What's going on at Richmond Park?

if you want a taste of the wild, then London has two famous places to go - Richmond Park (to the west) and Hampstead Heath (to the north). But which offers the best experience? Here's a closer look at Richmond Park. Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs). 

Richmond Park is famous for the veteran oak trees.
This was one of many that are more than 6 of my arm spans wide. (c) GM

Richmond is just 10 miles from central London but it feels like a world away. Exploring this area over the xmas holiday gave me the opportunity to bike the 7mile (11km) radius of the huge park (hugging the boundary wall). A few days later with my friend Gisella I then walked across the centre from Mortlake station to Richmond overground - logging up 23,400 paces (14km).

Initially visiting was partly a political act: I wanted to see what this strange constituency of Richmond Park was like. It's where the incumbent MP, Zac Goldsmith (Con) lost to his Lib Dem rival, Sarah Olney in the Dec 2019 general election. Professionally Zac lucked out as he was then given a seat in the House of Lords, ensuring that he stays in the Cabinet as Minister of State for the Environment & Rural Affairs.

Richmond Park: After a steep climb, looking back down the
sandy path at Broomfield Hill. (c) NB

Part of the constituency includes the old hunting ground, Richmond Park. This is owned and managed by the Royal Parks, a charity, which looks after 5000 acres across London including Hyde Park, Greenwich Park, St James' Park, Bushy Park, Regent's Park and Kensington Gardens.

Pen Ponds are an easy place to spot wildlife. We saw a variety of
ducks, rails and cormorants. There are meant to be kingfishers. (c) NB

I'm a regular at Hampstead Heath, run by the Corporation of London, so I was surprised that Richmond Park seems very different, although they aren't that far apart as the crow flies. Of course there's no need to choose between them but I definitely noticed:

• Hampstead is wetter and muddier- you need boots in the winter (Richmond seems better drained)
• Richmond is cycle friendly (Hampstead virtually bans them)
• Richmond lets cars everywhere - it's basically a 20mph free for all and the noise and traffic smell ruins the rim of the park, which is exactly the bit pedestrians and cyclists use (Hampstead has no cars, good on you Hampstead)
• Richmond has 400+ deer and consequent problems with visitors feeding them and then getting into problems/wild animal face offs, especially around rutting season. Spotting deer was a real highlight.
• Hampstead is full of TV types and intellectuals talking leftie and love chat (Richmond has a different feel) though both parks are of course open to anyone and everyone.
• Hampstead has swimming ponds (Richmond has hot spots and car parks by every pond)
• Richmond lets cyclists and walkers share a track which seems to work (it's less stressful walking in Hampstead because no cyclist slinks up on you)
• Richmond has amazing old oaks, zillions of them. Hampstead has some veteran trees.
• Richmond is noisy: thumbs down to the endless vehicle traffic and parakeet screeching. Hampstead has parakeets, but it doesn't feel so busy with these green invader birds.

With these lovely routes, even in winter Richmond Park is popular
with walkers and cyclists. Just to the right, on the other side of the trees, you can make
out the road. Although there's now a hopper service to get people round the
park without their own cars (a nice idea) it's hard not to be surprised by how
car dominated this park seems to be. (c) NB

CYCLING: 
I really enjoyed cycling clockwise from Richmond Gate around the park. There's one super steep section but once up the hill there's a bench, kiosk (car park of course!) and plenty of old oaks to recover under. Once you're ready to cycle on, you will be rewarded by amazing views back towards London. The park is really breath-taking. I spent about two hours cycling or staring at the views. If it had been warmer I'd have spent longer under the oak trees.

Tip (getting there): From Richmond station exit left then left on to Sheen Road until the traffic lights. Here turn right up Church Road so that when you meet Richmond Hill (turn left) you haven't had to slog up the most steep part. Keep going until you Reach Richmond Gate. Getting to the park took about 10 mins, mostly in my lowest gear. I don't think I'd ever manage to cycle up a mountain!

