Hello all, it's quite a time since I initiated a walk report because I haven't been doing many!
But Friday 13th was an exception and a very propitious date if you ask me! I went walking with our forum member Yeldew in Collyweston Great Wood in Northamptonshire. This is a private wood where you need permits to walk in it and Yeldew has one and walks in it frequently. The point of this of course was that apart from forestry workers, very few people inhabit the wood so there's a very low chance of encounters.
The rendezvous had been planned for some time and was mainly weather dependent. The morning was grey, chilly and windy but I determined to go there come what may as I hadn't had a good walk in nature for such a long time (since last year). But luck was on our side and about lunchtime the skies cleared, the sun put its hat on and we walked for about 2 hours in excellent sunshine and not too hot and not too cold in the intermittent breezes.
I thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful, aged, commercial, mixed-deciduous wood. It was not only extensive but it was verdant with the burgeoning greenery and blossoms of high spring.
There had been huge spreads of bluebells which were mainly finished now but we passed many extensive carpets of white flowered wild garlic and the whole wood had the faint aroma of it - like an Italian restaurant!
Yeldew led me on paths ill trodden and I was transported once again to that wonderful feeling of being in nature and being a part of it.
My small backpack was an incumbrance and the necessary shoes and hat and even my necessary glasses seemed to separate me from full immersion in the green and welcoming surroundings. After a while, I was impelled to drop my pack for a bit and do some tree hugging. Why I get positive feedback from this activity, I know not but nevertheless tree hugging does add a sort of evanescent connection with the life of the woodland.
And so we wandered and chatted, chatted and wandered, got a bit lost and found our way again and eventually found the perimeter track of the woodland
which ran parallel to a deserted old military facility with many empty storage bunkers set into earth mounds. These had been thoroughly covered with graffiti but most of it was quite artistic and some of it very skilled indeed. My photos are not so good as they were taken through the wire fence and a layer of hedge and overgrowth. Hopefully you get the idea - there were about 20 bunkers - each highly decorated inside and out (the graffiti painters had broken in to each building).
And so we wandered back past little ponds and a field to our cars having had a very satisfying free range naturist hike.
John
