trunk because it's really big, broad, and it's kind of split into two, kind of more than two. And it's got some dead branches coming out the middle. It's got one gorgeous, great, long, twisted limb reaching out. And it's that that's they're they're propped up, but it's kind of snaking, isn't it, ooh, it's elephantine that's what it is! Yeah, let's use our favourite word of the day.

Matt: I'd I'd say it's definitely elephantine *both laugh*

Jules: Yeah. And you can see kind of, it looks like there's faces everywhere, aren't there? It's like in that they've dead bit of branch there, you can see like a sort of twisted sort of face and a great long nose. And ohh it's, what a beautiful beast. So Matt, could you tell us a bit about its cultural connection to human beings?

Matt: Well, it certainly, it it was aged back in 2014 by a tree consultancy called Bosky and we we obtained a grant funding to tag and map many, many trees across the estate of this, being one of them, and it was it was aged at 818 back then, which puts us at around about the 830 mark now. In terms of relations to humans, it predates the Magna Carta and one of the most notable former residents of Bradgate Park obviously being Lady Jane, when she was a child living on the park, the tree would have already been quite a mighty oak of about 300 years.

Jules: Gosh, so, so Lady Jane Grey would have known this tree.

Matt: Yes, yeah.

Jules: She would probably sat underneath it.

Matt: Which is somewhat remarkable.

Jules: Yeah. Maybe had a little picnic under here. *Matt laughs* That's what I would have done. Fantastic. And it's wonderful that you're protecting it and actually, despite this sort of really craggy bole, it's it's looking in pretty good health, isn't it, it's got loads of leaves all around. Are you feeling sort of confident about its its future given given how it is?

Matt: Well, certainly, yeah you you've you've pointed out the props and these props have been in place supporting certainly this this limb. If we walk around the other side of the tree, you can you can get a bit more of an impression as to what the props are actually achieving for the tree and in due course, and I believe we'll we'll probably upgrade these props, which are basically telegraph posts with Land Rover tyres that have been cut, which is certainly an effective way of doing things, but we have evolved the propping techniques that are now, you can see the tree in the distance over there by the compound that's called the Pheasant Garden. And there's a there's an oak tree there that supported by a prop and that is manufactured using metal, sort of steel work and then there's a cup section that's manufactured and then that that's a more sympathetic way of actually supporting that bough.

Jules: Yeah, yes.

Matt: Regarding, you know the actual cover of the foliage, like you say, totally agree that it's it's still got reasonable foliage cover, certainly certain things that we do have to watch out for is shade. And that is partly why we've cut the tops off the trees around it. But also you can see where we've got a bit of interference here with this Scots pine at the back.

Jules: Oh yes, it's actually actually touching I think, almost touching.

Matt: So that is something that we would look to keep keep in check. So this Scots pine, as as lovely as it is, that Scots pine is more like 70 years old, and we wouldn't want that to be shading out so that's something we'll we'll probably climb up there and just cut that, cut the limb off off the Scots pine and stop that, because you can see if we just leave that doing what it's doing, it's going to start shading out and it's really important that we keep the living mass of this tree, so there's a balance there between the living mass and the dead mass of the tree, the static mass. And it's that balance as a ratio for the tree, you know, if you, if you look at a younger tree there, you can say that almost almost 100% of of the of the crown of that tree is alive. Whereas you look at this tree and you start thinking maybe 50%. So the closer that ratio between the living mass and the dead mass is, the closer that gets more like to a one to one, then the the tree will will then gradually just just just be going into decline. So you know, the tree will not live forever but I'm pretty confident it's going to outlive us guys *laughs*

Jules: Yes. It's an amazing thought, isn't it? And it's obviously very loved and and and I think the importance is is not just about the tree itself, is it? So really ancient oaks like this, they support enormous numbers of species, some of which only live on ancient oaks. So that's why we need to protect this tree as much as we possibly can and also bring on those veteran oaks of the future that you you, you're, you're that you're you're doing just that, aren't you, here in the park. Absolutely vital.

Matt: Yeah, very much so, very much so. As we've driven across the park, we've seen various planting that's been supported by the Tree Council. And like you say, that has, that certainly has been planting more oak trees, but then also other nectar bearing species, rowan, blackthorn, hawthorn, gorse. And these are all important, like you say for the deadwood insects that, that, that live within the ancient oak tree and and then as the tree gets older it then develops more veteran features and those crags, holes are very important roosting habitats for, certainly for owls and bats.

Jules: Yeah. And so oak trees in the UK collectively support more than 2,300 species, some of which are completely reliant on oak trees. They couldn't survive without oak trees, and one of the things we were talking about earlier as we drove up was the fact that there are, you know, some, some beetles, for example, some longhorn beetles, for example, they spend their lives as larvae living in deadwood. But then the adults, they need nectar when they grow up, so again, it's really important to have those nectar sources nearby isn't it?

Matt: Yeah. So very, very much is. Yeah. And that's what we're looking to do on the park we are we are planting those, those supporting plants.

Jules: Fantastic. Wonderful. This incredible tree that we're standing in front of is one of the ten contenders in this year's Tree of the Year competition and the theme of this year's competition is culture and the the the the history and culture associated with trees in our world. Ancient oaks are absolutely threaded in our culture. I'm particularly interested in them, I wrote a book about about oak trees called Oaklore, and one of the things that I talked about was the way that the oak tree intertwines with our lives with with lots of different species, but also with human lives and with our culture. There were so many stories associated with the oak tree. One of my favourites is the story of Charles II and the Boscobel Oak. So before Charles II was, became king he was fighting the parliamentarians and he took a terrible drubbing at a battle. And he needed to escape. And he escaped to Boscobel House. And he was with this soldier called Colonel Careless, and this soldier suggested that they hide in the oak tree overnight rather than the house. And they did. And even though the parliamentarian troops were were wandering nearby, they didn't find the king and his soldiers, and they escaped. And eventually they returned and that led to the restoration of the monarchy. The thing I like about this story is the cultural links then go on and on. Because at that point, a day of national celebration was declared throughout the land, and that was 29 May and that became Oak Apple Day and everybody would party and if the best people at the party, the coolest people at the party, they waved oak branches and wore oak leaves and and if you were super cool, you had lots of oak apples on your, so little galls on your oak branches. And if you didn't have little symbols of oaks, then others were apparently within their rights to take a bunch of nettles and and and attacked you with nettles, which wasn't so nice. So it was also called Nettle Day. It was also known as Pinch Bum Day and Maids Ruin Day. The story goes on, but the other sort of fun cultural connection to that is it also came, it also brought about lots of pubs called the Royal Oak, and the last time I looked there were about 400 oak trees, 400 sorry pubs called the Royal Oak throughout the land, so the cultural tales just go on and on. And that's just the oak tree. But all of our native trees have some fantastic stories associated with them in. In fact every old tree has a story to tell. It's like us, like every older person, we've all got a story, a history to tell. Yeah. OK.

Matt: So yeah, we're just walking back from the oldest tree now, and we're just sort of musing over just that connection that human, humans have got to trees. I think it's the fact that an oak tree can sort of live centuries and really, that puts our lifetimes somewhat in perspective. And the fact that an oak tree can just go from the tiniest of acorns to a huge mass of of timber and that is just really fantastic, how you could you could cut open a tree and see all those different tree rings, those years of growth and then just sort of put that in context, what was happening was, was it Dick Whittington that was the Lord Mayor of London for the last time, was it was it the Battle of Agincourt, was it the Magna Carta? And and it's for people like you that actually write books about it, Jules, that can say it a lot better than me *both laugh*

Jules: No that was brilliant and we're not gonna cut this one in half though are we, Matt?

Matt: No, we're certainly not. And the fact that it's hollow, we just can't see those rings anymore.

Jules: No. Thank you. Brilliant. Right. This is our final leg on our walk and we're now in a polytunnel and it's really warm because the sun's beating down outside and it smells gorgeous and and we are surrounded by lots of little trees. Matt, can you tell us a little bit about these?

Matt: So the polytunnel was funded by the Tree Council and it's just very important that we're growing on oaks for the future from acorns that have been collected on site. So they've got the genetic continuity of the long-lived oak trees and hopefully they'll grow and carry on into long into the future.

Jules: And are they, is it a a mix of acorns from all different trees in in here or is it, or is, are you, are you taking them from specific trees?

Matt: It's yeah, it's a bit of a mix. Sometimes, you know, where where we can and where they're viable, if we if we get to the acorns from a veteran tree before the deer, then that's certainly something that we we're looking to grow on. So generally that's what we're that's that's where we'll try and harvest them from that, we've put a frame down before with a bit of a grill, so we can collect the acorns, but then they don't get eaten and that's certainly quite a good technique. And and then we we we grow on from the old trees where we can, yes.

Jules: They're really lovely. So we've got really tiny little trees with, some of them have got like, you know, about 5 or 6 leaves. And then they go up to sort of above our just above our heads. And I think what always strikes me is the, the the diversity in in leaf shape and colour that you that you see all around you. So even the same place within within oak trees, it's incredible, the different shapes and sizes you get, isn't it?

Matt: Yeah, it really is. And you know, look, looking some of the some of the oaks have been collected from Swithland Woods as well. And and where you've got a stalked leaf, that is a sessile oak.

Jules: Ah yes.

Matt: And and where you've got a a leaf that's coming off that isn't stalked, that is an English oak, but but that will have a stalked acorn.

Jules: Yes. So that's the the key way to tell the difference isn't. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you. I love it. The Bradgate Park oak is one of ten iconic trees across the UK in the running for the Tree of the Year competition. Other examples include the Tree of Peace and Unity in County Antrim. That's an iconic lime tree, I say a lime tree, it's actually two lime trees which are fused together so that the trunk has become bound as one and it's, they've become inseparable and as such they've become a symbol of harmony and hope. So newly married couples sit beneath that tree for a blessing and it became a particular symbol of peace and reconciliation when Tony Blair, David Trimble and John Hume met here in 1998 at the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Another example is the Argyle Street Ash in Glasgow. This tree is growing right next to some historic flats and it's seen as a symbol of local resilience. It has survived all kinds of things, including Victorian industry, the Clydeside Blitz, recent development and so far, ash dieback. One of its cultural connections is that it was featured in a 1935 book by James Cowan. The book was called From Glasgow's Treasure Chest and in it he describes the tree as 'quite the most graceful ash I have seen'. Well, that's enough of me. Meanwhile, thank you so much to Matt and Natasha. It's been great fun talking trees with you.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

Tinuke Oyediran is on a mission to explore all of the UK's temperate rainforests, so for our latest episode, we showed her around magical Bovey Valley Woods in Devon. Tinuke is an adventurer and former professional roller skater, and was a contestant on the BBC's Survivor UK show. She's really passionate about nature, pushing boundaries and sharing her experiences to educate and inspire online communities.

As we take a riverside ramble through the rainforest, we hear Tinuke on her wild adventures, the healing powers of nature and her efforts to address the lack of representation in the great outdoors. We also hear about her life-changing experience on Survivor UK, how being outdoors helped her to cope with trauma, past and future adventures and the three Guinness World Records she holds!

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, today I am meeting a professional roller skater, which is a first for me anyway. She was also one of 18 contestants marooned on a deserted location in a BBC reality show which saw people divided into two groups and tasked with competing in a range of challenges in the hope of eventually winning the title of sole survivor. She's meeting me on what I hope to be a less arduous but no less interesting adventure visiting a really, a really very rare sight, a temperate rainforest here in the UK in Devon.

Tinuke: Yeah. So my name is Tinuke. I am an adventurer, I'm an online storyteller, triple Guinness World Record holder randomly enough, I'm completely obsessed with being in the outdoors and outside of my comfort zone, so being here in a new temperate rainforest is a great start.

Adam: Right. Well, I've I've gotta first of all, you you threw away the line 'a triple Guinness World Record holder'. So I've gotta ask you about that. What what's the three world records you hold?

Tinuke: I know. So it's I I used to be a professional roller skater in chapter number one.

Adam: Wow.

Tinuke: And it's the most cartwheels, the most burpees in a minute on roller skates and then the most spins on the e-roller skates in a minute as well. I did them all in lockdown, so I was just like on a mission. I had time.

Adam: OK. And e-roller skates are battery powered are they is that what they are?

Tinuke: Yeah, yeah, they're like, they're like a little, like, roller skate segway things that you put on your feet. It's pretty epic. You can go, like, up to 40 miles an hour. It's like proper adrenaline.

Adam: Wow. So I mean, I know we're here to talk about forests and the outdoors.

Tinuke: We are indeed.

Adam: But I have to, I've never met a professional roller skater before, so I just I have to begin with a couple of questions about that. So how how did that come about?

Tinuke: So I I used to be in a show called Starlight Express, which is a musical.

Adam: Oh yes, of course. Who doesn't know Starlight Express!

Tinuke: Literally.

Adam: So so but you were a roller skater before that.

Tinuke: I wasn't. I was a dancer before that. I I change my mind a lot as you *laughs*

Adam: Ah so is that how it works, I often wondered that because they they go through a lot of roller skaters and I thought, that's a limited pool they're fishing in so so they get dancers and teach them how to roller skate.

Tinuke: Yeah. Yeah, they train us up and then if you can do the, if you can roller skate by the end of the sort of like training up then you go on to the show. And I did that for two years in Germany and then I came back to the UK and was a professional roller skater for like, 10 years, which was great.

Adam: Amazing. Are you still, are you still doing all of that?

Tinuke: I do sometimes yeah, I have I have a little cute troop of hula hoop gals who I meet up with every now and then and, like, do some fun jobs with. Yeah.

Adam: OK, good. Alright. And I promise not to ask you anymore about roller skating. Right. So you are an adventurer. And I know you are on is that right, a sort of mission to to look at the temperate rainforests and and forests of the UK?

Tinuke: I am indeed. Yeah, that among many other missions. So I suppose I could go in how I started, which follows on from the roller skate story, is I went on a show called Survivor on the BBC. Essentially, it's a show where *laughs* they basically just like strip you of all your human rights and desert you on an island and you have to survive in the wilderness out there. So I had a love of the outdoors and forests and woodlands and the wilderness, everything before. But that's what sort of shifted it into making it a bit of a mission to explore.

Adam: And how did you how did you do? For those who haven't been following Survivor, which is a massively popular programme, but for those who don't know it, how did you do?

Tinuke: I did good. Yeah. Yeah, I did good. It was absolutely brutal in, both physically and emotionally. It's quite it's quite a hard show in terms of like, ohh tactics and things like that. So that was quite tough, but I loved being, living in the wild, building shelters, catching food and yeah, just living out there. That was, that was incredible.

Adam: Had you done anything like that before?

Tinuke: So I had recently gone and lived out in a a beautiful forest near Stonehenge for a week on my own as you do *laughs* and that was a lot of shelter building and bushcraft skills and all of that, fire making, so I I...

Adam: And you just taught yourself this? I mean you just turn up and yeah, I'm gonna sit in the forest now for a week, I better learn how to build a fire or what? *both laugh*

Tinuke: Yeah, like some London City babe, just like, where am I? I had done some, like basic skills and and beforehand, so I did know what I was doing. I'd done lots of shelter, building and stuff like that before, but yeah.

Adam: And what was, so you said, catching your own food, this is killing animals and eating them, is that?

Tinuke: We we, no, we we had, it was I I wasn't, you're not allowed to, I wasn't allowed to catch them and eat them. So I had things with me that I brought in, rabbits and then I forest forage-ed, foraged, foragaged? Foragaged a lot.

Adam: Whatever. I know what you mean *both laugh* Very cool.

Tinuke: Yeah. Yeah, that was crazy.

Adam: And so so that's your background. Lots of different bits to that obviously. And and this latest adventure to sort of travel around the UK an look at forests. Why why that particularly?

Tinuke: Yeah. So I first of all, I think it was just online I saw something. This must have been a couple of years ago, something about like UK rainforests and I was just like, what? I had no idea at that point that there were rainforests in the UK and I started off with a rainforest actually not too far from here, which was the first one I went to go visit and and I just started learning all about it. I I do lots of storytelling online and sharing with my community and like educating people about what we can find in the UK. And so that was my first obsession where my rainforest addiction begun and then since then, I've gone up to lots of them in Scotland. Yeah. So yeah, that's where it all kind of began.

Adam: So very good. And so it is a, I mean it's it's a surprise I think to most people to be honest that there is a a temperate rainforest in in the UK at all. And it's that in particular which you are looking at on this, you know, adventure, this tour of the UK, not forests in general, it is rainforests.

Tinuke: It is rainforests, yeah.

Adam: And there's a lot of talk now about the sort of mental wellbeing, and in fact, only a few weeks ago, when the King had some problems with his recurring cancer, he and some other members of royalty I think were talking about the healing powers of being out in nature. So it's sort of a very topical thing. What's your take or experience of that?

Tinuke: Yeah. Forest bathing is a thing. I love it. All about sort of bathing your senses and being in the forest, obviously. But my personal journey with nature and healing is a very strong one and is definitely rooted in why I do what I do and why I've chosen this as a career. So when I was about 28, I went through quite a traumatic time where I lost all of my sort of like initial close family. So my cousin, brother, my mum and dad. And I was super young obviously at the time and I started going out into nature as what I thought was like a way to escape my reality. And I went on lots of crazy adventures, hiking, going into the Grand Canyon, going hiking around Iceland. And it was sort of what I thought was a way to get away from everything. But it just became my biggest healing tool ever, and I have recently liked to call it adventure therapy or adventure healing and and it's all about putting yourself out of your comfort zone, being somewhere where you're not normally are, going out into nature forest bathing, hiking, breathing, experiencing aura of nature, looking at an unbelievably tall tree or, you know, a huge beautiful valley like the one that we're in today.

Adam: And and it's interesting so you, I mean, you were a dancer and and a roller skater, so you're obviously a physical person anyway,

Tinuke: 100% yeah.

Adam: So that was so, but there seems to be a distinction you're making between the sort of exercise you might do as part of your dancing and roller skating, and the sort of exercise that is involved in going to a forest or on a hike or something. Why is that different? Because we talk about exercise and the endorphins anyway, so you get that whether you're in a gym or running in a forest. What's different about being in a forest?

Tinuke: So I I do like the idea of moving forwards, so I do lots of processing whilst I'm hiking so there's a there's a thing, if I go on on a little bit of a tangent, it's called it's a therapy called EMDR, where

Adam: N?

Tinuke: EMDR.

Adam: M for mother. EMDR yes.

Tinuke: Yeah, where it's all about rapid eye movement. So you might follow your end of your finger and you go left, right, left, right. It's all about combining the left and right hemisphere of your brain whilst you're processing something traumatic and you can also do it whilst you're tapping and you can also do it whilst you're walking so that's what I started to do whilst I was hiking out in nature.

Adam: And what does that do so why, why is that helpful?

Tinuke: The traumatic memory normally gets stuck in the right hemisphere of the brain because that's where emotions and and all of that is governed and so obviously, feelings of anxiety and all the things that can come with going through something traumatic. So by processing whilst you're stimulating the right and left hemisphere of your brain, walking, looking, tapping, side to side, it just helps blend blend it into one and that's what I that's what that's why I've picked hiking and being outdoors.

Adam: Very nice. And you, have you found a difference?

Tinuke: Completely, 100%. It's like absolutely changed my life, especially especially obviously since I went through all of that. I like doing something, as you said, I'm a physical person, but I like doing something that's quite hard. I like it to be quite challenging, like a challenging hike or a long one, and then at the end of it, it's just building up that resilience that I'm capable of getting over hard things, I'm capable of being a little bit uncomfortable when it's pouring with rain. I've gone camping, there's loads of midges, blah blah, blah and then it's type two fun, you know?

Adam: Right. Type two fun?

Tinuke: Type two fun.

Adam: I can, never heard of that. Right. That's that's fun with a bit of an obstacle?

Tinuke: That, that's that's the type of fun that you get in the outdoors a lot where you might be like, why am I camping in this rainforest and it's pouring with rain. But then afterwards, you're like, wow, what an incredible experience.

Adam: It was actually fun, oh good alright. Well we're just coming up to a big, let's go, just try and avoid that. So yeah. OK. So so you have found that to be a real benefit to you.

Tinuke: Yeah, it's definitely changed my life and my outlook on things. And also it's it's what I've learned about myself is that I'm capable of pushing through uncomfortable moments, and it's like cold, hard evidence for myself that I'm capable of doing that. So it's definitely been a massive like trauma recovery tool for me, yeah.

Adam: That's it's interesting. You also talked right at the beginning of this little walk about how, I think you wanted to demonstrate to your community the benefits of nature and the outside. So, so so for what what community are we talking about, to be in, because we want, everyone is part of lots of different types of communities. So so what community are you talking about?

Tinuke: So for me like representation of BIPOC people, people of colour, especially in the UK, mainly city dwellers don't have as much experience with the outdoors so,

Adam: So you're talking about, you are talking about lots of different,

Tinuke: Yeah

Adam: You're not talking about an ethnic community or anything,

Tinuke: No no no.

Adam: You're you're saying young people, people from different,

Tinuke: Yeah. People of colour, people of colour, especially like for me obviously like black women doing adventurous stuff is not normally what we get up to *laughs*.

Adam: Is it not?

Tinuke: Not, not not in comparison to,

Adam: So why, why is that then why do you think that is?

Tinuke: Lots of different reasons. Lack of representation in the outdoor scene is a huge thing across like the media, and also just when you come to a rainforest like this or a space, it's very different to be here when you're the only person of colour here, lots of people feel like they are a bit out of place, wouldn't know how to get here, wouldn't know that it was a thing that you could do, wouldn't know the benefits of it and and also it's if it if your if your peers and your family don't, don't go and spend much time in nature, you don't have that incentive to or need to know that you can do it. But in recent times it's definitely changing, which is amazing. And there's some incredible groups that are popping up. Black Girls Hike is an incredible one.

Adam: Is that the name of the group?

Tinuke: That's the name of the group, Black Girls Hike. Yeah.

Adam: And that's a a physical group of people, of black girls who go hiking.

Tinuke: Yeah, kayaking, camping, all sorts of things. And it's yeah, specifically for people of colour to like understand what it is and how amazing it is to be out here. I went on a camping trip with them last year. It was like 80 women or most of most of them it was all their first camping trip and and that was amazing.

Adam: And what about age then as well? Because I was struck by how younger people are very to my mind, very politically engaged with the environment, but less actually engaged, so they, it tends to be older people, in my experience who are part of the environmental charities, I mean, I suppose first of all, do you think that's right or am I wrong in your view or, and so what what do you know about the engagement of of younger people, of all colours and and sex and gender, of of people of your age group. Do they tend to talk about the environment? Is that a a dull subject to them?