Me, dog and Time Out book of London Walks exploring
Richmond Park on a sunlit December day. (c) GM

WALKING:
Walking was more fun - perhaps because I had my dog with me - but also it gave me the chance to catch up with my friend Gisella.

Nicola and Gisella inspired to pose by an ancient oak
in Two Storm Wood. Bertrand Russell played as a child in the
oaks at Pembroke Lodge. (c) GM

We could have walked in silence, but that would have been hard as there was a lot to discuss, ranging from our children and our jobs to travel and politics. We also went on the most beautiful, bright December day which meant every photo looked amazing - at least Gisella's did! Finding so many veteran trees was amazing. Richmond Park claims to have 1,300 veteran trees of which 320 are ancient. An ancient tree is a perfect habitat for many fungi, invertebrates, lichen and other species. According to the National Trust "one ancient oak has more biodiversity than 1,000 hundred-year-old oaks."

Mesmerised by the camouflaged red deer. (c) GM

Red deer near King Henry VIII mound. (c) GM

Highlights included:

• Spotting red deer up close
• Meeting so many veteran oak trees and also the fabulous sweet chestnuts in Sawpit Plantation.
• Watching a fire engine workshop with hoses at Pen Ponds (potential good training for XR members)
• Catching the hypnotically lovely scent of witch hazel in secret Isabella Plantation (and using the compost toilets there)
• Walking the last section from Pembroke Lodge to Richmond Hill towards the best sunset of 2019.

Viewpoint on Richmond Hill with the River
Thames' spectacular curves. (c) GM

Now I know two good routes around the park, and have a basic grasp of its geography I plan to go again soon. I love the way a walk you know seems to get shorter, and if that's the case then I'll have time to pop into the info centres. 24 hours on I'm still feeling jealous of all those Richmond Park wardens and also the riders who must know the park so much more intimately.

Q: Have you been to both these big London parks? Which would you recommend exploring, and why?

• More info about Richmond Park 
• More about Hampstead Heath

BOOK REVIEW: London is a forest

For anyone who likes exploring London this new book by @thestreettree expert Paul Wood, London is a Forest, offers a new way to look at trees. Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs). 

Recommended reading: London is a Forest by Paul Wood.
A great guide for exploring London's trees in an intelligent way full of views and viewpoints.

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LONDON IS A FOREST by Paul Wood (Hardie Grant, £12) 

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I live in a forest. During May most mornings I was woken by the excited trill of a wren in the tree by my bedroom. Looking out of the window I pick out my favourite trees – usually with the bigger silhouettes. But I like the lollipop tiddlers too, and the way young seedlings suddenly burst up releasing giant-sized leaves from red stalks. 

But this forest isn’t a traditional wild wood of fairy tales. The paths are paved, the tracks are tarmac. It’s busy and polluted. In fact, it’s central London, because London is a forest according to a UN definition. Excitingly London has 8.3 million trees, which is about one tree per person, making it the world’s largest urban forest. 

The well-named Paul Wood’s new book London is a Forest is an absolute must-have. Savouring each chapter, I’m reminded of yet another friend or relative who’d be fascinated by the content. As a result my must-buy-it-for list has now grown so long that I think may be forced to recommend rather than make so many purchases. 

So what’s special about this book? 

There’s a short intro that argues the case for why London is a forest which should be required reading. But the basic content is divided into six meandering trails that pass by the best bits of green London. This isn’t just lush royal parks and Thames-side walks, it’s also via the most venerable, most unusual, and most loved trees. Despite 8.3 million to pick out Paul is able to turn any humble tree into a celebrity - and tell you which angle it looks best from...

