Like most things which we take for granted, these trees can be almost invisible.
We’re fortunate in our town, we have plenty of trees. And like most things which we take for granted, these trees can be almost invisible, but they’re all about us – quiet, calm and reliable. Their beauty ebbs and flows with the seasons, they are the perfect barometer for measuring the progress of the year. From festooning the churchyard at St Edburg’s, to lining the winding Bure as it drifts through the town centre behind the bookshop, even the smaller trees in the planters along Sheep Street have a role to play in shaping and defining our world.
On some recent walks along the Wessex Ridgeway, towards the Dorset/Devon border, we came across woodland which had an otherworldly feel to it – this didn’t feel like the woodland we have in this part of the country, it almost felt tropical – damp, a profusion of ferns, lots of moss growing on the trees themselves. Whilst walking these beautiful paths, curiosity took over and the conversations turned to ‘could tropical rainforest exist in this country?’ And like all episodes of curiosity, there’s a book to help satisfy the incurably curious – for just a few weeks after our walk, a book was published by Guy Shrubsole called ‘The Lost Rainforests of Britain’. And not only that, like all the best cases of serendipity, Coles was asked to support a lecture Guy was giving at Oxford University yesterday evening. A fascinating subject, and a beautifully created book by a knowledgeable and curious writer – and Guy has happily signed some copies of the book for us. You may have seen ‘The Lost Rainforests of Britain’ featured in last week’s Sunday Times as the ‘Science Book of the Year’ – it’s one of our favourites too.
‘The Way through the Woods’ by Rudyard Kipling
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.
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