Tinuke: No no, it's it's not a dull subject. It's a big subject. Obviously this is our reality and it's gonna be the reality of our children and our children's children and much more than it would be for someone older. So it is a big topic of conversation, especially the world that I'm in at the moment, meeting so many people who love the outdoors. It's definitely a subject that is brought up a lot, definitely, and it's it's definitely a thing of why I started the rainforests and going around the temperate rainforest because they're so endangered and it is a massive topic of conversation.

Adam: And and are people optimistic about it or are they, is it is it all disaster prone. I I I fear sometimes that the environmental lobby talks so much about the problems it's a bit of a turn off to be honest. But you've been talking very positively about the role of it all.

Tinuke: So I suppose I'm trying to put a positive switch on it by talking about it a lot and promoting everything that I do online. For example, I just went to Kilimanjaro two weeks ago and that was the whole reason I went there was because in a couple of years, well in, there won't be a glacier at the top of it anymore. The snow would have melted. So I was on a mission to do it before the glacier had melted and I talk a lot about it whilst I'm doing it. And suffering a lot actually up there. Adam

Adam: Suffering from the cold and the,

Tinuke: And the altitude and everything.

Adam: How how high is Kilimanjaro?

Tinuke: It was like three, 3,870 something metres.

Adam: Right, and and you walked up.

Tinuke: I did, very, very slowly *laughs*.

Adam: I was going to say, how long did it take you to get there?

Tinuke: It took me seven days to get there and down. Yeah, it was a little bit mad.

Adam: With a group, or?

Tinuke: With a group, yeah. And I got a chest infection on day two.

Adam: Oh wow.

Tinuke: It was it was like one of the hardest things I've ever done. And that's when you're like, yeah.

Adam: That's type two fun, isn't it?

Tinuke: That is type two fun *both laugh*

Adam: Sorry I have paused because we are right by a beautiful bridge. Isn't that lovely? Doesn't that look like a a sort of something

Tinuke: Like the Hobbit

Adam: It does, you know what it does, like a Hobbit right out of Hollywood.

Tinuke: Or like there'll be a troll underneath.

Adam: Yeah. Who knows? Maybe there is a troll and we need to answer a a riddle before we cross. Yeah, let's take a photo here. But it's a good point because I think you're massive on social media, so we'll take a photo here. Maybe you'll put it on social media, but what are your social media tags? And if people want to follow you?

Tinuke: So it's Tinuke, which is T-I-N-U-K-E underscore Oyediran, O-Y-E-D-I-R-A-N. And that's all over the place.

Adam: It's all over, on all platforms.

Tinuke: On all of them, it's the same.

Adam: You're you're you're everywhere. Right. Let's take a photo.

Tinuke: Yeah.

Adam: OK, right. Well, let's go over the troll bridge. Oops OK there we are.

Tinuke: We're not going to go for a wild swim?

Adam: Well, I'm very happy to to

Tinuke: To not *laughs*

Adam: To to try and find a towel for you on your exit, but I won't.

Tinuke: You can cheer me, cheer me on but not take part, partake

Adam: Yeah, I'm a, I'm a supporter of your wild swim as opposed to a participant.

Tinuke: Fair enough.

Adam: I would like to stand in the middle of that river. I'm not going to because I don't know what I'm doing. Anyway so you, you've got we talked about the adventures you've done on TV and elsewhere. You've got some other adventures coming up. What are they?

Tinuke: I do. I do indeed. I have some lots of UK hikes coming up, which you can always join me on. You can follow me on my Instagram and come,

Adam: When you say join you and you mean not just turn up and sort of follow behind you in a sort of creepy manner. This is an organised this is an organised thing.

Tinuke: No *laughs* yeah yeah organised hikes

Adam: Fine. OK organised. I thought, just go, oh look there she is, just follow her *both laugh*

Tinuke: Join me, join me. I'm also going to Iceland, which I'm inviting everyone to come along with me. That's in October, I'm going doing the Annapurna Trail in Nepal, sort of around around Everest. I'm doing that in November, also inviting everyone to join me. And then my big birthday party next year is going to be to Everest Base Camp, which is April next year. So you've got a whole year to train up.

Adam: And if people are interested in joining on these adventures, they contact you via all your social media platforms.

Tinuke: They do indeed.

Adam: Fantastic. How long have you been involved with the Woodland Trust for.

Tinuke: Probably about a year now.

Adam: So not not long and how did that happen?

Tinuke: I think it was I actually I think it was initially when I first saw a reel about temperate rainforest and I contacted and said I'm going off on a mission to visit them all. Can I come to all of yours and do you want to join in in any way? And yeah, it's been it's been really exciting since then. Yeah.

Adam: So I mean, you've talked about trying to encourage people from your communities to come along on a similar journey metaphorically as well as I suppose physically. What would your message be to them to to persuade them this is maybe something worth getting involved in?

Tinuke: The benefits for me have completely changed my life in an amazing way and I can't help but not share it. So come and try it out. Get outside your comfort zone a little bit if this is something that you're not used to trying, you definitely won't regret it and it's always nice to go with a group, so yeah, make new friends.

Adam: From all of us to all of you, thanks for joining us and as ever, happy wandering.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the visiting woods pages. Thank you.

Our latest episode comes from a rather unexpected venue: a former Chelsea Flower Show garden! Now located in London's Notting Hill, it's where we meet Danny Clarke, garden designer, TV presenter, and self-confessed tree hugger. As we explore the public woodland-themed garden, Danny explains how it tells the stories of injustice against humans and nature. He created the garden as part of his work with Grow2Know, a charity dedicated to making nature more appealing and accessible to a wider audience. It's a subject close to his heart and as he tells us about his childhood and the meaning behind his moniker, The Black Gardener, his passion is clear. Danny finds comfort and joy in nature: the sound of birdsong, the smell of tree bark, the texture of soil. And he's doing his utmost to help as many people as possible, regardless of background, to find that joy too.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, today I'm off to meet someone much closer to home than normal. I can do it on the tube rather than going on the train. I am meeting Danny Clarke, who is a British garden designer who shot to fame in 2015 as BBC's Instant Gardener. Since then, he's been on our screens with a host of popular garden makeover shows and horticultural advice. He joined ITV's This Morning's presenting team, and he is now a member of Alan Titchmarsh's Love Your Garden team as well. In fact, in addition to all of that, he helps run a charity known as Grow2Know which, whose heart I think really lies in reclaiming space and reconnecting people with nature and each other. And it's one of those projects I think I'm going to see him at really very centrally, in London, in Notting Hill, where they have tried to bring some green space, some nature right to the heart of the city, and include all the local communities.

Danny: My name is Danny Clarke. I'm a garden designer and TV presenter.

Adam: Lovely. And we are meeting in what is now fashionable Notting Hill, wasn't always the case when I was growing up around this area, actually, so, but but we're we're in an urban garden that is your design.

Danny: Well, not the whole garden, not the whole space. I mean, this is Tavistock Square. Yeah, uh, but we've, um, kind of elicited a section of it to rehome our Chelsea Flower Show garden from 2022, which is which actually is a Grow2Know project, of which of which I'm a director of.

Adam: So I what wanna know about Grow2Know. But you you've already mentioned the garden and we're standing right by it. So. Well, why don't you describe it to begin with. So people get a sort of visual image of what it is we're standing next to.

Danny: OK, so basically your corten steel structure, it's dominated by a corten steel structure. And that's supposed to represent two things, a) the mangrove restaurant, which was a place that was owned by a West Indian immigrant in the late 60s/70s that was brutalised by the police. And so it's telling that story. And it's also telling the story of man's injustice to nature. So what we see here really is a corten steel structure, which represents the roots of a mangrove tree. And as you can see, it looks quite brutal and and and the top where the trunk is, it's actually been severed, which actually represents what, you know, man's kind of lack of, shall we say, I don't know, respect for nature.

Adam: So it's it's a political, I mean, it's an interesting installation, if that's the right word, in that it's it is political in this with this sort of small P, not party political, but it's sort of reflecting the societal challenges that this area certainly went through. But you it's interesting, you talk about the trunk, is it is it also a tree? I mean this is a sort of tree podcast. Is there a reference in that as well?

Danny: Yeah, that's a reference to the tree, so that the reference to the tree is that it is a mangrove tree alright, so mangrove and mangrove restaurant. Yeah, so it's kind of a play on words, if you like. So we're telling it's really about storytelling. So we're telling two stories here. We're telling the story of man's brutality against man and man's brutality against nature.

Adam: Wonderful. So you run this organisation? What's it called again?

Danny: It's called Grow2Know. I don't actually run it, I'm a director, so I'm I'm I'm it's so it started well, it started soon after the Grenfell fire in 2017.

Adam: Which is also I mean this is not far from here as well.

Danny: It's not far from here. It's just up the road. And I was horrified by what unfolded like many people were. And I felt quite powerless. So I thought, you know what I'll do? I'll get in touch with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where the tower resides and see if I could help in some way, maybe use my expertise as a garden designer to maybe build a small, I don't know, small garden and I spoke to our head of greening guy called Terry Oliver. There's lots of emails flying backwards and forwards. And he was eulogising about this young man called Tayshan Hayden-Smith, 19, single father and who lives near the tower who knew people who perished in the flames. And he turned to gardening or guerilla gardening. I don't know if you know what that is? It's gardening without permission.

Adam: Well, yeah. A friend of mine does that actually near where I live, and sort of grows plants, actually vegetables and potatoes in the street trees. I'm I'm going I don't wanna eat your potatoes! But anyway, I get it. It's an interesting sort of little subculture, guerilla gardening.

Danny: He was just drawn to it. I think it's probably because his mum used to was into nature when Tayshan was very young and she used to point things out to him. Like, look at that tree, isn't that wonderful? Look at that sunset, isn't it lovely? And this, this kind of instilled into his sort of consciousness. And he just naturally just felt he needed to just go out and find a piece of land, community space, pick up litter, syringes, maybe go to the garden centre, get some fading plants and just pretty the place up as best he could, and he got a lot of healing from that and people will be attracted to him. So there'll be this conversation going on. Sometimes people will stay for a minute, then go off again. Others will probably stay and help him along the way. You know? You know, to to transform the space as best they could. And he got a lot of healing from that.

Adam: And and and you, you and your colleagues sort of created this charity around.

Danny: So so no, no. So o what then happened was that I... he wanted to know if I'd like to meet this guy, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, I've been meeting a guy that's got all sorts of issues that I might not be able to deal with. But I had this outline of him, and when I met him, there was none of that. He's the most amazing, well-put-together, guy – young man – I've ever met really. And I, cut a long story short, became his mentor, and we've just been on this fabulous journey ever since. And this is part of it. So one day, Tayshan said to me, he'd like to form a nonprofit. We didn't have a name for it at the time, but it did become Grow2Know, and and he wanted to show the wider, more people wanted to make it nature more inclusive, and he because he got so many benefits from it, he wanted the other people to enjoy, you know, the curative effects of gardening and being in nature – cause we all know it's good for the mind, body and soul. So that's how Grow2Know was born. But we've actually sort of gone on from that now. We're more than just a a gardening collective. We're more pace-making, change making. We're out there to sort of change the narrative, if you like. And we're kind of an activist group and we're just trying to make nature more appealing to a wider audience.

Adam: And how how are you doing that? I mean, you've clearly got this garden here. But in trying to sort of bring urban communities closer to nature, how are you doing that?

Danny: Yeah. Bring, bring, bring communities closer to nature.

Adam: And how do you do that?

Danny: By having spaces like this. So we've got spaces, quite a few spaces that we've converted in this area and this is just one of them. So it's about bringing people into nature and making it more diverse and more accessible. And in many ways, that's what we're about.

Adam: And so I'm interested in in your view about urban communities, youth communities, diverse communities.

Danny: That we're all drawn to nature. You know, we, we we all needed part of it in our lives. That's what lockdown taught us, that it was very important for us.

Adam: So it's not a challenge for you to bring them into your world. You think they're already there?

Danny: No, the people are already there. It's it's just giving them access to these spaces. I mean, for example, excuse me, in the north of Kensington where, let's say it's less affluent than the South, people have the equivalent of one car parking space of nature or greenery that they can access. In the South, which is a lot richer by the river, you know, you've got the like, well, the Chelsea Flower Show is actually by the Thames River, and where people like Simon Cowell and David Beckham have properties, so you get an idea.

Adam: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

Danny: We all know how wealthy that area is. They've got on average half a football pitch of nature they can access, or greenery. So that tells its own story and and the life expectancy between the people in the north of the borough and the south of the borough, there's a 15 year difference, so you're expected to live 15 years longer if you live in the south than you are in the north.

Adam: It is and I hadn't thought of that before you said that, but it is an interesting part of London, this, because Kensington has this sort of reputation of being very posh and everything and the David Beckhams and the what have you. But it is a very divided sort of part of London, isn't it? With the very rich and really the quite quite poor and disadvantaged as well, all within the same borough.

Danny: It is, there's a big difference and I think you'll probably find it's the biggest, there's a bigger disparity here than any other borough in in the country.

Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. So also, oh, well, why don't we have a walk? We'll walk through through your garden whilst we're talking about this. So also just tell me a bit about, so we we you you very eloquently describe the the the metal sculpture we're we're sort of walking under now, but a bit, the planting as well. So you've got sort of beds of bark here which make it look very nice.

Danny: Yeah. So we're we're kind of going with the woodland theme cause as you can see there's lots of trees around here, cause I'm I am a bit of a tree hugger and I love trees. That's my thing.

Danny: And we didn't want to, I mean, the, the this garden, although it was our Grow2Know show garden at Chelsea, we haven't actually transformed it in that form. It's the planting is completely different because if we did that, it would jar with what's around. So we've gone with the space. So although yeah, it's all good.

Adam: It's all quite green and evergreen.

Danny: So the actual structure is the same, but that's all that's that's that's similar. Every, everything else is different. And of course we've had to adapt it as well because the garden that we had at Chelsea had ponds. So for health and safety reasons, we couldn't have that here. So we've gone with the woodlandy theme and so there's rhododendrons, there's ferns.

Adam: I was gonna say quite a lot of ferns and some also some big stones here as well, which sort of nice, nice bit of sculpture.

Danny: Yeah. That that's a bit of a coincidence really, because.

Adam: Because they're just there.

Danny: These were already here, but believe it or not, we had stones this size in our Chelsea Flower Show garden. We didn't transport them from there to here. These were already here and we've just kind of re- sort of jigged them. Re-placed them. Just to make it all look a bit more appealing. But we actually had these at Chelsea as seats in the central area underneath the structure. But now they're actually sort of dispersed in the beds and they make great features and and having them there actually helps move the eye around the space.

Adam: Yeah. So I mean what, ecology and and concerns about the environment. Clearly a a big issue at the moment. What what's your sense about how the people you work with and and talk to feel about that and engage with it? Are you optimistic about that engagement and and what difference that might make? That was that was my phone. I'm sorry, I should have should have put that on silent.

Danny: I'm working with amateurs Ruby! Ohh.

Adam: Yeah, I know, I know. I know. You know what? When I'm out with the film crew, you have to buy the round of drinks if that, 'whose phone went?' Right, you're buying a round the, yeah, we're we're we're right by the...

Danny: Yeah, well, and it's and it ain't cheap.

Adam: OK. I'll put it on silent now. That'll teach me. What was I saying? Yeah, so. Yes. I wonder whether you're optimistic about that reengagement? Cause the way you're talking about it is very positive actually. Everything you've said is very positive. Is that I, I want to get a sense of is that because you're a positive guy and you or, you know, you're trying to look on the positive side, or you genuinely feel no, no, this, you know, these communities are engaging and that's a great thing, not just for them. But for nature, because if people support nature, nature's got a sort of pal hasn't it.

Danny: Yeah. And I think people are engaging and and do you know what? I mean I'm all for getting young people involved in nature as much as I possibly can. I think that's very, very important. I think we gotta get them out at a a very early age, the earlier the better because then it sort of stays with you for the rest of your life. If you are not sort of involved in it at young age then you're not, you're less likely to be interested in it later on in life. But I think people generally are engaged in nature. They do need a bit of green. Yeah, I think we're naturally drawn to it. I know when we put it, for example, installing this garden here, the amount of people that are coming out and saying what a wonderful job we were doing. And you know this sort of thing is much needed in this space. And it's also by doing this, it's encouraged the cause. This is a council owned area. It's encouraged the council now to reconfigure the whole of this area to sort of give this more of a sense of place.

Adam: I mean, it's interesting you say that. I have to say my experience is not that, it's that young people I meet and I don't meet as many as probably you do, so I will accept that maybe you have a more expert view on this. But my experience is that younger people are engaged with the politics of nature like they're very into green politics maybe and talk about it, but you don't see them a lot in the woodlands.

Danny: Oh, absolutely.

Adam: It's actually older people I see in the woodlands and it's the young people are sort of politically going, yeah, yeah, that's cool. But actually, I don't see them at these sort of events and they might grow into that. But so is that I I'm just wondering whether you recognise that or you think no, no, that's not what you see. They are actually out there and I'm just seeing, you know, a sort of different view.

Danny: I think I think they are. I think they are out there. Obviously there are a lot of young people aren't kind of, don't, aren't as engaged with nature as say I was when I I was a lot younger. I mean you don't see them outside sort of playing around, kicking the ball, climbing trees like we would do, going off of bike rides into the fields.

Adam: Are you a country boy, then are you? Or you grew up in town?

Danny: No. In fact, my my childhood was very I I moved around a lot cause my dad was in the army. So lived in Belgium, Germany, Malta, all those sort of places. But we were never encouraged to be indoors. We were always thrown outside. I mean, I remember even at the age of 8 or 9 just disappearing for all day. My parents would never know where I was. But you know, I'd I always came home. I never came to any harm. But I think these days I think parents are kind of very worried that that something might nefarious might happen to their children and and the kids aren't given the freedom that we were given, which is a shame. So they're not exposed to nature as much on their own. I mean, I do see kids going around with their parents on walks and stuff like that, but it's not quite the same as being able to explore on your own. You know, children naturally want to sort of push the boundaries. We really need to let kids do their own thing, explore more. It's a growing experience and you know, and we all need it. We all need to be out and about and you know, listen to the tweet, I mean, tweeting of the birds, you know, feeling, feeling the wind on our on our faces, the warmth of the sun on our skin, all those things that you know, just feeling the texture of the soil, the texture of the bark on the trees. It's lovely. I love doing that. When I hug a tree, you know. Just to smell the bark. It's lovely. It's comforting. And that's because I was exposed to it when I was a child. And you know it, it gives me those fond memories and and because of that it's it's very calming and and and a great stress-buster.

Adam: I follow you on on Instagram. You got a good Instagram following and your Instagram handle, if anyone wants to do that, is?

Danny: The Black Gardener

Adam: The Black Gardener. So that, which itself is an interesting sort of handle. So you're making, I don't know, is that just a random handle or are you making a point about, oh I am the black gardener. That's that's a statement.

Danny: *laughs* Well I am. I am what it says on the tin.

Adam: No, no. But look I'm a bald, I'm a bald reporter *laughs*. My handle isn't bald reporter, right? So it feels like you're saying something about that that's important. And I just...

Danny: It is it is, it is important.

Adam: Unpack that for me. Why is, why did you choose that, why is that connection to gardening, to nature and the lack community and your heritage? Why is that important?

Danny: It's important because there are few black people who are in my industry, so that's why I'm The Black Gardener. So I got the idea from a guy called so, The Black Farmer.

Adam: Yeah, famous range of sausages.

Danny: That's right and I saw that he was having success with his name and the reason he calls himself The Black Farmer, cause at the time he's the only black farmer in the country, so hence The Black Farmer. Black gardeners, professional black gardeners are as rare as hen's teeth. So I thought to myself, why don't I call myself the black gardener?

Adam: But why? Why do you think it is then? Cause that goes back to our earlier conversation. About sort of other diverse communities.

Danny: It could be some psychological reason, maybe from the days of slavery. Where working the land is seen as servile. Parents don't want their children to be working the land. They want their children to do something respectable like be a doctor or lawyer or something like that, so they tend to veer them away from doing something which is connected to the land, and and I think maybe that could be a reason, I mean I did have a conversation with somebody via Twitter in the States about it, and she said it's the same there. People of colour tend not to want to go into land-based industry. I mean I've I've only ever and this is only about two months ago, I saw my first black tree surgeon. Yeah, and and you know my plant wholesalers. I've spoken to them about it and they said, you know what, we've got thousands of people on the books and they can only count on one hand the amount of people of colour who are actually in the land-based industry. But also you you've gotta see it to be it as well, you know.

Adam: What do you mean?

Danny: Well, what I mean is if people see me in this space, then it's gonna encourage them to be in this space.

Adam: I see, it normalises it more.

Danny: It it normalises it more. I mean, I I go into the countryside. I mean, I'm a member of the National Trust, RHS. And I go and visit these great gardens and I walk around. I'm obviously in nature, and I very rarely see people of colour. I I I was in, where was I? Sissinghurst, a little, Sissinghurst Gardens a while back. And I must have been there for a good four or five hours. And I was the only person of colour who was walking around that space. So I I want people to see me in those spaces and that hopefully will encourage them to think, well if it's for him, why can't I go there as well.

Adam: Yeah, very cool. So I mean addressing, I mean that community and or anyone who's sort of listening to this podcast then. What would your message to them be about, maybe about that you've learned from your experiences engaging with gardens and trees and nature that you'd encourage them to do, or ways of getting involved, any anything you'd want to say to them?

Danny: Just just go out and enjoy the space, you know? Don't be put off because you feel it's not for you. It's for everybody. I mean, nature shouldn't have any boundaries. It's there for everybody to enjoy and you get the benefits from being out there. It's it's it's all good for us. I mean I would really like to see more people engaged in gardening or horticulture as a way of earning a living. Because for me it's it's not a job. It's just what I do. It's what I enjoy. I've got a real passion for it. I love it and I like to see other people, whoever they are. It it doesn't have to be a colour thing. It it, I'm talking about young, old, I'm talking about gay, straight, whatever, whoever you are, it's there for everybody to to enjoy.

Adam: Brilliant. Well, it's been a real treat meeting you. Thank you very much indeed. Under your wonderful sculpture in your garden in the centre of London.

Danny: Yeah, you're most welcome.

Adam: Thank you very much. Remind me of your your your social media handles.

Danny: It's The Black Gardener. I'm I'm on Facebook and I'm on Threads.

Adam: On Threads, now there's something I haven't heard for a long time!