I did wonder if reading a book of walks might be a bit dull if it was interlaced with turn left here, right there, but the instructions are provided in a different way, with phone-friendly GPS coordinates. Using the margin for GPS coordinates prevents the text from being plied with instructions. This allows the reader to follow a cohesive thread as the author walks us (or maybe cycles as these are mostly 16+ mile/27km+ routes) from tree to tree taking in trails and London viewpoints from:

·     High Barnet to Barbican

·     Erith to Canary Wharf

·     Epping to London Fields

·     Richmond Park to Westminster

·     Croydon to Deptford

·     Tower Bridge to Heathrow

I’m a north Londoner so there are parts of these chapters that are very familiar to me and others where I’m slightly stuck. But this mix of arboreal anecdote, London knowledge and the author’s asides (mostly about how that tree ended up with that limb damage or was planted there) are fascinating. Not only am I re-remembering walks with friends, but also planning where to go for my next London explore. 

By default I already hug green places as I criss-cross my bit of London, so I know many trees well. But with Paul Wood as a guide there is so much more to learn. Just using one example, the silvery bark-shedding London plane I am now aware that there’s a mix of varieties on Highbury Fields. That the avenue on Kennington Road (western side) in Lambeth harbours badges that name each tree after an astronaut (best viewed from a 59 or 159 bus). And the very oldest London Plane, known as Barney, can be found between the London Wetlands Centre and Barn Elms playing fields. This extraordinary tree has been preserved using a metal cage that its thick branches are now trying to grow through.

Paul Wood’s ability to share an interesting factlet at each tree has been well-honed by his well-followed activity on @thestreettree and subsequent walks and talks. Even on a two-street walk Paul can do far more than name-the-street-trees. He can also tell you about why the local authority planted them, when to expect blooms or fruits/nuts and even the life span. Somehow Paul does this in the most gracious and charming way, rather than harrying us with fact after fact (an occasional sin of experts who know how to categorise).

London is a Forest deserves to become a classic guide to London. At this point of climate crisis it helps us understand what trees thrive in the parks and street scape, at the same time as covering the info about what those trees have seen. My hope is that this book should give encouragement to the many other cities of Britain – and the world – who are considering doubling their tree cover. People know that trees offer valuable services – just a few include their ability to carbon, absorb noise, remove pollutants, reduce flood risk, offer summer shade, improve well-being, look beautiful, provide pollination opportunities and delicious bounty (I’ve even made N4 street tree pear jam). Recent attempts to cost these services to London calculated they are worth more than £6 billion. 

My hunch is that we all need to be more knowledgeable about our trees and at times shout loudly for them. Past threats have often been road expansion and building. On London’s clay soils insurance companies dealing with subsidence claims have a tendency to put their blame squarely on the trees nearest to the subsiding house. If this habit remains unchallenged there is a risk that despite the Government getting us to plant more urban trees we will actually reduce the number. As Paul Wood’s book makes so clear, simply through the amazing variety of trees he introduces us to from the Atlas Cedar (Chiswick) to wingnut (Bermondsey) sometimes it’s not just planting trees that counts, it’s the size of what you plant. Some trees offer far more eco-system services, especially veterans.

London is a Forest will also look good on your book shelves as the cover art work – a green ringed log with the line of the River Thames flowing through it - is stunning. I’ve noticed that recent Hardie Grant books (part of Quadrille), have particularly good covers as well as rather fab nature thinking,so whether you judge a book by its cover, or its content, London is a Forest is a total win. My tip is to go add it to your wish list now.

Other books you might like:

• Ghost Trees: nature and people in a London Parish (shortlisted for the Wainwright prize) by Bob Gilbert 
• The Way Home: tales from a life without technology by Mark Boyle 

When did you last plant a tree?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. We do this in a bid to be less polluting and tackle climate change while at the same time keeping a global outlook. Recently Cicerone Guidebooks kindly gave Around Britain No Plane a very young oak tree. But where to plant it? Words by Nicola Baird 

My new oak tree, safe for a while in a big pot away from the bantams.

If I've got a proper life regret, then it's that I haven't planted enough trees. We all know we should plant more trees - to mop up pollution, provide habitat,  maybe even offer a sense of continuum - it's just that I don't really have anywhere I can put trees. My back garden is titchy and the hens and dog are expert at ruining any planting schemes I might have. And I live in London where the dreaded word subsidence is always linked to trees. Subsidence by the way is allegedly caused by street and garden tree roots undermining your home in their search for nourishment and water.

Worse for my tree planting dreams, my last purchase was a bowsaw which I intend to use to reduce the height of my giant privet hedge.

But I still long to plant trees. One a day is the Man Who Planted Trees mantra - and I have planted a few, maybe 100. Some highlights include:

• Acorns taken from trees later felled along the Newbury Bypass which are now growing at my brother's house.
• The mini orchard (you only need five trees to make an orchard!) in my home's front garden.
• The new whippet thin hedge saplings planted when I was doing a three month long course with British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, now the TCV.
• The small native woodland trees my friend Hannah has got me to plant in Wales. Always done when it's freezing.
• The olive tree that got put in my children's primary school grounds when the playground was remodelled.
• At Christmas my brother and I had the fun of planting two crazy trees in his garden - a little hazel which has truffles added to the root ball; and a weeping willow which he hopes to use as a picnic den, about 10 years from now...

Where to plant this baby oak?
This obsession with wanting to plant more trees means that I was thrilled to be given an oak sapling in February during a promotion for Britain"s National Trails by Cicerone, the publisher that specialises in long distance travel guides. I love the variety of Cicerone's guides and have The Danube Cycleway by my desk and on the kitchen table there's The Great Glen Way, just in case I have to take off, now... In some ways there is too much choice - Cicerone has 350 guidebooks and as a result has provided me with proper anorak information about Britain's National Trials... for instance 2016 will be:

• 45 years since Offa's Dyke Path was established
• 30 years sionce the opening of The Peddars Way and Norfolk coast Path
• 20 years since TheThames Path became a national trail
• 51 years since Britain's first national trail - the Pennine Way - was opened.

My husband and kids exploring the oak and hornbeam
woodland of Hatfield Forest, Essex - just beyond
Stansted Airport's runway.

Who will help me plant trees?
Walking and cycling across a long distance route are exactly the sort of times that get you thinking about landscape. Should the UK look so denuded?

Well it probably wouldn't if there were less sheep on the uplands and a different emphasis on land use. But that doesn't mean people aren't still planting trees. And the great thing is that it's possible to have a go yourself, even if you have zero outside space. For example:

• The Woodland Trust is a fabulous organisation doing a lot of tree planting - thanks to people like you and me (well actually not me, but I hope soon to have a go!). See more about how to plant trees with them on local community land, at schools and even in urban areas, here.
• The National Forest in Leicestershire is transforming 200 square miles into a huge forest. They rely on volunteers - so if you live in Leicestershire, Staffordshire or Derbyshire, or can make a trip to the Midlands, then you can help them out in their ambitions to plant more trees. See all the info here.
• You can also look at Trust for Conservation Volunteers website - just type in your postcode - and loads of green (management tasks and tree planting) pop up. Rather sweetly some of these are called green gyms.

Seeing the wood and the trees
I can see a couple of trees from my window as I type this, but amazingly 45% of the land in Russia, more than 50% of Brazil, 31% of Canada and 30% of the US are forested.

In the UK only 11% is forested.

Depending on your point of view woods can be beautiful, calming, wildlife and ecosystem havens. They are also a huge source of our cultural capital - lots of stories hint at the dark deeds that could happen "if you go down to the woods today". That mix of oasis and death trap does perhaps confuse the way we react to the idea of a walk in the woods. I certainly prefer to go into woods with my dog - although he's no friend to the larger animals we meet there (squirrels, munjac deer etc). But in the woods I notice how much calmer I always feel, it's almost as if time stops when I make the effort to touch and smell the bark of a large tree trunk or look up into the canopy.

Devon woodland - a place to stand & stare.