Danny: Yes. Yeah *laughs* So there you go. There you go.

Adam: Right, The Black Gardener, thank you very much indeed,

Danny: You're most welcome.

Adam: Well, thank you very much for listening to that and those bangs you might have heard in the background were a sign that we should go because that was the the local bin men coming along to collect the rubbish *laughs*. Anyway, thanks for listening. And wherever you're taking your walks, be that in real life or just with us on the Woodland Walks podcast, I wish you all happy wandering.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the Visiting Woods pages. Thank you.

Buckland Wood is no ordinary wood. This is magical temperate rainforest, a rare habitat not just in the UK but in the world. Cloaked in lush lichens and mosses, dotted with stone walls and bridges and with a beautiful river rambling through, it already looks and feels like a special place. But the Trust has big plans for its future. Join us to explore with rainforest guru Sam, who tells us about the bid to restore this globally important site and its huge potential to connect people with nature, store carbon and boost biodiversity. Hear why temperate rainforests are so special, along with pine marten reintroductions, backpacks on beetles and much more!

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: For today's woodland walk, we are heading into the rainforest, but I am not going very far. Well, I'm going quite far, but not to the Amazon, or South America. I'm going to to the temperate rainforest, which isn't as well known, but is actually even rarer than the tropical rainforest. It's also known as Atlantic or Celtic rainforest. And as I said, exceptionally rare. You do find it on the West Coast of Scotland, North and West Wales, Devon, Cornwall, Cumbria, parts of Northern Ireland, which sounds like a long list, but it really isn't. And what's wonderful actually is that Britain is really the place in the world to find these things. We have a very high proportion of the global area of temperate rainforest. I'm heading to Devon to see some temperate rainforests. Anyway, enough from me. Let's go talk to an expert about Devon's temperate and exciting rainforest.

Sam: So I'm Sam Manning. I'm the project officer for the Woodland Trust Rainforest Recovery Project. We are here in Buckland Wood, which is a new Woodland Trust acquisition on Dartmoor in the Dart Valley.

Adam: Fantastic. And it's it's super new because the place we came down didn't seem to have a sign on it or anything. So when did the Trust acquire this?

Sam: So we've literally just acquired this this month and it's an extension really of two other sites that we own in the Dart Valley, Ausewell Wood, which we bought about five years ago and Grey Park Wood, which we've owned for a couple of decades.

Adam: Right. And and what are we gonna do? Where are you taking me today?

Sam: So we're going to have a walk around the wood and I'm going to show you some of the aspects of the restoration work that we have planned here, we're going to go down to the Dart River, which is a really special river. It's 26 miles long. Very, very ecologically biodiverse, very important for, in terms of temperate rainforest, and look at how we can restore that through various different natural flood management methods.

Adam: Right. Lead on, Sir. So you already mentioned the keyword temperate rainforest. Is that what this is?

Sam: Yeah. So this is sort of prime what we call hyper-oceanic temperate rainforest.

Adam: You just have to say that slowly. Hypo what?

Sam: Hyper-oceanic.

Adam: Hyper-oceanic, OK.

Sam: Yes. So there's there's two different kinds of temperate rainforest broadly. There's southern oceanic, which is any rainforest woodland that receives over 1.5 metres of rainfall a year.

Adam: Right.

Sam: Or hyper-oceanic and that is 1.8 metres of rainfall and above, so slightly techy and scientific. But what it means is is that you get two distinctly different communities of lichens or lower plants, which is what makes these woodlands particularly special.

Adam: Sorry, I've already forgotten. Are we in the rain type of temperate rainforest that gets more rain or less rain?

Sam: More rain.

Adam: More rain.

Sam: Yeah it rains a lot here.

Adam: So that's the the non-oceanic one gets more rain.

Sam: The hyper-oceanic gets a lot of rain, yeah.

Adam: Hyper-oceanic. OK, so you can see I'm a poor student. OK. So, but luckily extraordinary, I mean, it's a bit there's a chill, but it's it has been lovely weather and it's definitely dry today.

Sam: Hmm yeah, this is this is quite strange for Dartmoor really, I think this is sort of the driest March in 60 years or something. So we are we are beginning to experience much, much drier springs and summers, but one of the functions of these rainforests is they are very, very good at producing their own rain and and in 2020, during the COVID lockdown, there was a real blue sky dry sort of drought level day in that March-April period. And I remember walking through this valley in the middle of the day and there was a thunderstorm and that was occurring nowhere else even in Devon or the wider country. And that's because they're effectively these sponges that accumulate a lot of rain in winter, store them, and then produce them more in summer.

Adam: Wow. And and I mean also we we think of rainforests as basically Brazil I suppose. But but we have temperate rainforests in the UK and my understanding is, I mean, they're extraordinarily rare on a, not just the UK, a global level. Just give us a sense of how special and unusual these environments are.

Sam: Yeah, that's right. So they're they're found only on 1% of the earth's land surface. So they are rarer by area than tropical rainforest.

Adam: Right. Do you happen to know? Sorry, are we going down there?

Sam: Down there yeah.

Adam: OK, so 1% temperate rainforests. Do you know what tropical rainforests are to give us a sense of proportion?

Sam: I actually don't know that, but I suspect it's probably around somewhere between 10-15%.

Adam: OK, well, I'm not gonna hold you to that *both laugh* but but that gives us a sort of sense of just how rare these are and tropical rainforests are fairly rare anyway, but OK. So these are very, very unusual environments. And what are you trying to do here then?

Sam: Well, a lot of these temperate rainforests are ancient woodlands, but they are plantations on ancient woodlands, so they are woodlands that have existed in perpetuity for as long as records go back. But a lot of them, as you can see here, have been coniferised, so they would have been cleared of their native tree species like oak, to be replaced by non-native timber crops from places like the Pacific Northwest, which which that's also ironically a temperate rainforest landscape, but those species are not co-adapted to the species we have here. So you you get these plantations that are very, very unbiodiverse, very dark, very shading and really don't work in tandem with a lot of the light-demanding rainforest species that we have, like rowans, hawthorns, oaks, that kind of thing. Of those sites I've talked about, almost half of it is conifer.

Adam: So your your first job, ironically, is to take trees out?

Sam: Well there'll be a sort of two-pronged approach really of using natural processes to diversify the forest, make it more structured, diverse. But we will need to intervene at certain times, particularly if we have really, really rare species. So in Ausewell for example, there's a species of lichen called bacidia subturgidula, so it's got a mad Latin name,

Adam: Wow, OK I'm definitely not saying that *laughs*

Sam: *laughs* But that species, for example, we have a quarter of the entire world's population of that species of lichen in Ausewell.

Adam: Right in Ausewell, which is quite a small place.

Sam: Yeah, exactly. That's about 100 hectares, so...

Adam: And that's a quarter of the global population of this lichen is in that...

Sam: Of that species, yeah. So when it comes to that, it's really about almost surgically intervening.

Adam: That's interesting. Let's let's carry on, you you better lead on, I've no idea where I'm going. So but that's interesting because I I can see planting trees, I've never heard of people actually planting like them, I didn't think that was even possible.

Sam: Yeah. So we call it translocation and and that's really only a last a last sort of nuclear option really when it comes to lichen conservation, if we have a tree where they have a really, really rare form of, a rare population of a species, then moving that to another tree may be the difference between that going extinct or not. But here now we've had this happen, what we're going to be doing is seeding it with those rainforest tree species to start to get that regeneration and there's loads over here.

Adam: What I'm still not clear about is why is the rainforest so special? It might be, oh it gets a lot of rain, who cares? A place gets a lot of rain, so does Wales, so does a lot of bits of London. It's clearly something special, it's not the trees, so what, why is having a temperate rainforest actually a good thing, what makes it special?

Sam: Well, there's there's there's a few different things. One of them is, and this is the real key one we focus on, is the biodiversity value. So the real bad, Britain in general is quite a wildlife poor place. We have quite a low species diversity, but these rainforests are absolute wells of biodiversity globally. The key ones are these epiphytes, so we're talking about lichens, bryophytes, so those are the mosses, liverworts and hornworts. Britain has over 2,000 species of lichen, it's one of the most biodiverse places on Earth in terms of lichen species, so we're really punching above our weight in terms of biodiversity in that sense, and they're only really found in these temperate rainforest habitats.

Adam: And lichen, I love lichen, and it's a real sign of air purity and everything, they're beautiful. How much do they support, like wildlife? I'm not aware of animals feeding off lichen very much, I don't think it has much nutrients in it?

Sam: Not too much at a macro level, but if you were to delve into that microscopic world, they are absolute keystone species in terms of forming the bedrock for so many invertebrates for so much sort of microbes. But they're also functionally, and this is something I'm I'm really passionate about, is looking at these forests in terms of what they can give to us functionally and the environment functionally, they are really good at fixing nitrogen. They're very, very good at fixing carbon, but but so in terms, that's what that's what makes temperate rainforest really good in terms of climate change mitigation is they hold that water, but they also are incredible carbon stores far more carbon is stored in these forests than traditional forests in the UK.

Adam: And that's lichens playing a big role in this?

Sam: A huge part, yeah, because of the pure, like the biomass of those lichens and mosses.

Adam: Ohh interesting. OK, so where are we going?

Sam: So I would quite like to go down to that river.

Adam: I'd love to go down to the river! Can I just ask, we're not going that way, are we??

Sam: No, I think we're gonna, that's one we may drive down, I think.

Adam: Drive down there?? No no we're not going to drive down there, that's not possible! *both laugh*

Sam: Yeah, we might have to go to a scenic detour around.

Adam: OK, well, there let's go down to the river. You have to lead. You look like...

Sam: So I think if we head up back to the car, shoot down, yeah.

Adam: OK. Ohh I see. OK, OK. But we're not driving down this this hill.

Sam: No, no, I think let's go down to the main Dart actually and then you can...

Adam: OK. And then get and get back, OK. Brilliant. We have come down to the river, remind me what the river is called?

Sam: This is the Webburn.

Adam: The Webburn, which leads into the Dart. We are on proper Hobbit territory now. A moss-covered stone bridge over the Webburn. We passed a little a beautiful little cottage, actually there's a number of beautiful cottages here. So explain a bit about where we are.

Sam: So we're stood on the Webburn, the Webburn watercourse and just behind us is the confluence of where it enters the Dart River and this kind of where it feeds into our aspirations for the restoration of the site. It's what many people would consider to be quite a natural looking river or natural looking watercourse. But this really as you can see it's very straight, it's very cut down into into the ground. So we call that incision and that's a product of centuries of draining and of artificial domestication of this watercourse to allow the land around it to be drier, which makes it more kind of productive for forestry.

Adam: So that's not natural?

Sam: No.

Adam: Are you gonna do anything about that? I feel like a teacher, 'are you going to do anything about that?'!

Sam: *laughs* That that is the plan.

Adam: How how do you change, I mean, the river has cut, therefore quite a a deep edge into the land. What would you be able to do to to change that then?

Sam: Yeah. So a couple of years ago I went out to the Pacific Northwest, Canada, Vancouver Island to see their temperate rainforest and have a look at how old growth sort of ancient temperate rainforests function, but also how they restore them. And they, I asked them to take me to a river that was their best example of a really healthy rainforest river with really good salmon populations with great biodiversity that would have been unaffected by humans. And they took me to a place called Lost Shoe Creek. And and from the bottom of the watercourse where it entered the sea to the head waters, it was, you couldn't see the water. It was absolutely covered in wood, so huge trees that had fallen in, trees bank to bank, pinned against the bank. And what that does is it creates a much more dynamic river system that doesn't go in a straight line, but also holds back a lot of the gravel with the sediment and the silt that in this kind of river is making its way to the ocean. And causing a lot of damage.

Adam: So it's allowing or maybe placing actual dead trees into into the water and we can see one tree's already there, presumably that just naturally fell in.

Sam: That's right. Yeah. So if we left this for 1,000 years, it would fill, it would be effectively be a giant log jam, and we'd start to get a lot of that naturalised process happening. And then you get much more biodiversity because there's more invertebrates in the river, there's more shelter for fish and birds, there's more habitat. But what we're effectively planning on doing is is doing something what people call stage zero restoration, so taking, accelerating that that thousand-year process and taking it back to a more naturalised river.

Adam: It's such a a spot. I think it's time for a bit of social media video, so I'll film that and you can see that on the Woodland Trust and my sites, and then we'll crack on. Sorry, I know this is really important, but this is an amazing fallen tree over a drystone wall covered in moss, I mean, I just had to stop for a moment. Look, you talked about lichen. I know, I ask you a question then stop you answering it *both laugh*. I love this lichen, it's all on this tree. It is really, really beautiful.

Sam: So this is called seastorm lichen which is one of the few lichens that has actually a romantic sort of English name that isn't Latin.

Adam: Wow. Well, very cool. Whilst you're talking, I'm gonna take a photo. OK. Yeah, go on, seastorm lichen.

Sam: Yeah, and and so a lot of the lichens will, as you can see, grow on the branches where the light is greater. So there's almost a canopy world of biodiversity up there, and what we're doing by increasing the light levels is, is drawing these lichens down to the forest floor by increasing the light levels. But this is a really, really good example of the kind of levels of deadwood we actually want to aspire to. So in, as you can see, in most of the forest, it's completely denuded of deadwood. So we'd be lucky if we get sort of 5 cubic metres of wood per hectare. In the forest of, the temperate rainforests of Canada, they have sort of 600 cubic metres a hectare of deadwood. So you you could barely even move through their forest.

Adam: And that's super, because often people want the deadwood cleared cause you go, 'oh well it's untidy', but that's a sort of oasis of of biodiversity.

Sam: That's right. It's a whole layer of ecology that we're missing from our forests. And we recently did a study on something called the blue ground beetle, which is a an endemic rare species to temperate rainforests. We didn't know where they went in the day, so we didn't really know anything about them, they're very elusive. They come out at night, walk up the trees, and they reflect the moon off of their blue, kind of shiny carapace. They're our biggest beetle. So we did a study with Exeter University where we put GPS tracking backpacks on them.

Adam: On a beetle?

Sam: On a beetle, to find out where they went. And lo and behold, we found that they were going into these deadwood habitats and so it just it just shone a light on how important increasing deadwood in these forests is for all of those species.

Adam: Amazing. All right. I I do encourage you to follow the Woodland Trust's social media, Insta and all the rest of them and my Bluesky and Twitter or X or whatever it is you wanna do. And I'm now gonna take a photo which hopefully you'll see on any of that social media. So do follow them all. And we're going to take a pause as I pose *laughs*. Right, I'm back from my photographic expedition. Right. So you can answer the question again now about this public debate about access and and what have you. Go on, you lead on whilst we're talking.

Sam: So yeah, Dartmoor is really kind of the centre of gravity for a wider story around public, an increasing demand from the public to access land for wellbeing, recreation, connection to nature, that has been kind of growing here, particularly in this area.

Adam: Right.

Sam: There are, I think we actually sorry, we do need to go that way, I think they've blocked the path.

Adam: OK fair enough.

Sam: We're not having to scramble.

Adam: And I think we're going back to where we came from. Alright. Although that path there looks blocked.

Sam: This one looks good. Yeah.

Adam: Oh OK.

Sam: Go through this end.

Adam: Through the little stone wall. OK. Ruby's following doing social media. Ohh OK. Yeah, sorry, carry on.

Sam: So, I suppose the concern of some people might be that increasing footfall, public access to these really important fragments of temperate rainforest, it could have a damaging effect on the biodiversity here. But the reality is that in order for people to connect with, understand and care about nature, they need to have access to it. And so we need to bring people into these habitats in a sensitive and considered way to educate people about them, but the other key thing is we need to expand these habitats. So we're part of something called the South West Rainforest Alliance. And our goal collectively is to increase the amount of temperate rainforest in Devon and Cornwall, to triple it by 2050.

Adam: OK. I mean that's worth pausing on that for a moment. That's an extraordinary task. I mean it sounds a bit, I have to say I'm a bit sceptical about that, it sounds like you plucked that out the air. How on earth would you get to tripling the cover you've got?

Sam: Well, we think we can do that mostly through buffering existing temporate rainforest, so planting around them which can then make those bigger, better, more connected, but also just by introducing trees into farmed landscapes but not in a way that damages the farming. So agroforestry. But also the inclusion of hedgerows that connect up those fragments and there's been a lot of work that's being done currently in partnership with Plymouth University to model how we would do that effectively.

Adam: And the other thing that strikes me when we talk about ancient woodland, we're talking about, well, we can't create ancient woodlands, the clue's in the name, it's got to be ancient. It is different for temperate rainforests, isn't it? These things which I've heard about are achievable in a relatively short period of time. Is that right?

Sam: That's right. So we think we can create new temperate rainforest within our lifetime. So within a kind of 40-50 year woodland establishment phase and as part of the Rainforest Recovery Project, we have a strand of work that we're calling the temperate rainforest creation trials and that includes long term scientific research to tell us how best we can create rainforest the quickest. So is it doing closed canopy woodlands like this or is it individual trees in farmland? Or is it open space woodlands or maybe even natural regeneration?

Adam: Amazing. We're by the river. Let's move on with our tales from the riverbank. One thing I I wanted to ask you, I arrived here last night. And I met well, an old friend of mine called Chris Salisbury, who runs a local sort of adventure, an ecological company, taking people for adventures in the woods and telling stories and all sorts of really interesting things, and he was telling me two things that he's noted. One is the reintroduction of pine martens which I think is talked about, but also he's seen wild boar in these woods and I've never heard of that. Are those, have have you come across those stories?

Sam: Yes, so we were actually involved in the reintroduction of pine martens last year and that was a partnership between us and Devon Wildlife Trust and various other charities. And and that was a sort of very controlled planned, strategic reintroduction of a species that's been really successful. We've brought the public along with us, and they're now part of that increasingly biodiverse and resilient temperate rainforest landscape.

Adam: Right before we move on to wild boar, just educate me, what is a pine marten? Not sure, not entirely sure I know what one is.

Sam: A pine marten is a mustelid, so it's in the same family as sort of the badger, the stoat, the weasel.

Adam: Right, what's it look like?

Sam: It's it's sort of the size of a small cat, it's brown with a white bib and it looks quite a lot like a weasel, but it's larger, but they're very much arboreal mammals, so they spend most of their time in the trees.

Adam: And were they native to this land?

Sam: Yes they were.

Adam: Hunted out were they?

Sam: Hunted to extinction for their pelts and and things like that. Yeah.

Adam: So you're reintroducing them. How successful has that been?

Sam: That's been really successful. So we've reintroduced 15 animals to Dartmoor last year and we think that that will be enough of a seed population for them to start spreading naturally now.

Adam: OK. And I've heard about what, the reintroduction in other parts of the country of pine martens. Wild boar. A a harder issue I would have thought 'cause these are quite big beasts?

Sam: Yes.

Adam: Did, did any, presumably the Trust didn't introduce them? No.

Sam: No. So they haven't been, in the same way as pine martens were, formally introduced. There's been more of a sort of natural creep, or in some cases, so there's a term that people use now called 'beaver bombing', which which people use completely straight faced in a lot of circles now. And that is effectively guerilla reintroduction of species.

Adam: Right. OK. So these are just people who feel that they should be rewilded and just did it without any any authority or talking to the local community they just brought them in?

Sam: Exactly without going through that sort of more defined process.

Adam: And and look, clearly this is not a Woodland Trust policy, so I'm not asking you to defend it, but but the effect of that, I mean, have you noticed anything?

Sam: I think, I mean, it's a huge subject, but I think in general, if you don't bring communities along with you by educating them, by mitigating the effect of a species, it it can damage the movement in in the longer term. The other thing I'd say about boar and those larger sort of herbivores, which would have been a really important part of our ecosystem for diversifying them and keeping that process going, they will really struggle unless we have bigger, better, more connected woodlands that are more natural anyway.

Adam: Right. I understand. So we're just going through talking about this being the rainforest, but it has been amazingly dry in the spring and now you can hear that in the crunchy undergrowth of very dry leaves. You're gonna, I'm I'm an idiot anyway, but I'm concentrating on too many things so I've forgotten the name of the river for the third time *laughs*.

Sam: It's the Webburn.

Adam: The Webburn, why can't I remember the Webburn? All right. We've come down to the Webburn, to the riverbank side. It's beautifully clear this water, isn't it? There I mean it, it's it's wonderful clear. I so want to stand in that and then I'll have wet feet for the rest of the day and the journey back to London. So I'm not going to do that. How much of a threat is this sort of environment under?

Sam: So temperate rainforest once covered about 20% of the UK and they would have clothed our western seaboard which receives that amazing sort of oceanic rainfall and temperature we've been talking about. That's been reduced now to about 2% in the UK.

Adam: OK, from 20 to 2%?

Sam: From 20 to 2, so 90% loss.

Adam: Over what sort of period?

Sam: So we're talking about millennia really. So this is they would have been at their zenith about 5,000, 6,000 years ago during the Bronze Age and that progressive multi-generation story of increasing farming, of draining, of forestry, has led to the fragmentation that we see today. In Devon and Cornwall, we think it would have covered about 75%. That's now been reduced to about 8%. So a similar 90% loss both regionally and nationally.

Adam: And are you optimistic that that's about to change? Are we now seeing a different story?

Sam: I feel really optimistic, but mostly that's because I think we're facing a lot of these holistic problems at the moment around the biodiversity crisis, around climate change, and I think rainforests are an actually incredibly cheap, scalable way of restoring nature, which will help us with the biodiversity crisis, but also protect communities from climate change. By doing some of this rewetting work, by increasing increasing tree cover, we can massively reduce flooding and massively mitigate the effect of drought on our farming and on our communities as it gets worse. We are hoping to raise £2.8 million to help us achieve the goals we have here and and the site will be open once we've achieved that goal towards the end of the year. And people can go to woodlandtrust.org.uk/southwest to find more about that appeal.

Adam: So just repeat that website again so if people want, if they, if you've got your pen or your computer keyboard ready, here is the website to go to.

Sam: Thats woodlandtrust.org.uk/southwest

Adam: And they can learn learn more about it, but also contribute there can they?

Sam: That's right. Yeah. And if they want to learn more about the Rainforest Recovery Project, we are launching a website this week called rainforestrecovery.org.uk.

Adam: So by the time you hear this podcast, all of that will be available to you at the moment I can edit it all together. It is an amazing, amazing site. I am really privileged to be here. What a wonderful place. Sam, thank you very much indeed.

Sam: You're welcome.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the visiting woods pages. Thank you.

Spring is in the air! Join us at Londonthorpe Wood, Lincolnshire to enjoy the wellbeing benefits of woods while using all our senses to check for signs of spring. We seek out frogspawn, song thrushes and blackthorn blossom for Nature's Calendar, a citizen science phenology project which tracks the effects of weather and climate change on nature across the UK.

Keeping your eyes and ears peeled to record for Nature's Calendar doesn't just support science. Discover new research that shows how engaging all our senses on a woodland walk is good for our wellbeing, and how different levels of biodiversity in each wood can impact the positive effects of being in nature.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, this month I'm off to Grantham in Lincolnshire, which is a bit to the right of Nottingham and quite a bit below Sheffield, if you're not clear on your geography. Anyway, I'm here to investigate a Woodland Trust project called Nature's Calendar, which tracks how the seasons are changing over time and if, for instance, the timing of spring is starting earlier. Now, if that is happening, that's not a minor thing, because all of nature depends on, well, the rest of all of nature. So if one thing changes, it can cause big changes everywhere. Now, this is all part of citizen science, and if you don't know that phrase or haven't heard it before, it means the data is collected from people of all ages, backgrounds, abilities, not necessarily by scientists, in fact, probably not by scientists. Anyone can volunteer and the volunteering work is incredibly important. Volunteers have been recording the changing seasons with Nature's Calendar for 20 years, and the database they have built contains 2.9 million records. It's believed to be the longest written biological record of its kind in the UK, and it's used by researchers from across the world to explore the effects of weather and climate on timings in wildlife. And a brief word for those who like new words, here's one for you: phenology. That's what this project is all about. The study of seasonal changes in plants and animals from year to year. Phenology. Now, that word was invented by a botanist called Charles Morren in around 1849. But even before they had a name for it, people were busy recording what was happening in nature and Britain was really at the forefront of much of this work. Robert Marsham was Britain's first phenologist, doing his work before the name was invented for his field of study, and he recorded his quote 'indications of spring' from around the year 1736. Anyway, all of that is a huge historical meander so let's get to the events of today with a real meander around Londonthorpe Woods with one of the Woodland Trust's experts.

Here we are. Whenever you're ready!

Sally: Okay, I'm Sally Bavin. I'm a monitoring and evaluation adviser for the Woodland Trust and we are currently at Londonthorpe Woods, near Grantham.

Adam: Right, well, thank you very much for joining me here. It's a chilly day, but we're good on the, we're good on the rain for the moment. So what is the purpose of what we're doing here? Where are you taking me today and why?

Sally: We've we've come out to the woods today to enjoy some of the wellbeing benefits of visiting woodlands and particularly looking out for signs of spring using all of our senses. So, yeah, it should be quite a quite an enjoyable one.

Adam: Fantastic. And this fits in with part of a campaign the Woodland Trust is running. Is that right?

Sally: Absolutely, yes, so we have at the moment we're asking people to look out for the vital signs of spring, as we're calling it. So we've picked out three things of interest that are frogspawn, the song of the song thrush returning for the spring, and the first blackthorn flower.

Adam: Right. And that's what we're going to try and spot today.

Sally: We will have a go. Yeah, we might be a bit early for some, but this is the the interesting thing to see what's out and about at the moment.

Adam: And on a previous podcast we were here together looking to sort of identify trees. I'm going to be super impressed if you can identify birdsong as well. Are you good at that?

Sally: Well, I know the song thrush. That's the one we're listening out for *laughs* so I'm not too bad. You'll have to test me as we go along.

Adam: Okay, so we're at Londonthorpe Woods, which is, happens to be near Grantham, which is where the Woodland Trust is actually based. So all very lovely. Which way?

Sally: I assume we're editing lots of…

Adam: No, no, no, all this confusion is, is in *both laugh*. That way.

Sally: Okay.

Adam: Right. If you're hearing noises off, it's because Alex from the Trust is joining us. She's part of the brains of the operation and also doing social media videos. So I'm gonna look particularly daft with my, headset on, talking into a little box. Anyway, so, okay well, we're already leaving the woodlands. That was a quick visit. We're crossing the road. Is it because there's a pond over here?

Sally: Yes. So the first thing we're going to look for, is frogspawn. And as we are walking towards the pond, I could tell you about some research that the Woodland Trust has funded, but let's wait till we get away from the road.

Adam: I was gonna say we just crossed not a very busy road that got very busy as we were crossing it. Okay, let's go through here, away from the road and into another bit of woodland.

Sally: So I think to get to the pond, I think it's that way. And then that way.

Adam: Okay, you're not filling me with confidence. You've only taken two directions, and you're not sure of either of them at the moment, but okay *both laugh*

Sally: Yeah. So as we're walking along, the idea is to be using all of your senses to engage with the landscape that we're in. So I've just seen a robin fly past there, but, yeah so…

Adam: But robins aren't a sign of spring?

Sally: They sing all year round, they're a good constant through the winter. Thank goodness for the robin otherwise we wouldn't really have much birdsong in the winter at all.

Adam: And they look lovely, robins, but actually they're they're quite territorial, they've, a lot of them come to my bird feeder in my garden and they're, they're proper brave! I mean, I'll go out and the robin looks at me like, come on, get the nuts out, get the seed, they're not scared. They're quite territorial, looks like quite territorial birds, I think. But go on, you you were wanting to tell me?

Sally: So one of the birds that we're listening for is the song thrush. That is because, it's a bird, which generally, it starts singing early spring, and it's a species that's been recorded for Nature's Calendar for many years now. So it's one that we're asking people to look out, to listen out for even, engaging all your senses, because it's quite a distinctive song, so if we do hear one, then that would be great.

Adam: And then where do they go then, in the winter, then, migratory, migratory, oh, gosh, I can't even say that word properly. But anyway, they're not always here, perhaps is a better way to describe them.

Sally: We do have resident song thrush, but it's the singing behavior that starts in the spring.

Adam: Oh does it? And is that all about attracting, you know, mates?

Sally: Yeah, yeah, it's the the springtime rush for romance, yeah.

Adam: Right okay and is it the boys or the girls doing the singing? Or is it both?

Sally: I believe it's the males, but, yeah, I'll have to check that one.

Adam: Okay. I'll check.

Sally: It's usually the males.

Adam: Is it? Okay.

Sally: But the robins are the exception where females and males both sing.

Adam: Actually, do you know what? I've got such a bad memory, but I, we came here, and I remember stopping at this tree because I think you were explaining to me, was it, a little, I've forgotten the name, but the things that you crush up and make ink with that Shakespeare used to write in.

Sally: Ah, oak galls.

Adam: Oak galls! Oak galls. And I think they were around here. No, this is not an oak?

Sally: No…

Adam: Okay. But this is, that's right, I think oak galls, which was a great little episode all about, and I've got one on my desk still from this woodland.

Sally: Oh, you've not used it for writing yet?

Adam: I haven't ground it up to try and make ink, no. Anyway, sorry, I was interrupting. So yes so so the birds don't leave us, but they do start singing, right? A very muddy bit.

Sally: Very muddy.

Adam: Okay, you might hear some squelching. Oh, blimey.

Sally: So that's some good sensory experience there as well all the squelchy mud.

Adam: Okay, so tell me a bit about, this woodland that we're in whilst we're going up to find the pond.

Sally: So this is Londonthorpe Wood. It's the closest woodland to our Grantham head office, which is lovely. It was it's a woodland creation site, but it's getting, on I think it's roughly about 30 years, probably since it was planted now. So, it's really, you know, well established now, we can start to see lots of different types of habitats. We've got some glades, which is open areas within the woodland, with some nice grassland habitat. There's some dense areas, like these sort of thickets of blackthorn, which we could be checking for blossom. I can't actually see any at the moment yet. I think we're perhaps a bit too too early.

Adam: Well, we're going just off the beaten track a bit here into a lovely pond area where, oh, it's it's actually, this is an outdoor classroom it says, so we'll go through this gate and walking up here, there's a good sized pond and a platform, I've lost the word, a wooden platform so you can sort of stand out a bit and it's here that we're hoping to see frogspawn, one of the early signs of spring, even though it's a bit chilly today. So we'll have a, yeah, I'm already getting a shake of the head so okay. Which is a shame, because it looks like there are no frogspawn here at the moment. So one of the early signs of spring is not here. But I suppose just the absence of that spring, is itself interesting, I mean, and in itself, one observation, of course, isn't scientifically significant, but actually, I think what is perhaps really important is that, global warming, changing seasons aren't linear. So we're also getting we may be getting an early spring, but also we're getting more volatile periods perhaps. So it's just up and down. And perhaps that's what we're seeing anyway. No, no frogspawn today. Let's move on.

Sally: It's an unusually hilly wood for Lincolnshire.

Adam: Yeah. Oh, right. Is Lincolnshire, meant to be fairly flat?

Sally: A lot of it's flat, yeah, but Grantham is on this, sort of geological feature called the Lincoln Edge, and it's sort of one big long hill that runs through the county, sort of south to north. And we just happened to be, have found it to climb.

Adam: Right. So what is the purpose of this then? Presumably it's partly scientific because you're getting data from a from a lot of people around the country. Is it something else apart from that?

Sally: Nature's Calendar as a project? Yeah, so, like you say, it's it's primarily it was set up to be a phenology project. So studying how the changing climate is affecting the changing seasonal events and affecting what time of year they occur. But it's also a really good opportunity for, because obviously it's volunteers that, you know, look out for these things and we need eyes and ears all over the country looking out for these things, and something that you get back from it as a volunteer, is that opportunity to have that bit of extra motivation to keep your eyes and ears out, looking at nature regularly, and with a sense of purpose to do that, which I think is a really good opportunity for people to, to help their own wellbeing. So it just kind of really fits well with what we know from research is, the way to get the most out of time in nature, which is using your senses to engage with it, finding meaning in it, and connecting with other people around it as well. So you become part of this, you know, community of people contributing and giving back as well. So you're providing your data that's, you know, an opportunity for you to, to contribute to something bigger than yourself and to, to have that sense of purpose, with what you're doing. So it just brings it more, yeah, it brings it alive for people, I think, because a walk in the woods, if you're not necessarily engaging with your surroundings, you could miss a lot of the beneficial species that that research showed when people engage with them, they really benefit from.

Adam: Brilliant.

Sally: I, I, one thing, oh, shall we sit on this log, that'd be a nice little, I mean, it looks a bit prickly around it, but nice to just sit and chat because we've had a lot of hills!

Adam: It does have a lot of, yeah, we have had a lot of hills.

Sally: So the research that the Woodland Trust funded, I just wanted to talk about what we're hoping to actually do with these findings and sort of why it's all important. So, the mapping that the researchers at the University of Kent have done, to identify those hotspots of, where woodlands are really rich in biodiversity and the biodiversity that people relate to for wellbeing experiences, it really it fits in with the Woodland Trust's focus on being really interested and driven to improve the quality of woodlands rather than just the quantity. So while we do need to increase woodland cover, as you know, just pure hectarage, we need more woodlands, it's really about the quality of those woodlands that we're creating and protecting and restoring woodlands that we already have. So this research really shows how it's important for people that the quality of woodlands is there. Just it just shows how important things like our new woodland creation guide are, which, set out guidelines for how to create a new woodland in a way that's most likely to help it develop into a woodland that's going to be thriving with wildlife in the future.

Adam: And what sort of person gets that guide, is that just for professional sort of people who are setting up massive woodlands across the country, or is it something you you might be able to do as a community project or if you've got a large bit of land yourself?

Sally: Yeah so it's available on our website so anybody can download it and it's aimed at anybody who's creating a woodland so the principles can be taken on board and scaled up or down to whatever's necessary. So, yeah, that's available on our website.

Adam: And, and in the time that, that this Nature's Calendar has been running, have you noticed any differences?

Sally: I've been with the Woodland Trust for five years, and so I've been recording frogspawn as my main…

Adam: That's your, that's your go to.

Sally: Yeah and I like it because it's very, well it's literally black and white *laughs*. You can, it's there or it's not there, one day it's there. So…

Adam: And what, have you noticed anything in that time?

Sally: Yeah, in my, I mean, a five year span, I suppose there's, there's quite variation and this is obviously just my one record, so it's anecdotal but but there are analysis provided on the website of all the woodlands, the, the Nature's Calendar data and yeah, so I think the first time I recorded it was about 10 March, something like that. And in some years I've recorded it as early as Valentine's Day so that's already past now so this year is obviously a later one. So you know, it, it shows that there is that, the the data from Nature's Calendar is part of it contributes to the State of UK Climate report and the JNCC Spring Index, which is the kind of, the measure that they use to look at the effect of climate change on biodiversity.

Adam: Sorry what's the JNCC?

Sally: JNCC is the… Joint Nature Conservation Council. That's probably, that might be wrong!

Adam: Maybe, something like that. We don't guarantee that by the way, if you're listening, it's just what we think. Anyway, okay, the JNCC…*both laugh*

Sally: It's a sort of government organisation.

Adam: Doesn't matter, I'm sure they're very important. Anyway, the JNCC, I interrupted your your train of thought. The JNCC says what?

Sally: The spring index has moved forwards by more than eight days over I think it's the last 30 years, I think is the data that they use.

Adam: And is that a lot? Is that significant? I'm not sure?

Sally: It's it's significant when you think that birds will time their nesting, to within a peak kind of abundance of caterpillars, which are all also dependent on the phenology of leaves emerging.

Adam: And an eight day difference makes a difference?

Sally: So yes, yes, studies of birds like blue tits, which we've said are, you know, so important for people's wellbeing to be able to see birds like that around, yeah studies have shown that they do suffer in years where, the, the leaves burst too early. That means the caterpillars come out too early, and then they are not in sync with that, pattern for when they're, raising their chicks in the nest because they need a huge amount of food to be able to raise to, to raise a clutch of, of chicks. And they do it over a spell of just, you know, 2 or 3 weeks. So a week is a big difference when you think that that's...

Adam: Right so that makes it, okay, that's it in context. So they're they're really peak feeding for these young chicks is 2 or 3 weeks. So if, if spring is moving eight days that's over half your feeding time to get a sort of young chick away and stable, is actually there's no food. That's the difference between living and not living, presumably that's a big deal?

Sally: Yep, yeah, exactly. And you know, the sort of potential knock on consequences of food chains being disrupted could go much beyond there but I think there's a lot more that we don't know yet. And that's probably just as concerning as what we do know.

Adam: Okay, yeah, I didn't, I have to say when you say eight days over 30 years, I went, well, I don't know, how significant is that. But when you say they've only got two weeks to feed these chicks at their peak, that suddenly makes it much more worrying.

Sally: Yeah, absolutely.

Adam: Okay. All right we've had our little rest.

Sally: I think we're getting rained on now aren't we.

Adam: Oh are we? Oh no.

Sally: I don't know I thought I felt a few spots.

Adam: Right. Where to now? Now why am I asking you, you've no idea!

Sally: I think this takes us to, this takes us back.

Adam: You've no idea. I've got to stop asking you.

Sally: We, I can remember on the…

Adam: We're just going to go forward. And if you, if you find this at some future period, send our love to our families and loved ones.

Sally: Yeah we're still wandering.

Adam: Yeah we're wandering and we just left this under a tree.

Sally: Oh, yeah, I definitely felt rain.

Adam: Okay. A little bit more mud. Whoops. Yeah. My first slide. Oooh.

Sally: Oh look at these. Look at the snowdrops.

Adam: Oh yeah. Snowdrops.

Sally: Now that's a Nature's Calendar event that you can record. But because they're already out we've missed it.

Adam: Alright. Oh gosh I saw that little, there's loads of snowdrops! They're all over there. So that's an early sign of spring.

Sally: Yeah so next year you have to keep an eye out before, you know, in like January.

Adam: Oh so it's not a sign, it comes before spring really. The snowdrops end of winter really.

Sally: Yeah. Well, it all depends where you sort of draw the line, doesn't it? It's all a continuum, really.

Adam: Aren't they beautiful? Gosh.

Sally: And for Nature's Calendar what you, the the key point at which you know, okay, they're officially open is when the flower is actually open like that and you can see in the middle, not, just when they poke through and they're still closed like that one.

Adam: Right.

Sally: Yeah. That's a lovely display of them.

Adam: Yeah. All over. Look, they're on the other side of the path and all these brambles as well. Very nice. It's emerging now.

Sally: Top of the hill, can see, we've got a vantage point now, see where we are, out of the woods. Okay. I think that must be about their peak. You know, we're seeing them on their best, best few days.

Adam: So downhill now? He says hopefully.

Sally: Yeah. Downward stretch.

Adam: Okay. All right. We're going downhill. And whoa ho ho ho ho ho ho! That's like the Vicar of Dibley when she just disappears down a hole, which is much, well it's not quite as dramatic as that, just my foot went into it, not my whole body, but, you know, I don't know if you can hear this, but there we are. It's going through my shoes. I've got wet feet. Whoa ho ho! *both laughing*

Sally: This is a wet bit. We should have brought some tarpaulin just to slide down this hill shouldn't we.

Adam: Sorry? Whoa! Okay, we're all going over. Oh ho ho ho ho!

Sally: You're doing the splits.

Adam: Give me a hand, I've got my legs going different directions. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Whoa, oh whoa! *both laughing* Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry sorry about that.

Sally: Oh, dear. Perhaps this was a mistake.

Adam: It's not just me.

Sally: I wonder if there's such a thing as mud skis.

Adam: Yes. There we are. Go on then, so yeah, so what's the…

Sally: What, why, why does it all matter?

Adam: Why does it matter, all of this then?

Sally: Well, for the Woodland Trust, it's really important to our vision and our mission, we want to create a world where woods and trees thrive for people and for nature. And so there's been quite a lot of work looking at the ecosystem services that are provided by woodlands in terms of carbon and flooding and all of those sorts of things. And a lot of mapping work has been done already to help us prioritise, you know, where is it best to create, protect and restore woods to deliver those particular priorities of different ecosystem services? But this is the first time that human wellbeing has been kind of mapped in that way, to be able to provide insight into, you know, these are the areas that need to be targeted and prioritised to increase biodiversity, particularly in areas where people have not got such high quality woodlands to visit necessarily.

Adam: So an important piece of work scientifically, but a great thing for people to be involved in as well.

Sally: Exactly. And and another thing that was really an interesting finding, so the researchers analysed their map of woodland wellbeing quality against the indices of multiple deprivation, which is some socio-economic data that's in a sort of mapped, format. And they looked to see whether there was a relationship between the quality of woodlands in an area and the socio-economic status. And they found that there is a relationship. So unfortunately, areas which are have a lower socio-economic status also tend to have the lower quality woodlands, which is, you know, it's not fair. And it's, something that, you know, it's opened our eyes to that to now allow us to think about, you know, how is it best to to sort of consider that when we're targeting where to create woodlands and enhance biodiversity in general. So, so yeah, it's really important for people I think, this is this is a really important piece of work, to help us deliver for, for people and nature.

Adam: And if people want to get involved in spotting the early signs of spring, how should they do that?

Sally: You can go to the Woodland Trust website and go to Nature's Calendar, you'll find the link on there, and there'll be all the information there about how to sign up and what different events you can record and how to do it. Lots of information on the website. *dog barks*

Adam: Wonderful. We've got a keen dog who wants to get involved clearly as well. And so go to the Woodland Trust website and you can follow them on social media, Insta and the rest, no doubt as well. Thank you very much.

Sally: Thank you for coming on a walk with us.

Adam: Thank you. I returned to the car park muddier, a little wetter, but we have missed most of the rain so that is really good.

Sally: It's just starting now. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us. And do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite Woodland Walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special or send us an email with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to [email protected] and we look forward to hearing from you.

Grab your hot chocolate (or mulled wine!) and get into the festive spirit with our Christmas special as we meet some reindeer, talk Christmas trees and explore a small but mighty wood with huge value for nature in the snowy Cairngorms National Park. We discover fascinating reindeer facts with Tilly and friends at The Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, and step into a winter wonderland at nearby Glencharnoch Wood with site manager Ross. We learn what makes a good Christmas tree, how the wood is helping to recover the old Caledonian pine forest of Scotland, why the site is so important to the community and which wildlife thrive here. You can also find out which tree can effectively clone itself, and is so tasty to insects that it developed the ability to shake them off!

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, today I'm in the Cairngorms in Scotland. In Scottish Gaelic, the area is called – I'm going to give this a go - Am Monadh Ruadh. Apologies for my pronunciation there, but we are in the midst of a mountain range in the Highlands, of Scotland obviously. Generally we're about 1,000 metres high here but the higher peaks I'm told get to about 1,300 metres odd, which is going on for, I don't know, 4,500 foot or so. So this is a very dramatic landscape. We have rocky outcrops, boulders, steep cliffs. It's home to bird species such as the dotterel, snow bunting, the curlew and red grouse, as well as mammals such as mountain hare. But the reason of course we are here this Christmas is because it is also home to Britain's only herd, I think, of reindeer. Now, the reindeer herder is Tilly. She is the expert here and I've been braving, I am braving the snow and icy winds to be introduced to her and the herd. And from there after that, we're going to take a drive to what I'm told is an amazing wooded landscape of Caledonian pine to talk all things pine, and of course, all things Christmas trees. But first of all, let's meet Tilly, who looks after the reindeer.

Adam: OK, we are recording.

Tilly: That's good. OK. I'd better not say anything naughty then.

Adam: I'll cut out any naughtiness, that's fine.

Tilly: This is a bit of a rustly bag. It's more rustly than normal but never mind.

Adam: What do the reindeer actually eat?

Tilly: Well, so. We're now up in their natural habitat and we're looking across a nice heathery hillside with sedges as well. You can just see them poking through the snow and they'll pick away at the old heather of the year and the sedges.

Adam: Right.

Tilly: But we manage the herd and we like to feed them. So what I've got in my bag is some food for them, which they love.

Adam: Right. And what's in your Santa sack of food now?

Tilly: Oh, that's a secret.

Adam: Oh, you can't tell me. Oh, God.

Tilly: No, no. I can tell you. So it's a cereal mix and there is something similar to what you would feed sheep. Bit of barley, bit of sheep mix.

Adam: That's awesome. So not mince pies and carrots? That's only reserved for Christmas Eve. That's probably not very good for them, I would have thought.

Tilly: Yeah, no, I hate to say this, but reindeer don't actually eat carrots.

Adam: Oh right okay, well, that's good to know.

Tilly: But if ever children bring carrots for them, I never turn them away because we're very good at making carrot soup and carrot cake.

Adam: Santa's helpers get the carrots.