What to see
In winter I love the architectural quality of trees. In spring it's fun to compare the shades of the new green leaves, and see if you can spot love birds quarrelling over which is the best tree. In summer they just offer wonderful shade, and then autumn it's the joy of catching falling leaves and enjoying the array of reds, auburns and yellow displays.

Thank you
So thank you to the trees, and thank you to anyone - like Cicerone - who has ever made it possible for me to plant a tree. As you can see from the photo at the top of the page my baby oak is currently in a pot and at some point is going to need relocating so the roots can get growing properly. But here's to a year of planting many more and enjoying the ones that we know best. Let me know your tree planting stories. Here's a cheer to anyone who manages to plant even one tree, and proper envy and big respect to whoever plants the most!

Cherry blossom season: London, Japan, Washington

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. We do this in a bid to be less polluting and tackle climate change while at the same time keeping a global outlook. Here's a way to enjoy a taste of the cherry blossom of Japan, or the Washington cherry festival, just by taking a little walk around your local area. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

I love the way tree flowers are so showy, and yet most of would disagree that trees have flowers - because we think of it as blossom. 

Every year - after that long winter - the blossom seems sensational, as you can see from this gorgeous cherry tree flowering in a nearby London street.

2015 is proving an amazing one for cherry blossom thanks to the brilliant blue skies offering perfect backdrops, and cold, windless nights allowing the blossom to cling on for just one more marvellous, frothy day.

Of course Japan is famous for its cherry spectacles - known as sakura. You can see a map of where the biggest blossoms are here. Only today I learnt that Washington offers a National Cherry Blossom festival, with peak bloom between mid March and mid April, see here.

Unsung splendours
Knowing how important blossom is to the Japanese, and people in Washington, it is rather wonderful to take a walk through your hometown and pass a street tree or a generous planting on a council estate and see these fabulous pink and white blossoms blanketing a tree.

In the UK, once the cherry is out, watch for pear, apple and then my absolute favourite, hawthorn (or May) blossom. Spring is earlier in the south, so if you miss it just try heading north for an extra burst of springtime joy.

Here's an interview I wrote recently with a London tree champion who has been involved in counting the capital's trees, read it here. It seems amazing that 7 million trees thrive in such a built up place. But back to cherry trees. If you love anime as well, springtime is your chance to dress up and get searching for blossom backgrounds for your selfies. If you don't want to walk, then just sit down with instagram.

Lots more info about trees, blossom and gardening from the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley, near Woking, Surrey.

Over to you
What's your favourite tree blossom?

Where do you go to admire trees?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post looks at some very special trees you can vote for in the European Tree of the Year. But the best trees are the ones we see from our homes, schools and offices or pass when we are out and about (hence the choice of pix). Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

NB#1: Poplar in a London Park - when it's in leaf they rustle
together as if making conversation.

This week - from 21-28 February 2015 you can vote for European Tree of the Year - using this link http://www.treeoftheyear.org/Uvod.aspx. Looking at the photos on that link you can enjoy the lonely tree in Powys, Wales; the 150-year-old oak tree in the middle of a football pitch in Estonia and the UK's Major Oak - believed to have been used by Robin Hood and a gorgeous Scots Pine in Scotland.

NB#2: My cycle route into central London always takes me past this wonderful fig tree
on Amwell Street, Islington.

With the exception of the Irish entrance - a baby Cedar of Lebanon that's just 15 years old - and the Italian's predictable, but particularly ancient olive, the entrants are all tree species that are easy to see in the UK.

Tree ID is a tricky skill, but perhaps it could become your party trick?

NB#3: My family's favourite oak on Hampstead Heath
ideal for picnics, climbing, games & quiet thought.

Do you know how to recognise an oak, a horse chestnut, sweet chestnut, sycamore, black poplar or a plane tree? If so you can travel the world of trees easily in the UK taking in:

• Estonia (oak)
• Belgium (horse chestnut)
• France (sweet chestnut)
• Hungary (sycamore)
• Spain (black poplar)
• Bulgaria (plane tree)

NB#4: Silver birch liven up a city winter sunset.