Tilly: And I'm absolutely certain that Santa eats all the mince pies, so all good. So anyway, come on through here. We're going now into a 1000-acre enclosure. It just hooks on there, that's perfect, it goes right across. We could actually once we get close to these visitors are coming off from a hill visit this morning. So you'll be pleased to hear that I am the boss. I'm Mrs. boss man and I've been with the reindeer for 43 years. Now, their lifespan is sort of 12 to 15 years, so I've gone through many generations. I've known many lovely reindeer and there's always a favourite and you would have seen some real characters there today. And you couldn't see them in better conditions. Anyway, do get yourself down and warm yourselves up. Oh, you've done very well to bring a little one like that today.

Walker: He did pretty well until now!

Tilly: You've done extremely well. Of course they have. He's got very red, a bit like Rudolph. The thing is there's just that wind, and it's the wind that drops the temperature, that chill factor.

Adam: Yeah. So where are we going, Tilly?

Tilly: So we're heading out towards what we call Silver Mount. They're not in here all year. Different times of year, sometimes they're all free range, some of them are free ranging, some are in here.

Adam: When you speak about free range, literally they can go anywhere?

Tilly: Yes they can.

Adam: And they come back because they know where the food is?

Tilly: Yes they do. They know where the food is, they sort of know where the home is, but they do wander out onto the high ground as well, more in the summertime.

Adam: Right. And is that, I mean Scotland has different rules. There's a right to roam sort of rule here. Does that apply to reindeer? Is that the issue?

Tilly: That is a moot point.

Adam: Oh, really? We've hardly started and I've got into trouble.

Tilly: No. Well, we lease 6000 acres, right? So we lease everything out to the skyline.

Adam: So that's an extraordinary range for them.

Tilly: It is an extraordinary range, but they know no bounds. I have to say reindeer sometimes do just pop over the boundary.

Adam: And that causes problems with the neighbours?

Tilly: Well, some like it, some aren't so keen. And we herd them as well, so we can herd them home. And we herd them by calling them.

Adam: I was going to say, do you have a skidoo, or?

Tilly: No, no. Absolutely no vehicular access on the hill. It's all by Shanks's pony, everywhere.

Adam: Really. So you walk, and then you just ring a bell to herd them, or what do you do?

Tilly: And you 'loooooow, come on now!' and they come to us.

Adam: Right. And so what was the call again?

Tilly: 'Looow, come on now!'

Adam: Come on now, is that it? OK, very good. OK, I now move.

Tilly: Yes. But hopefully they won't all come rushing from over there.

Adam: I was going to say, yes, we've now called out the reindeer.

Tilly: We've just joined a cow and calf here, who have just come down to the gate, and you can see just for yourself, they're completely benign. They're so docile and quiet. There's no sort of kicking or pushing or anything. They're very, very gentle creatures.

Adam: And is that because they've been acclimatised because tourists come, or would that be their natural behaviour?

Tilly: It is their natural behaviour, bearing in mind that reindeer have been domesticated for thousands of years. We're not looking at a wild animal here that's got tame. We're looking at a domesticated animal.

Adam: Right.

Tilly: It's probably more used to people than some of the reindeer up in the Arctic. So we have domestication embedded in their genetics.

Adam: So what we're saying is, genetically, they're actually more docile. It's not because this particular reindeer is used to us. But originally then, if one goes back far enough, they were wilder?

Tilly: Yes so, it's a really interesting process of domestication of reindeer, which happened in the Old World, so Russia, Scandinavia, inner Mongolia, outer Mongolia. And that is reindeer and many, many reindeer in these Arctic areas, are domesticated. They're not wild.

Adam: And that started happening, do we have an idea when?

Tilly: Probably about 10,000 years ago. But if you go to the New World, to Alaska and North Canada, exactly the same animal is called a caribou. Caribou are never domesticated. The indigenous people of these areas never embraced the herding and enclosing of reindeer, which was caribou, whereas in the Old World it became very, very important to the men, the people's survival.

Adam: And then the caribou, do they have a different character?

Tilly: Yes, they're wilder. And it's a little bit difficult to show today – you see quite strong colour variation in reindeer, which you don't see in caribou, and colour variation is man's influence on selecting for colour. So you'd get very light coloured ones, you'd get white ones in reindeer, you'd get very dark ones, but in caribou they're all the same, brownie-grey colour. Yeah, they felt that the white reindeer were important in the herd for whatever reasons, Germanic reasons or whatever. Interestingly, the Sámi - and I'm not sure if there could be a white one up in the herd here at the moment - describe them as lazy reindeer, the white ones.

Adam: Why?

Tilly: Well, I didn't know why until I worked out why white reindeer are often deaf. So they sleep, they don't get up when everybody else gets up and moves, and this white reindeer doesn't realise that the herd has left them. So they're not all deaf, but certain white ones are.

Adam: Very important question, obvious but I didn't ask it to begin with because I'm a fool. Why are reindeer connected to Christmas?

Tilly: Well, that's a really good question, because actually they think it stems from a poet called Clement C Moore, who wrote a poem in America, he had Scandinavian Germanic connections, called The Night Before Christmas, where Donder, Blitzen, Cupid, Comet, fly through the air with Saint Nick in the sleigh, the little Santa.

Adam: Yeah.

Tilly: But, so that really set the scene of eight reindeer and the sleigh, and that was based on the Norwegian God Odin, who had eight legs and strode through the sky with these eight legs and eight reindeer. Then we have Rudolph, who turns up, but he doesn't turn up until the time of prohibition in America.

Adam: So Rudolph isn't in the original poem?

Tilly: Absolutely not. Rudolph is an impostor.

Adam: I didn't know that!

Tilly: He, so he, it was a marketing exercise for a department store during alcohol prohibition. And it was Rudolph with his red nose, and his red nose is because of alcohol.

Adam: Because he drank too much? So was it in favour of alcohol or was it going 'what terrible thing happens to you when you drink'?

Tilly: I'm not terribly sure. But anyway, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was the song, so that adds to it. And then along comes Coca-Cola who used a red and white Santa to promote Coca-Cola at Christmas time. So the red and white Santa is Coca-Cola.

Adam: Right. And the red-nose reindeer is from alcohol and reindeer comes from an actual American poem, of which Rudolph wasn't part of anyway. That's all simple to understand then!

Tilly: Exactly. Perfect.

Adam: Well, we're moving up to some of the more exposed slopes. Tilly has gone ahead. I'm just going to catch up back with her, and ask how she started as one of UK's first reindeer herders. Well, certainly, one of our few reindeer experts.

Tilly: I came up to volunteer and I met the keeper who was looking after the reindeer for Dr Lindgren, who was the lady who brought them in with her husband, Mr Utsi, and he was quite good looking.

Adam: Is this a revelation you wish to make to them?

Tilly: And the reindeer were endearing, and the mountains were superb, and so I married the keeper.

Adam: Right, you did marry him! I thought you were telling me about another man other than your husband.

Tilly: So I married Alan. We married in 1983 and I've been here ever since.

Adam: And so the purpose of having reindeer here originally was what?

Tilly: Ah, good question. Mr Utsi came here and was very taken by the landscape and the environment, the habitat, because it was so similar to his own home country of north Sweden. And he begged the question where are the reindeer? Why are there not reindeer here? And it was on that notion that he and his wife, Dr Lindgren, devoted the latter half of their lives to bringing reindeer back to Scotland.

Adam: So that's interesting. So, it raises the difference of ecological or sort of natural question, of whether these are indigenous animals.

Tilly: Yes. So it's an interesting idea. Certainly, the habitat's available for them and they live in their natural environment. But when they became extinct, or not extinct, but when they weren't in Scotland, some people say as recently as 600 years ago and some people say as long as 2,000 years ago. If it's 2,000 years ago, they're described as a past native.

Adam: So OK, I didn't realise that, but is there any debate around whether they were originally - whatever originally is –

Tilly: They were definitely here.

Adam: So they are native? They're not sort of imported, they have died out and been brought back here.

Tilly: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, they were reintroduced, but how, what that time span is, some people say sooner than later, and Mr Utsi certainly identified this as a very suitable spot for them.

Adam: Any idea why they might have died out? Do we know?

Tilly: Probably a bit of climate change and also probably hunting. Very easy animal to hunt. Are you OK with this chitter chatter going on?

Adam: Yes, it's all good, and a bit of, do you call it mooing?

Tilly: Oh no, the reindeer aren't making any noise, they're clicking.

Adam: Someone was mooing!

Tilly : I think it was the people.

Adam: I thought it was the reindeer making that noise.

Tilly: Not at all. They're very silent.

Adam: They'd have left this podcast thinking reindeer moo.

Tilly: They would have. Exactly. No, they are really, really silent animals.

Adam: There's a very large reindeer there coming down the road.

Tilly: Oh, that's OK, that's Akubra, he'll do nothing to you at all. He's an absolute genuine reindeer. He's lovely. But he listened to the clicking as they walk. You can't hear it because of your headphones.

Adam: OK, so I guess later on I'll put a microphone on a reindeer. That will be a first. One other thing I always imagined when you saw a set of antlers on a sort of grand Scottish mansion, I thought, oh well, they've killed that the reindeer. And actually, that's not true, is it? They fall off.

Tilly: They do. You're absolutely right. Having it depends how you see the antlers. If the antlers are still on a skull, that animal has been killed and there's nothing wrong with that. There is a, you know, the animals need to be controlled. But you're also right. Antlers are lost every year and regrown again, so they cast their antlers and they regrow their antlers. So in a reindeer's life, if a reindeer is 10 years old, he will have just grown his 11th set of antlers.

Adam: And the purpose of antlers is fighting? I'm a big girl, I'm a big boy, whatever.

Tilly: Yeah, mainly for fighting, a weapon. So for the big breeding males, it's for claiming harem for females, so in the breeding season. And those big breeding bulls will actually lose their antlers around about now, their antlers will fall off and then they won't regrow their antlers until next spring, right? The females, little females like this, keep those boney antlers all winter and they use them for competing for food, so they can jab another reindeer and push it off and they can get into the food as a result.

Adam: The other thing I can notice about some of them, but not the reindeer in front of us, but I think the one walking away, although this looks very bony, the other one has sort of felt on it, and what looks like blood. So what's going on there?

Tilly: Yes. So they are the velvet antlers on the Christmas reindeer that have finished growing, but they don't lose the velvet properly and there is still potentially blood in the bone, as it were.

Adam: So there's this sort of capillary underneath the felt.

Tilly: Yes, exactly, because the antler's a really interesting appendage because it grows from the tip. It doesn't grow from the base, so the blood supply has to go all the way to the tip to grow. And the velvet skin carries that blood supply.

Adam: Right. I see. So now the reindeer in front of us has no velvet so that can't grow.

Tilly: And no blood supply. Exactly. And the only way she can grow, get more antlers or bigger antlers, is to lose the whole thing and grow it again next year. Yes.

Adam: So any other serious facts we should note, to inform ourselves about reindeer?

Tilly: Oh, lots of serious facts. So they're the only deer species where the males and the females grow antlers. Every other deer species, it's only the males that grow the antlers. They are the only deer species that's been domesticated by man. All the other species of deer, we're talking about 40 different species, are all truly wild animals. They can survive in the coldest parts of the world, so in the middle of Siberia, the temperature can go down to -72 and reindeer are still living there quite happily.

Adam: It's cold today, but it's probably -2 or something.

Tilly: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Man cannot live in the Arctic without an animal to live by, and it's reindeer that he lives by. Man would never have gone into these areas. Obviously now they're all digging up, you know, getting the oil and the gas and everything. But indigenous man can only survive in these areas if he has reindeer as his farm animal of the north, so they're really important to the indigenous people of the north.

Adam: And in that sort of role, then, you can clearly eat reindeer. Then what else does it provide us?

Tilly: Absolutely. So it provides with meat. There are indigenous people that milk them in season. They have these tremendous coats that are used for covering tents and for people's, you know, clothing. And the antlers? Not now, but the antlers would have been used as tools in the past.

Adam: And have you ever had reindeer milk?

Tilly: I have tried, yes, we have milked the odd reindeer for one reason or another. It's very rich, very rich.

Adam: You have! Rich, is that good or quite fatty? Is it drinkable?

Tilly: That's good. Yeah, it's totally drinkable. Totally nice.

Adam: Yeah, I think yaks or a drink made from yaks, which was disgusting, I found in Mongolia, but I really found it difficult. It wasn't my thing.

Tilly: But it wasn't the fermented one, was it? Because in Mongolia they're into fermented mare's milk.

Adam: That might be what I had.

Tilly: And that is revolting.

Adam: Yes, OK, that's maybe what I had. How unusual is reindeer milk then?

Tilly: Yeah. It's got a very high fat content. They produce very little milk, because if you had a great big swinging under in in freezing conditions, you'd have ice cream, you wouldn't have milk.

Adam: The other thing I noticed that we haven't talked about is their hooves which look quite large and they look, I mean just from a distance, quite mobile.

Tilly: Yes. They are very, very, very flexible animals and their feet, their hooves are very big. Of course, for snow. Walking on the snow, spreading the weight, but also great shovels for digging. So they dig. You know, if you're in two feet, three feet of snow in north Sweden, you've got to get to the food underneath and to get to it, they need to dig. So they're great diggers.

Adam: And your life now here. It's quite a change from where you grew up, I appreciate.

Tilly: Certain years, a very rural life I had then. I have an equally country-wise life now. I will go to my grave with reindeer. They are my complete nutter passion. They are the most wonderful animals to be amongst, they put a smile on your face. They live in a beautiful area. They're just, they're just lovely animals and they give me a lot of pleasure. Yeah, yeah.

Adam: Fantastic. And if people are in the Cairngorms and want to have their own trip to see the reindeer, they call the what?

Tilly: They call the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre. You could do it on the website, you can ring us up and they need to dress up. I'm sure you appreciate you, are your feet cold yet?

Adam: No, look, I stopped off and bought extra thermals on my way.

Tilly: Very good.

Adam: Well, thank you very much. It's been a real treat, thank you very much.

Tilly: Brilliant. Oh, well, thank you for coming.

Adam: Well, I'm afraid I'm having to leave the reindeer behind because we're now heading to a little lower ground to see what I'm told is an amazing forest of Caledonian pine. And to learn a bit more about the trees and their relative, the other pine, which we all know as the Christmas tree. And we're off to meet a guy who looks after the Glencharnoch Wood in Carrbridge, near the River Spey and Dulnain. And now, despite it, it's a quite a small forest, I think. But despite that, it's quite well known for being really important, really big on biodiversity. And it's home to a number of species including, but not just them, but including the red squirrel and the crested tit.

Ross: My name's Ross Watson. I'm the site manager for North Scotland for the Woodland Trust.

Adam: Brilliant. Ross, we have come on an extraordinary day. It has snowed. It looks picturesque, chocolate box, shortbread box maybe, type stuff, so fantastic. So just tell me where we are.

Ross: Well, we're in Glencharnoch wood. It's a wood that the Woodland Trust owns and it's part of a series of little woodlands on the back of Carrbridge between Carrbridge and the railway. And the Woodland Trust has had it for a number of years. It's a little site, only 36 acres, but it's a pine wood site and a really important pine wood site at that, in that it's a small part of much bigger Caledonian forests.

Adam: OK. Well, I want to talk to you about pine wood, because I think it just sort of gets dismissed – 'oh this pine wood, not important, not interesting'. Apart from Christmas, perhaps, when suddenly it becomes really important, but I want to unpack all of that with you, but just explain to you we're going to go on a little walk. Hopefully you know where you're going. Good. All right, so just explain a bit about where we're going, give me a sense of the pattern of where we're going.

Ross: Absolutely. We're going to take a circular walk around the woodlands. The woodlands here, it's all about community. Everything we do here is around that tree. We're going to walk through a piece of land that's owned by the local authority and then go through our own land and onto privately owned land and then come back to our own land. And it really shows the connectivity of all these different habitats, all the different landowners. But really the path network is there for the community that's here and they are involved in practice as well.

Adam: So. Pine wood. Yeah, it sort of gets bunched all together, and especially the Scots pine I hear a lot about. But there are there are big, big differences and varieties are there? Tell me a bit about them.

Ross: The Scots pine we are walking through are really special species. That's the only native conifer in the UK, right? And that's why they're so special here. Really these Scots pine provide their own habitat all of their own. They're incredibly threatened. As a habitat in Scotland, we've got just a number of Caledonian pine inventory sites. We've got ancient woodlands, designated sites.

Adam: Sorry, just to stop you - Caledonian pine, Scots pine, interchangeable words?

Ross: Yeah, good point. The Great Wood of Caledon was the reference of the name of the forest that was here, the old, the original boreal forest that gradually reduced in size. Partly through climate change as the country became cooler and wetter, but also through human intervention through felling, fires, grazing, all that kind of thing. So now we tend to talk about Scots pine and Cally pine which can be fairly interchangeable, but the Cally pine tends to be the bigger, grander kind of granny pines, these really lovely old things you see in some of the landscapes.

Adam: But that's sort of just the way people use the word. Technically, they're the same thing, but we refer to the Caledonian pine as the big grand ones, and it comes from… so I just want to make sure I understood what you said. The word Caledonian pine then comes from a Caledonian, a forest called Caledonia?

Ross: Yeah, the Great Wood of Caledon.

Adam: Isn't that a brilliant name? So mystical and it sort of talks of Tolkien and other worlds. Wow, wow. OK. So we have the great Scots pine, the Caledonian pine. If people have a general thing in their mind about pine trees, what is special about Caledonian pine? How that distinguishes from pines in other parts of the world.

Ross: Well, Scots pine, as we're walking through this woodland, just now as you look up the trunks of the trees, as you look up the bark tends to go from a kind of grey-brown to a real kind of russety red, like a red squirrel colour. And that's a lot of the red squirrel camouflage comes from that, that rusty colour. So they're skittering around these treetops and they can be jumping around and they're nice and camouflaged because of that colour. So is that redness that you really see? But what we can see in here, a lot of these trees are very even age, it has been quite heavily thinned in the past, but then you come across a tree like this that's got a very deep crown. So you see there's live branches more than halfway down that tree, whereas there's a lot of these other trees -

Adam: Yes, I was going to say it's weird that they've got no foliage until very high.

Ross: Yeah, so this tree here, and foresters may call this a wolf tree, a tree that has occupied a space and it's just sat there and doesn't allow anything around it.

Adam: It's called a wolf tree?

Ross: Some people would refer to it as a wolf tree. What we would refer to that is it's a deep crown tree, not very imaginatively named, but a deep crown tree is really important here because of capercaillie. Now, capercaillie, you imagine a capercaillie's a big bird, a turkey-sized bird, almost waist height, a male capercaillie. And in the winter it will walk out across these branches and it will nibble away at some of the needles, and it will sit there and it will rely on that during deep snow for shelter, security, food. So without these deep crown trees, there isn't anywhere for them to go. So if you imagine a plantation, a very dense pine that are much denser than this and they don't have the chance for any deep crown trees. Then the opportunity for capercaillie here is much reduced.

Adam: Right. So there's sort of, I mean, look the elephant in the room. Well, it's Christmas around the corner. People have Christmas trees. Sort of most people know anything about pine, it's because they have it in their house at Christmas. That's not a Scots pine.

Ross: No, your traditional Christmas tree is a Nordmann fir. A fir tree tends to hold onto needles a little longer than a pine tree. And if you look after the pine, it will retain its needles, but quite often the pine trees will grow slightly too quickly, so it'll be a bit bare as a Christmas tree, whereas a fir tree is kind of hairy enough to be a good Christmas tree.

Adam: Right. And do we have, do we have them planted in the UK as well? I mean just for commercial cropping?

Ross: Yes, as a Christmas tree.

Adam: Right. So the other thing, look, we're in a really lovely forest at the moment. We're the only ones here. But Scotland, the iconic pictures of Scotland, are bare, bare mountains, aren't they? They're not wooded, and yet I've always read that that's not how it used to be. It used to be a wooded part of the country. Why did it lose so much of its woodland?

Ross: Well, it's looking back to, what, centuries ago as the climate became cooler and wetter, the tree line reduced in height. But more recently in the 1800s the Cultural Revolution created huge periods of felling where they needed this timber for industrialization. Trees from the woodlands near here were cut down, they were floated down to the river Spey and then out to Spey Bay and the Moray coast. They were used for underground water piping for ship's masts. Because these trees are, as you can feel today it's a cold place to be, they've grown very slowly. So because they're nice and straight as we can see, they are, the rings are very close together, so they're very sturdy. They're an ideal timber source. But then we start to look at deer numbers increasing and sheep numbers increasing. The more mouths on the hill meant that once you cut these trees down, it was much harder for the trees to come away again. And really, that's the landscape we're in now really. And when we're talking about those very large, deep crowned trees on open hillsides, these kind of granny pines are so picturesque, and really a lot of these trees, there was no timber value in them because they were already so crooked and they were left, and this is almost a remnant that's showcasing the old forest that once was standing there.

Adam: A lot of times, site managers, they're trying to keep things steady in a way, I suppose. Just trying to maintain what's going, keep that going, that's hard enough. Is that the job here or do you have bigger plans? Are there, you know, times are changing?

Ross: Well, this is one of eight woodlands I look after across the north of Scotland. Whenever we're doing anything, no matter what the scale of it, it's not just how do we keep the site going and kind of steady. It's about when we are doing work, how do we add value to that to make it better for the people that are living here? And how do we use that to continue to showcase these sites as the shop window for the Woodland Trust?

Adam: And is the idea here to try and remove the non-Scots pine, so you'd have a pure Scots pine forest?

Ross: Well, the Woodland Trust works on a on a threat basis really. So any tree is better than no tree, right? But if you have got a lot of spruce regeneration that's threatening this ancient wood then we need to begin to remove that. And that's been the case here.

Adam: Sorry I'm pausing because there's a lovely spaniel who I can see wants me to throw a stick, but I won't throw the stick. Very cool dog. There we are. Sorry, we were saying yes, so any tree is better than no tree. But are the other trees a threat then or not?

Ross: Well, the Norway spruce here has been seeding regeneration into the woodland areas and over the last few years we've cleared a lot of that and in some of these nice young spruce, we've been able to provide to the community for Christmas trees, which has been really handy. But all of that is gone now and we're left with this core of, of mature Norway spruce, that a number of them have started to snap so are becoming a safety issue for members of the public using footpaths next to it. But also there's an opportunity there where before that timber dies, we can extract it and it can be useful for the community.

Adam: And you'd replace it with Scots pines.

Ross: No, we're going to replace it predominantly with hazel and aspen. Because one of the slight concerns in having a single species stand, like we have here, where it's all Scots pine, is that there's only one species for the likes of red squirrels or the crossbills. And on a day like today we might hear crossbows coming over. There's only one species here for them, whereas if we're planting hazel, which is under-represented species here, that provides a different food for red squirrels in a different part of the woodland. And aspen is one of the most biodiverse species that we would have in this part of the world. And there are very, very few aspen.

Adam: When you say it's the most biodiverse species, you mean it attracts biodiversity?

Ross: Absolutely yes. In terms of the lower plant assemblage that's on there specifically and insects. And aspen, their Latin name is Populus tremula and the tremula comes from the oval shape on the leaf. Just in the slightest breeze, it's adapted that to try and shake off the insect burden because the leaves are so palatable for insects.

Adam: So the shape of the leaf in wind -

Ross: The shape of this stock of the leaf is oval.

Adam: And that helps shift any insects.

Ross: Yeah, yeah.

Adam: It's interesting because aspen, in my ignorance, I associate with aspen in America, but it's a native UK tree.

Ross: It is, yeah. And it will be one of the first colonisers after the Ice Age. That's, an aspen will have, the seed will have blown down as the ice is receding. But some of the aspen that are here now will be some of the oldest trees that exist in the UK and aspen generally now grows rhizomatously, so you'll see the roots through the forest and all of the suckers will pop out. And the aspen that we can see in the woodland today, they could have been here for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and they've just, as the clone has marched through the landscape, it's just it's moved and colonised these different areas. They're fascinating trees. So when you look at some of the images in North America, you might see entire hillsides of aspen and that could all be the same tree essentially, they're amazing organisms.

Adam: That's amazing. So it's sort of cloning really.

Ross: Yeah, absolutely.

Adam: That's amazing. And also I can see right on the Scots pine behind you, beautiful lichen, which is just a real sign of the air quality here, isn't it? I mean, it doesn't grow and it's just often further south. We do see lichen, obviously, but often I see a bit. This is everywhere. It's a real sign this is good land.

Ross: Absolutely, yeah.

Adam: Good land, good air. Wonderful. Well, I'm going to take another shot of our colleague down below. Hello. Wearing a lovely red hat, almost looks like Santa. And then we'll move on. So we're going uphill a bit, you might just hear the snow crunching under my boots. So this is amazing. A wolf peeking out from the woods, which adds to the fairy tale quality of all of this forest walk. This is not a real wolf. This is carved in wood. It looks really beautiful and it's covered in snow at the moment, which maybe is why I didn't spot it at first. So what's the story here?

Ross: Well, the story here is that Carrbridge hosts the Scottish chainsaw carving competition every year at the end of August, and there are chainsaw artists coming from all over the world to compete here to do some incredibly elaborate carvings. They do benches and three-to-four-metre statues and it's absolutely incredible.

Adam: This is very delicate that I'm surprised this would be done with a chainsaw.

Ross: Yeah, it's a very specialist skill as you can see, and people have to be very artistic. You have to be very good with the saw, but also the bar of the saw is a specialist carving tool. But then they also can use all sorts of other implements to try and refine the artwork itself. And this is just one part of that much larger chainsaw carving trail that's in Carrbridge that really commemorates this annual event.

Adam: Amazing. Well, we'll leave the wolf. It's got even a little dark nose. Amazing. A little dog, a real dog this time. Well, yes, just to prove it. We've just seen some reindeer. Obviously they're a type of deer. Are they as much of a problem as the normal red deer that we know about? So what's your view on them?

Ross: Well, red deer, the numbers are extremely high in some places and in the Cairngorms, they're generally much better managed. But in other places where there just isn't that, that integration or the objectives are yet to be aligned with protected areas, the numbers in those places need to come down, but recognising that there are different objectives, there are different landowners who want to do different things with land. So in recognising and respecting those objectives, but generally, ideal numbers need to come down and they need to come down a lot in order for trees and woodland to recover.

Adam: But that's deer in general, just because it's Christmas, I just have reindeer on the mind. You don't see many reindeer here. Or any reindeer here?

Ross: No, you see them up in the Cairngorms, right?

Adam: Right. Another pitstop. I see some lichen with some snow on it. I should turn them into Christmas cards. I won't, but that's what I should do. So if there was a sort of a final thought you wanted people to take away about this forest or about Caledonian pines you're trying to protect and grow here, what might that be?

Ross: Well, for this woodland, and as I say, it's only 36 acres in size, it's a fairly small wood. But it's not to discount that, and we talk about the hundreds of ants nests, the crossbills, the crested tits, it's woodlands like this can punch way above their weight. But also woodlands like this connected together provide a much larger, integrated robust habitat. And it's just thinking along these lines that this, this woodland, although it has the A9 on one side, it's got roads on two other sides, it's got a forest adventure park there and to the other side, it feels like a woodland that could be squeezed, but it can also feel like a woodland that is a part of this much larger landscape and contributing to that. And I suppose in part it depends on how you view that, yeah. But the woodland is connected to its woodlands round about, so it's definitely playing its part and part of that recovery of the old Caledonian pine forest of Scotland, as small as it is.

Adam: It's been a real treat for you to guide us through it on such a special snowy Christmas-y day. So thank you very much indeed.

Ross: No problem.

Adam: Well, it's been a fantastic day. Which leaves me just say from the land of reindeer and Caledonian pine, can I wish you a very happy, peaceful and joyous Christmas and New Year? And I do hope that wherever you are, you are able to share the joy of this season and that you'll join us in the New Year for lots more podcasts and tree adventures. Until then, from all of us in the Woodland Trust podcast team, to all of you, can we wish you a happy Christmas and a great New Year and of course, happy wanderings.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the visiting woods pages. Thank you.

Join us for a woodland wander with adventurer, author and tree lover, Al Humphreys. The 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year has cycled round the world, rowed the Atlantic and walked across India, but now focuses on pursuits closer to home. Pioneering the concept of microadventures, Al explains how exploring small pockets of nature in our neighbourhoods helps us to better connect with and care for the environment. He speaks of enabling young people to embrace wild places, and encourages us to take time to be curious and astonished as we discover new places on our doorstep.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Today I am off to meet an author and adventurer, and there's a title you don't get to say, or indeed hear very much. He's the author of a whole ton of books, including Microadventures, which I want to talk to him specifically about, but also books called the Doorstep Mile, Local, There Are Other Rivers, Grand Adventures, Moods of Future Joys, Midsummer Mornings, Thunder and Sunshine, and I could go on and on. And I'm meeting him at a Woodland Trust site called Ashenbank Wood. It's a Site of Special Scientific Interest in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is teeming with extraordinary wildlife. So we'll be talking a bit about the woods and a bit about the sort of adventures he's been on and the sort of adventures we might all be able to go on. Anyway, I'll let him introduce himself.

Al: My name's Alastair Humphreys. I'm an adventurer and a writer and tree lover.

Adam: Which sounds very exciting. So when you say you're an adventurer, what does that sort of mean?

Al: Well, I was slightly hesitant to say that because I confess I feel more like an ex-adventurer, but I have spent pretty much all my career going off doing big adventures and then coming home and writing and speaking and making films about them. So they've gone ever smaller. I began by spending four years cycling around the world, I've rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, walked across the Empty Quarter desert, played my violin incredibly badly through Spain, and then gradually smaller onto what I call microadventures. So, encouraging people to find short, simple, affordable adventures close to home and squeezing around their busy daily lives.

Adam: So that's interesting. You talk about the mini adventures. On a previous podcast we talked to the natural navigator, I don't know.

Al: Ohh yes, Tristan. Well, he could tell you a lot more intelligent things than I can. He's great.

Adam: No, but I think he took very much the similar view of yours. He went, I've done all these big adventures. But actually when you're doing these big adventures, it's all about tech, you know, and I needed satellite link ups and all sorts of stuff. And actually I wasn't, I was really looking at screens all the time. And he was going, the smaller adventures are actually much more revolutionary, because if you go low tech, that's a proper adventure. Just trying to find your way through a wood is a real adventure in a curious sort of way, even more challenging than doing something which sounds really flash.

Al: Yes. And what Tristan's done fantastically is taking those skills from bigger journeys down to his literal daily life, hasn't he? If you, I get an e-mail from him, I think it's weekly or so and it just essentially says, where am I now and which way am I facing? And from his little clues in the local park, he can tell whether it's north, south, east, and west.

Adam: Yes. No, you're right. I tried. I was very bad at that. And what I've learned, I've already forgotten. So tell me a little bit about why your connection to nature, then, how important that is to you, if at all.

Al: So I had a nice, happy childhood growing up in the countryside, so as a kid I spent a lot of time running around the fields and woods and streams and things, so I suppose that hammers something deep into your subconscious, although you don't really notice it necessarily as a kid.

Adam: Where whereabouts was that?

Al: In the Yorkshire Dales.

Adam: Ohh, God's own country. Amazing place.

Al: Yes. Lovely part of the world. Yeah, so I really enjoyed that, and then my big expeditions, I've spent a lot of time in some of the world's really wild places and that's a fantastic backdrop to your adventures. But actually my – oh, and I also did a zoology degree. Although I found it incredibly boring, and now looking back I find it amazing that you can find something like that boring. But it's taken me stopping the big adventures, slowing down, paying attention to my local area to build a deeper connection with nature. And I don't know if that's partly just me getting old as well, I suspect there is an aspect of that. But whereas in my youth I was sort of cycling moderately quickly across continents and now pottering around small little parks and I have time to be astonished in a way that you don't necessarily when you're on a big A to B kind of journey.

Adam: Yes, yes, there's the mechanics of getting you somewhere so challenging.

Al: Yes, and you're on a mission. The mission is to go from A to B and not die, and to succeed. And that's all quite, and the backdrop of it all is this wonderful nature. But the things I've been doing more recently, then nature has come to the forefront. I'm not really doing any big, exciting mission. And therefore the paying attention to the small bits of nature and the changing seasons comes to the forefront.

Adam: Yes, I did, I was just going to stop here. We're by one of the Woodland Trust sign posts about fungi and deadwood and the importance of that. We can talk a bit about that. But I was just thinking about what you said. I did an expedition across the Gobi in Outer Mongolia. I was working in Outer Mongolia, and it was, you're right, it was more interesting in retrospect. Because when I was there, we were just very concerned about the mechanics of the day. Getting through the day, making sure we weren't lost, getting food, all of that, rather than go 'this is quite an interesting place'.

Al: Yes.

Adam: Whereas, because we didn't meander, you go, I think the importance of meandering and almost lost time, and in a way, I think, boredom. I mean, it was interesting to talk about kids, you know, I don't know if you've got kids, but I think there's a lot of pressure on people to keep the kids busy, get them to this class, to do this, do this, do this. Actually the importance of just going, you know, 'they're bored now, they'll just go do something', is quite interesting.

Al: Yeah. And I think that's a fantastic aspect of it, a bit of woodland like this, isn't it? Is to bring some kids here and essentially say there is nothing to do here, but equally you can do whatever you want. So go on, clear off. Off you go, go climb some of these trees, pick up some sticks, rummage around, see what you find. And that's the great thing of a woodland like this.

Adam: Yeah. Do you have kids?

Al: I do, yes.

Adam: Well, how old are they?

Al: Well, they are entering the dreaded teenage phase. So the um, it's really interesting, actually, because they're completely addicted to their screens and that would be their preferred choice would be to live in a damp, dark, smelly cave and never emerge. But when I drag them by their hair kicking and screaming into a wood like this, they're grumpy for a couple of minutes and then I just say clear off, go away and then they love it. And there's a real physical and mental transformation that's clear, when you can, once they get out here.

Adam: Yeah. So I think that's interesting. And as a parent and everything, I just wonder what your take is on trying to engage a younger generation with nature and whether that's difficult, how you do it and whether we should be doing that, is that a concern of us or just, you know, let people do what they want?

Al: I think it's a massive, massive concern and I also think it's extremely difficult. These screens are deliciously alluring. That's how they're designed. You know, if I was a kid today, I'd love to be just scrolling mindlessly through a thousand videos of people falling off their bikes. If it's endlessly addictive. So I think it's very, very hard and being a parent is exhausting. It's quite easy to not bother with the kicking and screaming, going to the woods, but I think it's really, really vital to do and the reward of when you get them out is of seeing how transformative that is for them, but also for yourself is really good. So yeah, I think screens are a massive problem. I think the nature disconnection of our society is a huge problem, both in terms of our physical health, our mental health, but also with our ignorance to the decline of species and the loss of wild places. So I think it's an enormous problem.

Adam: And I mean you know, you're a broadcaster, you create a huge amount of content yourself. So I think there's an interesting question about how to frame that, because I fear then talking about all the trees are disappearing and wildlife is dying and that it turns, well, everybody, but perhaps especially younger generations off. They go, well if it's that blooming terrible, well, I'd just rather be on my screen. So how do you get that tone right, do you think?

Al: That's a question that I've been thinking a lot about, particularly over the last year or so. I've just finished writing a book, which is all about exploring your local area, and when I wrote the book, in the early months of it, it was very much a moaning, ranting disaster book that everything's doomed and that it's all ruined. But as I was reading through my drafts, I was thinking, geez, this is this is, well, no one's going to read it for a start. But also, it's not going to encourage anyone. But as the project went on, I realised that I didn't need to frame it like that, because I could look at it another way, which was how much I personally was loving getting out into these small pockets of nature, what benefits I was getting and how much I was enjoying it. And then the more that I personally enjoyed it, the more I start to become connected and the more I start to care and the more hopefully I start to take action. So I think you're exactly right to try and frame it as a positive thing of saying hey, get out into X, Y and Z for these fantastic reasons and then hopefully the fixing the planet part will take care of itself, once there's enough people enthused.

Adam: Yeah, interesting. Well, look, we'll carry on, but I said we stopped at this post. So the many dead and decaying trees you find here play a vital role in Ashenbank Wood's ecosystem. And that's a theme you'll see in lots of Woodland Trust places where deadwood is actually allowed to stay. In fact, it's not just allowed to stay, it's positively encouraged because of the fungi and the invertebrates, and then all the way up to the different sorts of animals that can live off that. So what looks like sort of untidiness is sometimes a real sort of oasis of life.

Al: And this woodland here was completely smashed by the huge hurricane in 1987. So I think more than most woodlands, there's a lot of fallen down trees in this wood, which I suppose previously would have been carted off and chopped up for firewood or something.

Adam: So let's, I mean, we're walking down this idyllic sort of dappled light, coming through the canopy of the still full roof of this of this woodland. So this is really idyllic, but take me somewhere else. So tell me about those adventures that you've had in these distant lands. Were there any particular that stand out for any particular reason?

Al: Well, given that we're talking about trees, I spent 10 weeks, I think it was, on the frozen Arctic Ocean, up near the North Pole, which was a fantastic expedition itself, but the small detail that sticks with me now is that to get up there, you fly to Canada, then you fly to some smaller place in Canada and the planes gradually get smaller and smaller and the safety regulations get more and more lax till you're on the plane with people with rifles and harpoons and stuff. But up to this tiny little community right up in the north of Canada and the people - I went to visit the primary school there in the morning just to chat to the kids about my adventures and stuff. And they were chatting about my adventures and they were, the little kids there were amazed that I'd never seen a polar bear. And my riposte to them was along the lines of but you've never seen a tree! Where they where they lived, there were no trees, literally none above the tree line, and that really struck me, what it would be like to grow up in a place with zero trees. I mean, you get polar bears, which is pretty cool, but I'd be sad to have no trees.

Adam: Yes, yeah, yes. And what was their view of that? Do they go well, I've never seen that, don't miss. Or were they interested in that?

Al: Yeah, well, I guess everyone's normal is normal, isn't it? You know, they're going to school on skidoos and things like that. And so, yeah, it's just fascinating to see the different people's views of normal in the world. And before I started my big adventures, one of the motivating factors for me wanting to go off around the world was that I found where I lived incredibly boring, as a lot of young people do. Oh my goodness, where I live is the most boring place in the universe. I need to go far, far away. And it took me going far, far away to realise that actually the stuff I'd left behind is pretty fascinating in its own way. If only you're willing to pay attention to it.

Adam: Yes, gosh, it sounds almost like a line from one of Tolkien's books. There you do a long adventure to find true interest is nearer to home. So I know you've written lots of things, but you've got a book just come out. So yeah, tell me, what's that book about then?

Al: So I've written a book that's called Local, and it's about spending a whole year exploring only the single Ordnance Survey map that I happen to live on. So, the whole of Britain's divided up into about just over 400 Ordnance Survey maps. So wherever you live, you could go to your local bookshop and buy your local map. And what I'm trying to do is encourage people to do that and to realise how much new, undiscovered stuff is on their doorstep. Woodlands, footpaths, hills, fields but also towns, villages. What's behind the industrial yards? Like a proper exploring curiosity to your own backyard.

Adam: And how much area does one of those maps cover then?

Al: It's the orange Ordnance Survey maps. They're more detailed. So it's roughly 20 kilometres by 20 kilometres.

Adam: Right. So a fair amount.

Al: It's a fair amount, but I've also in previous time spent a year crossing an entire continent, so in that sense it felt incredibly tiny to me. And when I began the project, I thought 'this map is so small, it's going to be so claustrophobic and so boring'. But actually, by the end of the year, I realise, wow, actually it's enormous. I haven't even begun to cover everything on the map.

Adam: So what sort of things did you find there that was a surprise to you, then?

Al: So what I did every week, I would go out once a week for the whole year and my rule was to explore one grid square a week. So a kilometre square chosen at random and the random was really important because if it wasn't random, all I would do is just choose all the nice bits of woodland around my map. But by making it random, it sent me off to towns and suburbs and motorway junctions and all sorts of random stuff. And I discovered a few things. The first thing I discovered was how little I knew this area that I thought I knew very well indeed. The second thing that I realised was that, yeah, of course it's nice to go out to woods and hills and streams and stuff, but also I was surprised how much I loved the forgotten grid squares, the abandoned bits, the broken down, fallen down, behind the warehouse kind of landscapes. Like what's behind the supermarket car park? And I found in these forgotten edgelands a real sense of wildness and solitude that I didn't get in somewhere lovely. And this wood we're in now is lovely, but you're not going to get much solitude. There's a lot of dog walkers wandering around. And whereas if you're sort of behind some factory and some regenerating thicket, you think, wow, no one comes here. This feels adventurous. This feels wild. No one on the planet knows where I am. I'm only 20 minutes from a massive city, so I really was surprised how much I liked the forgotten corners of my map.

Adam: Well, it sounds romantic the way you describe it, but behind a dumpster or a big factory? I don't really want to go there.

Al: Why not?

Adam: Because it's not pretty. It's probably got some unsavoury characters hanging around there. It might be more dangerous than crossing, you know, at some wild tundra, so it doesn't attract. I mean, but it does attract you, genuinely?

Al: I think I'd have agreed with you entirely beforehand. It seems much nicer to come to a pretty woodland and stroll around there. What surprised me was how rarely I saw people when I was out and about, and we live in a very crowded country. I live in a crowded corner of the country, and yet once I was off meandering, once you're slightly off the beaten track, it felt like I often had the place to myself. In terms of being scared, I never had any problems at all. But I was very conscious that I'm a six-foot-tall white man who's quite good at running and that the countryside in general is not equally accessible to everyone. That really struck home to me in the year, how the sort of privilege I have of being able to essentially wander wherever I want. And the worst thing that's happened, someone will say go away and I go, oh, I'm terribly sorry and be all sort of posh and cheerful and it'll be fine and that's not fair, and it's not right that there's that inequality.

Adam: I wonder what you feel because we're talking now, a little after there was a big fuss in newspapers about Kirsty Allsop as children or a child who went off travelling and I think he was 16 or something like that. And it raised the debate whether that's right or wrong and people have their own views, it raised the debate about adventure, what it is, how much freedom we should give younger people. And there were lots of comments, you know, look back a generation, my parents' generation, you know, people of 17, 18 were fighting in wars. You know, the idea of going on Eurorail doesn't sound that adventurous by comparison. But it does engage with the natural world, doesn't it? You've done very adventurous things. What do you think about our position on safety now? The sort of vibe about that?

Al: I think a relevant aspect of that discussion what we're talking about today is if you look at the roaming distances that kids have from home and you can see statistical maps of this online of how far our grandparents are allowed to go from home, you know, they'd get on their bicycle with a pickled egg and off they'd go for a month and then come home for their tea. All that sort of stuff. When I was a kid, I was basically in the Yorkshire Dales. I was basically allowed to go wherever I wanted, and then I'd just come home when I was hungry. And of course, I had no cell phone. And then kids today would not be generally allowed that sort of thing, and they're kept very much closer to home. And I think that trusting young people in wild places is an important thing to do.

Adam: Well, on that note of wild places and adventure, we talked a lot about maps and if you want to visit Ashenbank Wood and are looking for a map, it is grid reference TQ 675692, map reference explorer 163, and OS land ranger 177. Good luck with finding this particular wood. I hope you enjoy it. And until next time, of course, happy wandering.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the visiting woods pages. Thank you.

Step into the heart of an ancient woodland as we explore Ashenbank Wood, a Site of Special Scientific Interest rich in history and teeming with wildlife.

Woodland has stood here for centuries, but this haven is under threat. A proposed tunnel project, the Lower Thames Crossing, could harm the irreplaceable ecosystem and ancient trees here. Jack, leader of our woods under threat team, explains what's at stake and the challenges and strategies involved in trying to maintain a delicate balance between development and nature. A decision on whether the project goes ahead is due from Government in May 2025.

We also meet estate manager Clive, who delves into Ashenbank Wood's history, tells us more about why ancient woodland is so important and shows us the unusual approach of strapping deadwood to trees.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Today I am at a site of Special Scientific Interest in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which is teeming with extraordinary wildlife, and I'm told you can stand in the shadows of gnarled veteran trees and even spot some shy dormice, rare bats, and woodland wildflowers if you're there at the right time of year. But it is also a site under threat. National Highways propose to build a new tunnel linking Essex and Kent under the River Thames, and many feel that that will create a threat to the trees and wildlife here. So I've come not just for a walk, but to chat to experts and the first is the man responsible for coordinating the Woodland Trust response to big infrastructure projects and to chat to him about how infrastructure and nature can live hand in hand.

Jack: So I'm Jack Taylor, I'm the programme lead for the woods under threat team at the Woodland Trust.

Adam: Brilliant. And we're at Ashenbank Woods?

Jack: We are indeed.

Adam: Good, OK, sorry, yeah *laughs* I know I should sound more sure, we are at Ashenbank Woods.

Jack: I think its full title might be Ashenbank Woods SSSI, site of special scientific interest.

Adam: Oh right yes, yes. And we're going to see a bit later a colleague of yours, Clive, who will tell us more about the details of this woodland. But the reason why I wanted to talk to you first as we walk through, what is a lovely, actually dappled, dappled bit of woodland here is about your role in protecting places like this from development because, so what, what is your job?