The big venerables may be reasonably easy, but I find street tree ID tricky because the sort of lollipop-sized tree that survives pollarding and city pavements aren't the species that you'll find if you go down to the woods today. With one exception - the silver birch (see photo above).

NB#5: Crows nesting in an ash tree at the back of suburban garden, London.
Ash is my favourite tree to ID - you just cannot get it wrong, look for a horseshoe shaped black tip. Photo by Hedera Vetch.

Hope this post inspires you to vote via the Woodland Trust site here - or just to take a few minutes to admire at least one of the trees you pass this week. Maybe you'll end up creating your own top five trees too?

Meeting a very old mulberry tree - in Lewes

This blog is about low-carbon family travel. Exploring Lewes you may find the oldest mulberry tree - at 35o years old it's ancient, but a mere tot compared to the oldest tree in the world that's found in California, and reckoned to have been there for 5,000 years. Shame Lewes is so much colder than California... Post by Nicola Baird 

Posing by the UK's oldest mulberry tree in Lewes. It's close to 350 years old.

Dried mulberries are sold in the Turkish shops near where I live in London, but finding fresh ones - or even seeing a mulberry tree is unusual. Even so I can guide you to the two mulberry trees nearest to my house and if it's late summer will try and spot the bright berries that seem to grow off the trunk. If you catch them then they are tasty to eat and fabulously burst into red squishes as you pick them and aim for your mouth.

The TV adaptation of Hilary Mantell's amazing study of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall showed us that the decision makers of the day enjoyed cherries when they were in season - well they liked mulberries too. I guess where the nursery rhyme, "Here we go round the mulberry tree... " dates from.

Nestled between the South Downs, the Sussex-town of Lewes boasts many historic attractions from first bowling green to oldest mulberry tree.

The mulberry tree is from the 17th century and found  in the city centre at Southover Grange Garden. This is a public park now, but it used to be a private garden.

I love the fact that this mulberry tree is not far from Anne of Cleeves house. Anne was one of Henry VIII's luckier wives who neither lost her head or heart. King Henry had been wowed by her Holbein portrait but wasn't so keen when he met her, allegedly saying she looked like a horse (not in a good way). Her house was part of the "conscious uncoupling" settlement and luckily for visitors is open all year round so gives another insight into how the Tudors lived.

Old giants
There are still quite a few very old trees around. The Woodland Trust keeps a record of ancient trees, and recently (autumn 2014) it's tree fans voted the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, Nottingham - where Robin Hood allegedly used to hide - was named old tree of the year.

The oldest tree in the world is probably a bristlecone pine growing in California's white mountains  which has been there for 5,000 years. It's nicknamed Methuselah.

If only trees could talk, what stories they could tell.

Find out how to tree ID old trees with the Woodland Trust here.

Where can I be happy?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post takes a look at what it means to be happy - on holiday or at home. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).

Horse chestnuts in flower (look for the white candles).

"Does Japan have cherry blossom trees?" asks Nell, 12. This seems left-field but she explains that she's been playing Subway Surfer with a new background of blossom to make it seem more like Tokyo...

These days it's easy to travel without leaving your mobile.

Springtime - ideally outside away from screens - is wonderful in a country like the UK with four seasons. At least that's what the dog and I think as we walk around London (see photos). The dog enjoys sniffing and running - he's a lesson in how to be in-the-moment and happy.

But is happiness a choice? Can you feel happiness on demand, say by taking a holiday or being generous? I don't think so - although it's lovely to break routines, the pressure of keeping a family all happy (let alone a large family) for 24 hours a day for a week or more sounds terrifying. Creating a calm environment - with the opportunity to have many happy moments - is another option.

Wanting to be happy (and solvent) are two closely linked aspirations. As I meet more teenagers - my daughters' friends and the university students I teach - I do wonder about their resilience levels. It feels as if inner-toughness is being eroded at quite a speed. 