Jack: Yeah, it's beautiful. That's a good question *laughs* what is my job? I I suppose the the base of it, the basis of it, the foundation really is about trying to protect ancient woods and ancient and veteran trees from forms of development, but also from other threats outside of that as well. So non-development threats like air pollution, pests and diseases, deer overbrowsing. Most of my work does focus on working within the development sector and trying to protect against those development threats.

Adam: Right, and you're the project lead.

Jack: Yeah.

Adam: When I first saw that, I thought you meant you're the project lead for this woodland, but you are not. You are the project lead for all development threatening woodlands throughout the UK. This is an extraordinary, I mean that's quite a job.

Jack: Yeah, it's it's a lot. There are a lot of threats to have to deal with across the UK because we're always building always sort of growing as a nation. We always need sort of new forms of infrastructure and new sort of housing. We recognise that. But all of that does come with the added impact of having threats on our ancient woods and ancient and veteran trees, so we have a team of myself and my my wonderful team of four as well.

Adam: Alright. Yeah, it's not big.

Jack: No, it's not big, but they they are enthusiastic and they're great at what they do.

Adam: So this is quite a political area because we've got a new government which has promised to improve lots of things, get the country working, build lots of homes. I think, I think the Prime Minister only recently talked about, you know, we're going to get spades in the ground, we're going to be doing stuff. Well, is it your job to stop all of that, I mean, or how do you balance what needs to be done for the country and what needs to be done to protect woodlands?

Jack: Yeah. So it's so none of this is really about stopping development from from happening and we we have to be sort of quite clear that that's not what we're set out to do as an organisation. It's about trying to ensure that where development is happening. It's not going to impact on our most important and our most valuable woods and trees and that's why we do have a focus specifically on ancient woodland, but and then also on ancient and veteran trees as well, because we know that for the most part, there are lots of really valuable woods and wooded and wooded habitats and trees that are plenty sort of valuable and important. But we know that ancient words and ancient and veteran trees are likely to be our most important sites. We have to focus on protecting those. So we do have to object to some developments where we think the harm is gonna be too great, but we're never really looking to stop them from happening, unless the harm is too great.

Adam: OK. Which way?

Jack: Umm, I think right.

Adam: OK. So one of the things I've noticed before, I mean, when I was following the HS2 debate, was politicians were going 'it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. We'll cut this down, we're going to replace them. I tell you what, we'll do you a deal, we'll plant two for every one we cut down.' On the face of it that sounds reasonable?

Jack: OK. Yeah, not to us.

Adam: Why not?

Jack: Well, I think if you're, if you're looking at ancient woodlands and ancient and veteran trees, you're looking at something that is an irreplaceable habitat. There is no sort of recreating that habitat in in one space again, once it's been lost and the reason for that is these things take centuries to evolve and develop to create those sort of vital links between animals, plants, fungi, the soils as well. So ancient woodlands are especially important for their soils. So you can't really just take those soils and put them elsewhere because once that happens you completely disturb the relationships that have built up over centuries within them. And ancient and veteran trees, so you're talking about trees that for the most part are going to be centuries years old. How do you how do you replace centuries of development creating these wonderful sort of niche habitats for different parts of our ecosystems?

Adam: And is it, you said quite clearly that it's not your job or the Trust's job just to stop development, just to sort of blanket go, 'hey, stop building' so is it about going, 'don't build here' or is it about saying, 'if you're gonna build here, this is how to do it with the least amount of impact'? What's the sort of your approach?

Jack: Yeah. In some cases it is about saying not, not building here. It depends what we're dealing with, I suppose so it's different if you're dealing with, say, housing developments or leisure facilities as opposed to something like rail infrastructure or road infrastructure, which is quite linear in nature, so they can only really go in one place to deliver its purpose, whereas housing is not as locationally dependent.

Adam: I see. So you feel you've got a better argument if it's a housing project, cause you can go, 'put it somewhere else', but the train journey from A to B has to sort of go through this area. You're you're on a loser there are you?

Jack: Well, sometimes, but there are there are ways of of getting around sort of kind of impact. I mean it doesn't have to go absolutely sort of A to B in one way. You can think very carefully about the design to try and minimise impact on ancient woods. You can also look at alternative solutions, engineering solutions like tunnelling for example, so HS2 is a good example of that. The Phase One section which is going ahead between London and Birmingham, they actually put in a tunnel under the Chilterns, which saved about 14 hectares of woodland saved these three really good prime areas of ancient wood. And of course the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty came into that in a way, and they were trying to protect that also. But that was one solution to stop wildlife and nature being harmed.

Adam: Right. So that's, was this, were you involved with that?

Jack: Yeah, yeah.

Adam: Amazing. So how difficult was that to get that that project through and try to avoid the destruction of all that woodland?

Jack: Well, a lot a lot of destruction still is happening from High Speed 2. So about 20 hectares of ancient woodland has been destroyed at this stage now. A lot of the sort of preparation works for the Phase One section, that London to Birmingham bit, are now complete. So it it was difficult, but it it the way in which we were involved is we really brought ancient woodland to the table and put it at the forefront of considerations and and gave it a voice I suppose. It's not that it wasn't being looked at at all, but not nearly to the degree that we thought it needed to be looked at. And so we sort of kind of introduced that idea of well look, there's ancient woodland here, you need to be thinking carefully about the design and, you know, you think you're talking about halving the impacts on ancient woodlands from from our sort of kind of involvement and involvement of other conservation organisations in there as well.

Adam: So a lot of it is trying to say, to make the argument, but also to raise the profile of that argument,

Jack: Sure.

Adam: To bring, population and say this is actually a loss. You know, cutting it down is is a loss. So how much harder or easier has it got for you to make that argument?

Jack: Well, do you know, interestingly, I I would probably say that projects like High Speed 2, where there is such a big argument around the ancient woodland has raised the profile of ancient woodland itself. That's one of the sort of silver linings of that project for us, it's put sort of ancient woodland on the map in terms of habitat that needs to and is worthy of protection. So I think a lot of people now understand ancient woodland a bit better and what it is. There's still lots of awareness to do, you know, people just think of ancient woodlands as bluebells, big large oaks and it's not quite there. I mean, they're all so kind of varied in their nature and geographically across the country, but it's got people thinking about them.

Adam: So that was something of a success, although I know more complicated than just 'yes, we won that'.

Jack: Sure, yeah.

Adam: Any areas you feel you really lost that, you know, keep you up at night, you go, that was that was a failure and you know, we've lost that woodland?

Jack: Yeah. I mean, there've been, there've been some over the years. Back in 2012 a a large quarry was built on an area of woodland called Oaken Wood in Kent, probably taking about out about 30 to 35 hectares of ancient woodland which is massive, massive amounts, I mean, you're talking about in the region it's like 40 to 50 football fields and and and we're actually dealing with another threat to that woodland from an expansion of that same quarry. So yeah, you know that that one is one that gnaws gnaws at us, is that, you know, we don't want to see that happening anymore.

Adam: Are you getting more optimistic that you know the public are more on your side that this is at least something that plays in policymakers' decisions now?

Jack: I I actually think the public have always really been on our side. I think if you ask the the general public, they would probably say to you, we do not want to see ancient woodlands subject to any loss or deterioration, whatever the cause.

Adam: Yeah, I think you're right. But they also say, yeah, but we like cheaper housing and want better transport links so.

Jack: Yeah. Well, I mean the Lower Thames Crossing, which is going to be affecting this site that we're in now, Ashenbank Wood is sort of a prime example of that the the intention of that project is to relieve traffic congestion on the existing Dartford Crossing.

Adam: Which I think actually I can hear in my headphones this, although we are, I mean it looks beautiful, there's quite a lot of background traffic noise. So we can't be that far away actually from from transport, from big roads. So explain to me you say this this particular site, Ashenbank Woods which is a site of Special Scientific Interest, so it's not just any old woods, this is a really special place, is under threat. What is the threat here?

Jack: So the threat here is partially there will be some loss to the wider SSSI ancient woodland in the area when you're losing sort of kind of, Ashenbank Wood itself is not going to be subject to much loss, although there is a cycle route diversion going through the woods that might impact on some of its special features.

Adam: Oh one second just, we've we've just turned off the path, we're just, oops crawling under some trees. I don't quite know why we've come, we we seem to have chosen the most difficult route. Well, it is beautiful because we've come off the path right into a magic dell.

Jack: There we go.

Adam: Oh, look, there's obviously some, I think, probably some kids have built a sort of camp, tent out of fallen branches. OK, so sorry so I understand that this is under threat from development, the the development plan though is what? What are they trying to do here?

Jack: So so what they're doing is they're building a new crossing further to the east of Dartford Crossing, but that's going to involve connecting...

Adam: A river crossing, a tunnel?

Jack: Yes a river crossing.

Adam: But it's a tunnel.

Jack: Yeah, it's a tunnel.

Adam: Why would that? That's that's great, surely?

Jack: Well, the tunnel goes under the Thames. But in order to connect the A2/M2 to the to the sort of tunnel portal, they're going to be going through a lot of ancient woodlands as a result. So just down the way Clay Lane Wood is one that's going to be heavily impacted by by the proposals, you know several hectares of ancient woodland loss there, but in terms of our wood itself, you're you're gonna have impacts on some of the veteran trees from some of the works that are required in here. But you're also sort of increasing the traffic around the area on A2/M2. And as you can hear, there's already quite loud background noise from the traffic. If that becomes louder, it further reduces the suitability of this habitat for a lot of species.

Adam: Right. So what are your, what are you doing?

Jack: Well we're campaigning against it for one thing. So we've been campaigning against it since 2016, trying to bring those bring those sort of impacts down as far as possible. At this point in time, I would probably say that it's unfeasible, that it could go ahead without causing loss or damage to ancient woodland and veteran trees, and that's something that we have to oppose as an organisation. So we're working with other environmental NGOs, conservation orgs like RSPB, Buglife, Wildlife Trust, CPRE to to oppose this scheme.

Adam: So, and if people want to keep an eye on the sort of campaigns you're running, and the sort of live issues around the country, where can they get that information?

Jack: They can go along to woodlandtrust.org.uk/campaigns and they'll be able to find out about what we're doing in terms of campaigning for protection of ancient woods and veteran trees. We've got a really great campaign at the moment, all about protecting ancient and veteran trees and we're stood in in front of one of these at the moment, we call them Living Legends.

Adam: Right OK, what a lovely link, because I I was gonna say you've brought me to a stand. It looks like a sculpture this, so what, so let me just briefly describe this. I mean, it's a hollowed out tree. There's, it almost looks like there's 3 or 4 bits of different trees supporting each other, and you can go hide in the middle. I mean, there's, I'd, I couldn't spread my arms in the middle, but I mean almost, you know, there's probably, I don't know, 4 or 5 foot wide in the middle. It's most extraordinary. What is this? What's going on here?

Jack: So I would probably say this is an ancient ash tree. As trees sort of grow older, they they have to sort of kind of allow their heartwood to to rot away because that's what keeps them sort of stable and secure and in doing so that creates really important habitat for wildlife. And so this is what has happened to this ash tree effectively, its heartwood has sort of rotted away, it's still got this kind of all important surrounding ripewood to be able to support the rest of the tree.

Adam: That's extraordinary. So the the, the, the wood at the centre of the tree, the heartwood has gone?

Jack: Yes, yeah, yeah, cause it it's not it's not really useful for for trees at that sort of point. It's it's no longer the part of the wood that's carrying the sort of the water and nutrients up the tree. That's what the sort of outer ripewood does. So the heartwood decays away as they as they grow older.

Adam: And that's just ash trees is it?

Jack: No, that's that's pretty much all. Yeah.

Adam: How ignorant am I? OK, fine. OK. I didn't realise that that happens to all trees. And it looks like that would cause an instability problem, but this looks actually fairly fairly stable, it's fine.

Jack: It it's it's actually it's actually the other way they do it because it allows them to remain as stable as possible. And I I mean this one it doesn't, it doesn't look in the best sort of structural condition does it, but they need to do that for their sort of physiological condition because if they have if they're trying to support too much sort of heartwood then it affects the trees energy balances. And I mean that there's actual sort of scientific things here between the kinetic and the potential energy in a tree and why why they do this but all old trees do it and in turn it creates this amazing habitat, so you can see all these little holes in the in the sort of kind of inside wood and the decaying wood as well, where insects have sort of burrowed into it, where birds would be, woodpeckers, you know would be would be accessing that as well.

Adam: Yeah. Amazing

Jack: Amazing structures, aren't they?

Adam: And so I'm going to meet now, one of the people responsible for actually managing woods such as Ashenbank, and he's waiting for me a bit further into the woods.

Clive: OK, I'm Clive, Clive Steward, I'm one of the estate managers for the Woodland Trust working in the South East.

Adam: So what is important about this site? What makes this wood special?

Clive: What makes this site special is that it's ancient woodland or partly ancient woodland, but it's also managed as a wood pasture or has been managed as a wood pasture in the past, and because of that habitat it has lots and lots of old trees and old trees is very important in terms of what they support in terms of dead and decaying habitats.

Adam: Right, so well we're standing by this extraordinary ash tree, I mean, it's extraordinary that there's an ash tree at all, given ash dieback, but it's extraordinary for all sorts of other reasons. But is ash a big part of this woodland?

Clive: In terms of its name, Ashenbank, you you think it should be but but it's it is a component of the site but it's not, the majority species is not ash.

Adam: What is this site then?

Clive: So mostly sycamore and we're in the northern part of Ashenbank where we've got a lot of sycamore and we've got some really big old sweet chestnuts, but there are lovely old oak trees and hornbeam trees.

Adam: Right. And so when we talk about ancient woodland, it's always worth, I suppose, explaining a bit about what we mean because clearly will go, well, that's old. But old for trees can be a whole different sort of thing. So how, what, what, what do you mean when you're talking about ancient woodlands?

Clive: Well, when we say ancient woodland ancient woodland is defined as areas which have been permanently wooded since 1600AD. That's the sort of the the the date.

Adam: Oh right, I didn't realise it was that precise.

Clive: Well, it well, yes, it's roughly when big old estates used to produce maps, so they discovered paper and started drawing maps of what they owned but prior so before this this, the assumption is that if it's wooded then it would have been wooded ever since the Ice Age retreated but managed by mankind for for thousands of years.

Adam: So we're, we're assuming actually that ancient woodland is all it's probably been here since the Ice Age?

Clive: Yes. Yeah.

Adam: So that's why I mean that's it's worth I think pausing on that because it's why when we're talking about 'oh, we'll have to destroy a bit of woodland for a tree, for a road' sorry, we're talking about taking away a bit of the landscape, which has been there since the Ice Age probably. So that's quite a big deal to have done that.

Clive: Yeah, yeah. It is. It is. Yeah. The the other part of Ashenbank, which is the bit we're in is a more recently wooded area, probably about 200 years old. I have a a map here which is not good for a podcast, but I can show you a map.

Adam: Go on go on, we can describe this. Hold on. I'll hold the microphone and you can describe what we're seeing. So go on, yes.

Clive: So we have a a map here of Ashenbank Wood dating from 1797, which shows the woodland it used to be. I have another map showing the wood as it is today. So here's a map from a couple of years ago, but we're we're actually up here, which in the 1797 map shows fields. And now, now, now it's woods. So so basically, what's happened this Ashenbank used to be owned by Cobham Hall, which is a big estate to the east of Halfpence Lane, so this used to be partly of Cobham Hall Estate and in 1790, as many of these big old estates houses used to do, they used used they they employed a landscape architect to make their their grounds nicer as it were. So it wasn't Capability Brown, but it was a chap called Humphrey Repton who worked on this site from 1790 to about 1880, when he died 1818 when he died. And he landscaped the estate and the view from the house over to here looking west to what is now Ashenbank Wood was obviously important to him. So they actually planted a lot of these big old chestnuts which we walked past, which date from 200 years ago.

Adam: Which is very nice and we often hear about cutting trees down and looking at old maps going 'oh, we've lost all that wood', here's an example of the reverse to actually that's a good nature story.

Clive: Yeah, yeah, definitely it is. Yes. As you get older, as they get older, these trees there are microhabitats which develop rot pockets, branches fall off, they they rot, big holes develop and that that's these microhabitats which are home to what's called saproxylic species.

Adam: OK, that's a new word, saproxylic?

Clive: Saproxylic. So saproxylics are are basically insects and beetles and flies which only exist in dead and decaying wood. So if these big old trees weren't around, they've got nowhere to live.

Adam: Right, which is why it's useful to have deadwood on the ground. It's not so, it looks untidy, but actually that's often the richest place.

Clive: Indeed. Yeah, yes, but often, but often these insects and beetles are actually in the living tree, not in the in the horizontal, dead and dying stuff. And it's the living trees, which are are why this habitat is so important.

Adam: But I thought you said you said they're living in the living trees, but but saproxylic means they're living in the dead trees?

Clive: But within these big old trees, there are these rot holes and pockets and little microhabitats within the tree...

Adam: Yes, which are dead and that's where they live?

Clive: Where they live yeah that's right.

Adam: Right OK. Yeah, very interesting. OK, very interesting. Now, there's also, I knew I was told, but I'm completely confused by, an idea that I'm told that goes on here of strapping deadwood to live trees. Did I did I misunderstand that?

Clive: No, no, you you didn't misunderstand it. No.

Adam: OK and you're going to show me where this is ?

Clive: Yep. Shall we shall we go, we'll we'll walk there, have a look.

Adam: Alright. Brilliant. So you've taken me to this tree, a very substantial tree, but next to it, this is the a bit of, what, you better explain, because this is really odd and I don't really understand what I'm looking at.

Clive: Right. Well, going back to 1999 when High Speed One was being built, they took out three hectares of Ashenbank Wood along with lots of other woodland in the area. And fortunately, somebody had the idea of of suggesting that we could save some of those big trees they felled and reerecting them against living trees to help them degrade and and become part of the habitat.

Adam: So I mean to describe this, we've got a very big tree. What sort of tree is this?

Clive: So you've got a big, big oak tree.

Adam: That's a big oak, and next to it is 6, 12, I don't know, 30 foot, 40 foot high dead tree, bit of bark. But it's it's not like a small, it's a 40 foot bit of bark which you have propped onto the living tree. Why is it better to have done that than just to leave it on the ground?

Clive: Well, it's about these microhabitats. So I mean, it's not just propped up it's actually strapped to it, so it's actually quite secure.

Adam: It is secure, that's y your health and safety hat on.

Clive: We had to make sure it was strapped up, but vertical dead or decaying wood is equally as important as horizontal, dead and decaying wood.

Adam: OK. Is it different? What, does it do different things?

Clive: The wood doesn't but it attracts different insects and species so that that that's why so. But in most in most woodlands you'll see deadwood as being felled trees which are lying or windblown. You don't often see dead vertical trees.

Adam: I've never seen that.

Clive: Well, they're often well, they're often felled and taken out for firewood or something but they are important as as a sort of microhabitat for these saproxylics. That that's purely why.

Adam: So the saproxylics which are insects which live on deadwood prefer, some prefer the high rise living of the vertical tree rather than the low level bungalow type living. But what what sort of, do you do, don't worry if you don't know, but do you know which insects prefer living vertically?

Clive: I I don't know that.

Adam: You don't. Somebody will, somebody will.

Clive: Yeah somebody will. But if you look at that tree, you'll see that it's a there's a there's a U-shaped crook 2/3 way up and in that there's there's a there's a hole which has probably got water in it. So water gathers from rain and that's that that little microhabitat will be, something will live in it. And if that was horizontal, it wouldn't be there.

Adam: Right, yes, yes. Well that I think this must be, I mean, we've been doing this for a few years. I've never seen that. So that is amazing. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. So I know that the history of this site goes back quite a long way, not just the natural history, but the human history as well, and am I right in saying there's quite quite a lot of sort of Bronze Age heritage here?

Clive: Well, we've got a Scheduled Ancient Monument which has been dated to between 2000 and 1500 BC, which is a big burial mount and it is scheduled and it's, you know, English Heritage monitor it and we have to make sure it's free of trees and it's there to see.

Adam: Right. Wow. And it's interesting you talk about it's there to see because we came and parked in the Woodland Trust car park. Free parking, as is normal in Woodland Trust places, first time though a full car park. We are here midweek during the day. I was surprised to see it's full so talking about visitors, this is clearly a, I mean have I just come at a weird time, have they all come to see the Woodland Trust podcast being made, it's right, it's a popular site. That always feels like contention to me because I know you want to encourage people to come, on the other hand, coming in a sort of, destroys a bit of what we see. How much of a problem are the level of visitors?

Clive: Well, we basically have a path network through Ashenbank Wood which we maintain, we mow, we make sure it's open and safe. So most people walk on those those paths which steers people around the the wood, as it were, so and we we don't stop people from walking off the path but most people don't cause it's, you know, nettles or brambles or whatever. It's difficult to do.

Adam: Right, yes. And keeping dogs on the lead and everything. You've been with the Trust for a long time, haven't you, really. What sort of change have you seen in the the the debate around the natural world in your time here?

Clive: That's a big question.

Adam: Have you, I mean, sort of, it assumes you have seen a change, you might not have seen a change. I mean I the reason I ask it is because it feels to me it's gone up the political agenda, that it's not just, you know, people dismissively talking about crazy tree huggers and let them onto their own thing. It's become more mainstream. Do you think that that's it's become more optimistic, do you think it's become more pessimistic, do you think, you you know, it's become more informed, I suppose?

Clive: Well, I think there's a growing recognition that ancient woodland is a special habitat, but it hasn't quite gone far enough to get total protection. But I think there's a growing realisation that ancient woodland is special and we need to look after it. And I think the politicians probably do understand it, but maybe can't quite make that move to legislate against total protection.

Adam: Yeah. And I think that's part of the Living Legend campaign that the Woodland Trust is organising, isn't it?

Clive: Definitely is. Yeah. Yeah, very much so.

Adam: Well, there were two websites we talked about today. So if you want to get involved in a local campaign, search for 'Woodland Trust campaigns' and you can find out more about the attempts to get better legal protection for ancient and veteran trees by searching for the Living Legends campaign and of course I hope you get a chance to visit Ashenbank Woods yourself. So until next time, happy wandering.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the visiting woods pages. Thank you.

Did you know oak supports over 2,300 species of wildlife? Discover this and more fascinating facts in our episode dedicated to the nation's favourite tree. We join Trust experts, Jules and Kate, at Londonthorpe Woods, near Grantham, to find some fascinating growths on oak trees, known as galls, and learn why hunks of deadwood are so important.

We then visit the star of the show and 'Lincolnshire's best kept secret' - the astonishing 1,000-year-old Bowthorpe Oak. It's one of 12 amazing oaks in the running for 2024 Tree of the Year. Which one will you vote for?

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Well, in this podcast, we're looking at the Woodland Trust's Tree of the Year competition, which is all about oaks and is on a quest to find the nation's favourite one. And there are lots to choose from. There is the Elephant Oak in the New Forest, the Queen Elizabeth Oak in West Sussex, the Darwin Oak in Shropshire, the Capon Oak on the Scottish Borders and plenty of others to choose from across Wales, Somerset, County Fermanagh, Cheshire and well, lots of other places as well. And you can vote for your favourite oak by going to the shortlist of them at the voting site woodlandtrust.org.uk/vote, so that is woodlandtrust.org.uk/vote and we'll repeat that again at the end of this podcast.

Well, today I'm going to see one of the oaks in contention for the Tree of the Year, the Bowthorpe Oak in Bourne, in Lincolnshire, a tree which has a hollow interior and had previously, that interior had been fitted with seats and had been used as a dining room for 20 people in the past, 20 people! It must have been an enormous oak and that's not a practice I think that's recommended these days. Well, certainly not. But nonetheless it's a great oak which has played a great big part in the local landscape and is much loved, not just in the UK but attracts plenty of visitors from abroad as well. Now, oaks have an amazingly important part in our culture and in days gone by were, I think, central in Druid folklore, for instance, in fact one amazing fact I have learnt making this podcast is that the name Druid comes from druer, the Celtic for oak for the word oak and wid means to know, so Druid means oak-knower, so there's a good fact for you. Anyway, enough of me. I'm off to meet some people who know all about oaks and unusually I am not starting by a tree. So, unusually, we're starting in a car and I'm joined by two women from the Woodland Trust. So first of all, introduce yourselves.

Kate: I'm Kate Lewthwaite. I am citizen science manager at the Woodland Trust.

Adam: Wonderful. And our driver for the day is...

Jules: Hi, I'm Jules Acton. I'm a fundraiser with the Woodland Trust.

Adam: So we're going to look at a few oaks today, one of which is actually in the running to be the Tree of the Year, and you can vote on that still and I'll give you details a little later on on how to do that. But first of all, you were telling me that you have a little present for me. I always like to start the day with a little present.

Jules: It's always good to start the day with a little present, I think and here's a little one for you.

Adam: Oh, and it's wrapped up in tissue paper. It's an early Christmas present. How very good. So what is that? OK so do you want to describe it?

Jules: OK so it's a little, it looks like a little woody marble really, doesn't it? And it's got a little tiny hole you can see just there and some extra other little tiny holes. That is an oak marble gall.

Adam: An oak marble...ghoul?

Jules: Gall.

Adam: And how do you spell that?

Jules: G A double L.

Adam: G A double L and what what is it?

Jules: So this is this is incredibly special, so this has in many ways changed human culture, this little tiny thing. Certainly amplified human culture. So this is a gall, which is made by, and it's made by a little tiny wasp. And the wasp lays a an egg in the in the bud of the tree of the oak tree. And it makes the oak change and it sort of changes chemically. It's really strange. And it makes the the oak form this little marble shaped thing on the end of a twig. And that becomes home for the gall wasps' larvae, and so that the little larva grows up inside it and it has this its own special home, but it's also full of lovely food. So that's interesting itself and that it's it's it's it's got this sort of little little home but it what's particularly interesting human, from the human perspective is that these kind of galls were used to make ink for about 1,000 years and the the kind of ink that they made, it was used, I think, until the middle of the 20th century. So kind of until quite recently. So Shakespeare's plays were written on oak gall ink, Newton's theories, the American Declaration of Independence, huge amounts of historic documents.

Adam: So just trying to understand that, Shakespeare's plays were written on ink created by this thing?

Jules: By a gall like, yeah, this kind of thing by by a gall. Yeah. But you can you can still now you can make gall gall ink from these little little things here. So it in many ways it it amplified, this little tiny thing we've got here, amplified the whole course of human history, culture, etcetera in our part of the world.

Adam: Quite an extraordinary place to start our journey today. Wonderful. So, OK, so we're, yes, we'll put that away nice and safe and we'll start our journey. Kate, do you just want to start by telling me what we're going to do when we get out of the car?

Kate: We're going to have a walk round Londonthorpe Wood, which is one of the Woodland Trust sites, one of our thousand woods that we own and we're going to see an oak tree that Jules has found for us to go and talk about.

Adam: Fantastic. All right, well, let's go.

Jules: Well, well so we've just seen some amazing galls on what looks like quite a young tree, it's probably about 30-years-old, would you say, Kate, this one?

Kate: Maybe, yes.

Jules: And, yeah, they're they're bright red and they're on the underside of the oak leaves and they look a bit like cherries and

Adam: I was going to say, the one you showed me was all grey, you gave me an old rubbish one, didn't you? This is what they look like when they're on the tree. It's red, it does look like a cherry.

Jules: Yeah, this is a particularly stunning one, isn't it? And they they are literally called cherry galls. And they again

Adam: They're called cherry balls?

Jules: Cherry galls.

Adam: Galls, cherry galls.

Jules: And they're about the same size as the marble gall that we saw earlier. And I believe they are also caused by a gall wasp. And but what is good about these kind of galls is that they're relatively easy to spot. So once you get your eye in, you start seeing them everywhere, so it's a really lovely thing to start doing, you know, with children or just looking yourself when you're out on a on a walk, you know.

Adam: Wow. So that shows that a wasp has formed that?

Jules: Yeah

Adam: And these are non-stinging wasps, aren't they?

Jules: These are non-stinging wasps. They're teeny, teeny, tiny wasps. They don't look like your your black, you know the big black and and and yellow stripey things that come at your ice cream, not that there's anything wrong with those wasps, they're lovely too.

Adam: Inside that gall is baby wasps? Is that?

Jules: There will be a little larvae inside there.

Adam: And that's what they're using as as food, or is it?

Jules: Yes, that's their home but it's also their food source. And I'm not at some point in the year the the the little tiny wasp, once it's developed, will will kind of drill its way out and then be set free to the to the wider world. But I think we'll find some other kinds of galls, actually. So it might be worth us moving on a little bit and just see if we can.

Adam: OK. Moving on, yeah, that's politely telling me to be quiet and start walking.

Jules: Oh sorry *laughs*

Adam: Sorry, there's a, oh it's a tractor going up and down the field next to us. So that's what the noise is in the background. But the fact that we we sort of just held a branch here and and Kate was already, you know, lots of wildlife, jumped onto her jumper, does raise the issue about how many, how much wildlife an oak supports. And I was hear some fantastic number. Just tell me a little bit about that.

Jules: We know that the oak supports more than 2,300 species and that they could be species that that feed off the oak, that live inside it, that live on, on, on or or around it, that you know they perch in it. So species using the the oak tree in all different ways and they are, they they they're birds and mammals, they're lichen, fungi, invertebrates. All sorts of different kinds of species, but what's important, I think, is that they're only the species we've countered, and I think there are a huge number more that we just haven't got around to counting would, would you agree, Kate? You probably know more about this than me.

Kate: Yes, definitely. And some of those species can live on other types of tree, and some are only found on oak trees, so they're particularly important. And of course, we haven't started talking about the value of deadwood and all those wonderful rare beetles whose larvae live in the wood. So there's lots to be said about that as well.

Adam: I'll tell you what, let's just walk all further away from this tractor, which sounds closer than it is, and you can tell me about the importance of the deadwood.

Jules: Well we might see some spectacular deadwood.

Adam: Oh well, we might see some, OK. OK, so we have stopped by some deadwood and you're going to explain why, is that right? Right. OK. Kate is going to explain. Well, why have we stopped here, Kate?

Kate: Because deadwood is absolutely fantastic and we have a history of a nation of being a little bit too tidy and taking it away and using it for firewood and other things, when actually it's an amazing habitat in its own right. I'm just looking at the variety of rot holes, of larval galleries where the insect larvae have fed, and then the adults emerged. And it is like a whole habitat in its own right. And actually deadwood is really rare. Much of the woodland in the UK is not felt to be in good ecological condition and one of the reasons for that is a lack of deadwood. So it's incredibly important habitat and we don't have enough of it.

Jules: One of the things I didn't understand until recently and Kate, you might know more about this than me, but there's there's different kinds of deadwood. So if you have, it's important to have deadwood in different formats, so standing deadwood so when the old tree is still standing upright, and and deadwood that's lying down on the ground.

Adam: Right. What what why, so it matters if it's vertical or horizontal?

Jules: It it it matters that you have both kinds.

Adam: And why?

Jules: Because, I feel like I'm at the edge of my knowledge, so it's because about it's about different habitats, isn't it Kate, is that right?

Kate: Yeah, I think so. And the the wood will rot at a different rate. It's quite ironic because the one we're standing at now is actually at a 45° angle. So it's neither vertical nor nor horizontal. And of course, oak trees are absolutely full of of tannins, which I think are the same compound you find in the oak galls that enable the writing. But they also mean, you know this huge, great piece of deadwood here could be around for hundreds of years because it won't, it will rot very, very slowly.

Jules: And and one of the great things is when you have deadwood right next to living wood as well, because that creates all these different conditions which will suit different kinds of invertebrates and fungi as well, so that that's really important to have this collection of of different kinds of wood in in you know in a similar area.

Adam: Excellent. OK, we've, we've stopped. We've stopped Kate, and you've got very excited.

Kate: It happens quite easily when I'm out in nature. And there's a whole pile of knopper galls on the floor here, and they're black. You know, they've dropped off the tree. They've done their job. The the wasp has flown off. But I wondered if we could, I've no idea if this is gonna work, I wondered if we could actually try writing with them because they are oozing black.

Adam: Oh my, right, this is so exciting. OK, so this is like this is a modern day Shakespeare. Have you got? OK. The line is to be or not to be. I see. Hold on a second. So you've picked it up, right, I I think you might do something to it.

Kate: Well, I might have to. Shall we see, shall we see if it just?

Adam: Right, but you're not, you're just gonna?

Jules: Ohh there we go.

Kate: There is a brown ooze and it's I think it's not just from the path.

Adam: I was going to say, it's not just mud.

Kate: It's not. It's this kind of coffee colour.

Adam: Wow, OK. And you are writing to be or not to not be.

Kate: I am writing to be or not to be, I I don't know if I break it open a bit more if you might get. Ohh. This is gonna stain my nails, isn't it?

Adam: OK. Ohh dear, don't worry I'll I'll pay for the the visit to to the nail parlour.

Kate: *laughs* I shouldn't worry. Yes, we are actually getting some.

Adam: To be or not to be. Well, I'm sure that would have actually been mixed with water or something.

Kate: Most likely

Adam: Or some alcohol and put into a quill, but that does what hold on, let me just rub it, see. Well, I can confirm that is not just what we have now created ink. Proper exciting.

Kate: Absolutely.

Adam: Thank you very much. Well, we're heading away from our ink gall-bearing oaks to see the main attraction of the day, which is a short drive from here. It is the Bowthorpe Oak, one of the contenders for Tree of the Year. It is rooted in a grass paddock behind the 17th century farmhouse nearby. In 2002, the Tree Council, in celebration of the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, designated the Bowthorpe Oak one of 50 great British trees. One of the 50 greatest British trees in recognition of its place in our national heritage. And I'm meeting the current custodian of the oak who runs the farm in which it lives.

George: My name is George Blanchard and I am one of the family members here that farm at Bowthorpe Park Farm.

Adam: Right. And you have, we're standing by this famous tree. People come here to see this tree?

George: They do, yeah, we get them from all over the world. A lot of lot of UK, obviously, Europe and America, we get a lot of interest from America.

Adam: Well, tell me a bit about this tree.

George: So this tree, the Bowthorpe Oak, is the UK's largest girthed oak tree. It's absolutely stunning as you can, as you can see, fully in leaf at the moment it looks amazing and yeah, that's it's claim to fame.

Adam: Right it's wide the widest I think it was the second widest tree in the UK. Is that right?

George: We know it's the largest largest oak tree in in terms of it's it's the most complete, you know. So I think there could be wider ones, but not quite as complete.

Adam: Not quite as good as your tree!

George: Yeah, exactly. This is yeah *laughs*

Adam: No, I agree. And and is is this a family farm? Is this?

George: It is yeah.

Adam: Right so you've grown up, you've you played under the boughs of this tree.

George: I have. Yeah, yeah and and inside it as well. Remember it is hollow so.

Adam: Right. Yeah. So tell me a bit about the sort of the folklore and the stories around the tree.

George: Yeah so oak trees naturally start to hollow at around 500 years old, but this one was hollowed even further, back in the 1700s by a chap called George Pauncefort and

Adam: It was, it was, it wasn't naturally hollow, he hollowed it out?

George: They they do, they do naturally hollow, but he hollowed it even further. And you can tell this when you're looking inside it, because the the sides are quite flat. It's very unnatural. You can see so the hollowing has been done by by tools. And so he also put benches around the inside of it and a and a doorway on on the west side and even even sort of paved the flooring but and and put a pigeon loft in the crown, which I think, I think back in the day in the 1700s, if you had a pigeon loft in your tree, you were somebody *laughs*.

Adam: Ohh really that's like Lamborghini time, right? OK, forget your Lamborghinis, I've got a pigeon loft in my tree.

George: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And he would have parties in there as as you would, wouldn't you?

Adam: Well, yeah, of course. I mean, you've gone to all that trouble. Was he a member of the family? Was this being passed down?

George: No, no, there's no there's no relation, no relation. We've we've only been farming here since the sort of late 40s.

Adam: Right. OK, amazing. Amazing stuff. And I mean, and it looks in fairly, I mean as you say, it's in good leaf, it's in also just it looks to the untutored eye in good nick as well, generally healthy.

George: It is yeah. Really good really good condition currently. We lost a a limb off the back and that was that was quite concerning because it's it's quite dramatic when they shed a shed a limb, but it is what they they naturally do. We have an inspection done on the tree annually, but at the time of losing the limb, we were, we were quite concerned. So we upped the type of inspection we had done. And they were quite, quite invasive, I say invasive it was, you know, using really small drills, to see if there's any adverse rotting in any places. But no, they were really happy with the condition of the tree and and how healthy it is so other than any sort of man-made issue, I don't see why it shouldn't carry on growing as it is.

Adam: And it's amazing because, I mean, you know, it's taken us quite a while to get here and people come here all this way just to see this tree.

George: They do, yes, yes, seek it out, we call it Lincolnshire's best kept secret.

Adam: Right. Amazing. From all over the world?

George: They do yeah yeah. From all over the world. Like I say, a lot of a lot of Europe people come from Europe and a lot of people come from America. We find that the two two types of people from America, those that really appreciate it and those that just can't get their head around it because it's nowhere near as big as their redwoods *laughs*

Adam: Right? Call this big. Call this big, you should see...

George: Exactly. Yeah, call this big, we've got bigger.

Adam: Yeah OK. Brilliant well thank you very much, I will take a tour round it.

George: Thank you.

Adam: So one of the other, now I have to say, first of all, let me have a look at the front front, we've taken a book with us because Jules has published a book called Oaklore and you've brought it out here because there is a poem about this oak in your book.

Jules: There is and it was written well over 100 years ago by a poet called John Clare and but the interesting thing is when he wrote this poem this would have already been an ancient tree, so it's it's quite an interesting record that he was standing in awe, looking at this tree, just like we are now really.

Adam: Right, right. So when did he write this?

Jules: I don't have the exact date in front of me, but I know it's over well over 100 years ago.

Adam: OK, well over 100 years and you're going to put on your best poetry reading voice.

Jules: *laughs* I'll have a go.

Adam: Go on, give us, I always love, I mean, we did this in the Sherwood Forest podcast where we took a book about Sherwood Forest and a book about a tree to the tree it's about. So we're now going to read a poem about the tree we're standing by. So this poem by John Clare.

Jules: And it's called Burthorp Oak. So here we go. Burthorp Oak.

Old noted oak! I saw thee in a mood Of vague indifference; and yet with me Thy memory, like thy fate, hath lingering stood For years, thou hermit, in the lonely sea Of grass that waves around thee! Solitude Paints not a lonelier picture to the view, Burthorp! than thy one melancholy tree Age-rent, and shattered to a stump. Yet new Leaves come upon each rift and broken limb With every spring; and Poesy's visions swim Around it, of old days and chivalry; And desolate fancies bid the eyes grow dim With feelings, that earth's grandeur should decay, And all its olden memories pass away.

Adam: Brilliant. That's that's a lovely poem to read by by the tree.

Jules: I think it's quite interesting that he says age rent and shattered to a stump so it it sort of suggests that the tree is in a worse condition than now, wouldn't you say so Kate? And it looks like it might be happier now than when Clare saw it.

Kate: I was just looking at it and I mean it looks like some of those shoots have put on a good foot of growth this year. So that's the amazing thing about ancient oaks is they they so-called retrench. So all the limbs, the limbs drop off, they become shorter and and and wider and then they might all just start to sort of grow again and it sort of goes through these amazing cycles. Certainly there's a lot more vegetation on it than when I last saw it 15 years ago. It looks fabulous.

Adam: And also a lot of oaks grow very tall. This isn't so tall it it is wider, isn't it? It's a squatter tree. Is that because it's actually not had to compete, because it's actually in a field by itself isn't it? It's not competing for light with lots of other trees.

Kate: Yes, maybe. And also trees like this do, the really ancient trees they do tend to become short and squat and it's part, and hollow, and that's part of their survival strategy is that they'll shed some of these top branches and they'll, they'll shorten and and widen.

Adam: Right. I mean, oaks are really important, aren't they in the UK especially, they're part of the national identity, really, aren't they? And and a lot of that's got to do with folklore, which I know, Jules, you've written about as well.

Jules: Yeah, I mean the the oak has been part of our culture well, as far as as, as as far as we know as far as written records go back and even we we believe that the the Druids themselves were very also very interested in oak trees and they worshipped in oak groves and they particularly worshipped mistletoe, the rare mistletoe that came off off oaks. Of course, we don't have written records on the the Druids, so we don't, we know very little about them, but that's certainly what we believe. And then it's been threaded throughout our our history and our culture that the oaks right up to the present day, you know people are still writing about it and painting painting oak trees and you've got wonderful ambassadors like Luke Adam Hawker who is very inspired by oak trees and goes out drawing them.

Adam: Why do you, I mean I don't suppose there's an answer, but do you have a take on why we've landed on the oak as such a a central part of our mythology and identity?

Jules: Well, I I think I think all of our native trees will play a role in that in our folklore and our mythology and and our culture, I think the oak is is is a particularly impressive tree isn't it, especially when you're standing next to a tree like this that that is so majestic and and you know the words like majestic, kingly, queenly, grand, they they just sort of pop into your head. There is just something incredibly awe-inspiring about the oak tree. And then, as we've we've seen before it, it just has such a huge impact on our ecology as well. So I think I think it's just something it it does a lot of heavy lifting culturally and also naturally the oak tree.

Adam: And almost every pub is called the Royal Oak.

Jules: Yes, yes, I think there's at the last count there's well over 400 pubs called the Royal Oak.

Adam: And you know that personally by visiting them?

Jules: Well, I've yes, I've I've tried to count them all. I've still got some way to go *both laugh*

Adam: Yeah. OK, OK, alright. Well, it's it's a good project to be having.

Jules: So there's an interesting story behind the that name the Royal Oak. And the reason the pubs are called that relates back to a very special oak tree, the Boscobel Oak. Now we have to go back in history a few hundred years. And it takes us back to the Battle of Worcester and the son of Charles I was in in battle with the with, with, with the parliamentarians, and he took a drubbing at the Battle of Worcester, and he needed to escape. And he reached this place called Boscobel House, and he was going to hide out in, in that house and try and escape the the soldiers, the the enemy. But it was very insecure and one of his advisers suggested he, instead of hiding in the house, he hid in the oak tree. So they spent the whole night in the oak tree, which subsequently called called the Boscobel Oak, and this and and and they escaped capture and the king spent the whole night with this chap called William Careless as he as he was called

Adam: William Careless?

Jules: William Careless who turned out not to be careless at all because he actually saved the king. And apparently the king sort of curled up with his head on Careless' knee and and he, they they got away. They got away with it and because of that you know that then obviously led into a whole series of events which ultimately led to the restoration of the monarchy and said King became Charles II and and because of that there was an enormous celebration of oak trees. So they they they were raised in status even further. So we've got all the Royal Oak pubs which are effectively commemorating that occasion. But there's also a great day of celebration was declared. It was the 29 May. I think that was the King's birthday, and it was 29 May. And it became oak apple day. And that was when we would all when people across the land would would gather and and celebrate the restoration of the monarchy. And one of the things they used to do was they people would bring branches with oak apples, which is another of those amazing galls. And the more oak apples you had on your branches, the better the better you were, you know, the, the, the cooler you were at the party. And if you didn't bring oak branches with you, apparently people would be mean to you and they'd whip you with nettles.

Adam: Blimey, this story took a turn!

Jules: Yeah, these parties got these these parties got quite out of hand. I actually think we should bring these days back. Not, no nettles. But I think actually wouldn't it be great if we spent every 29 May celebrating our amazing oak trees and and and also the wider nature around us.

Adam: Yeah, we've missed it this year, but I'm putting a date in for us to meet at a Royal Oak somewhere between us on 29 May.

Jules: Yeah, let's do it. Let's party. Yeah. And maybe drink a glass of oak flavoured wine or whisky.

Adam: OK, never had that, but I'm I'm up for it. I'm up for it. Kate, this is also important because this is in the running for Tree of the Year.

Kate: Absolutely. So the Woodland Trust hosts the UK Tree of the Year competition, and this year we've focused on oak trees.

Adam: So so they're all oaks.

Kate: All of them are oak trees this year, so we've got 12 candidates from across the UK and the wonderful Bowthorpe Oak here is one of them. It's my local tree so I'm a little bit biased, but these trees all tell amazing stories. We've got one that's shaped like an elephant in the New Forest. We've got one that has survived being in the middle of pine plantation in the Highlands of Scotland and we've got one that's sadly under threat from a bypass in Shrewsbury. So we've got some amazing stories from these trees and the public can vote. So voting closes on the 21 October 2024 and you can go to the Woodland Trust website so it's woodlandtrust.org.uk/vote.

Adam: There were some cow noises just as you said that in the background! Just to prove that we're in a farm *all laugh*.

Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the visiting woods pages. Thank you.