So what's happened in four years that's changed? Possibly far greater reliance on mini-screens for entertainment? Here's where I have to reel in an interview in the Guardian with 15-year-old Alice Carruthers talking about her perfect (or possibly typical) weekend, see here. In brief her main external experience appears to be from watching old episodes of Friends on YouTube. I am sure Alice has zillions of strengths but I was shocked to read her summary of typical weekend. She doesn't seem to move around, do anything for anyone else, of have many domestic tasks - other than homework. She's never asked to solve problems.

Circus ponies graze near tower blocks in spring sunshine.

"I want to get off"
Teaching riding I often find kids reach a point they can do most things (eg, steer and rise to the trot), but are quite unable to cope with a horse or pony resisting their requests. It can be frightening riding a horse but if a child - or an adult - can find the inner resilience to cope with the unpredictable, stop the tears and maybe to learn to love an animal that is as likely to stand on their foot as nicker at them over the stable door - I think they are lucky indeed. Not only will they be able to ride (a rare skill), they'll also have mined a strength of character that I am sure helps people to cope with problems.

Oh yes, and climate change...

In St James' Park on a spring evening with deck chair, book & picnic rug.

Cow parsley and hawthorn blossom-lined walk along a former railway.

For rather more cerebral insights about happiness have a look at Mattieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, who links science and meditation with a certain amount of joy, see here. With thanks to my friend ML for passing this on (via Melbourne/Honiara and Facebook).

Over to you?
Any ideas for developing our resilience levels? Is there something that can be done at school or uni with students or is it something families need to work on?

Riddle: What's ancient but still growing?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here are three bits of wood that were felled when they were already 1000s of years old, have done one job and are now treasured gifts offering just a hint of colonial America and pioneer Australians. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs).   


The answer to the riddle what's ancient, but still growing, is wood - wonderful wood. The picture is of my three most treasured cut pieces of wood. From left to right in the picture are pitch pine, red oak and huon pine. This post is their story.

RED OAK
This is my favourite. The plank of red oak was cut down by the first colonists from virgin American forests in the Appalachian mountains. The tree could have been about 1,000 years old when it was felled. The pioneers cut it down with a massive handsaw, and then made it into planks with a steam powered saw.

It became floorboards at a factory in North Carolina.

What's so exciting about red oak is that in some planks you can find Civil War bullets, and even native Indian arrow heads embedded inside and only revealed when the planks are de-nailed in modern sawmills. Lots more information about this at my friend Jason's brother's website www.thehistorictimbercompany.ie.

It's been with Jason for a while - he uses a similar plank piece to put behind his sink taps as a splashback. I gave him a bottle of whisky as a swap, and will be giving it to my godson who is about to be confirmed. George is 18, and is considering studying American history at university - no doubt because of summer 2010 which he spent visiting Amish communities as documented by Channel 4 in its documentary Living with the Amish. I'm sure he's expecting cash, I just think this is a richer gift (sorry George!). Pic shows George eating an Eton Mess pudding off his i-plank gift...

PITCH PINE
It smells so good and you can see beautiful knots in the grain. This is a piece of tongue and groove flooring from a cotton mill in North Carolina.

When the colonists first explored the new continent of America they met vast forests of pitch pine (also known as longleaf pine) - stretching 150 miles wide from the Atlantic Coast of south western Virgina down into Florida, along the Gulf of Mexico and into east Texas. The trees can live for 100s of years and grow up to 300ft high and 5ft wide. They are seriously big.

These virgin forests were used to source tar, pitch, turpentine and resin for the British navy. They are resitant to pest attack and survive well in water, even sea water.

According to www.thehistorictimbercompany.ie " Heavy exploitatiton of virgin longleaf pine beagn after the American Revolution and intensififed with the development of railroads in the late 1800s and on to England where the timbers were a key building material during the Industrial Revolution. By 1930 virtually all the old growth longleaf pine had been cut and used to build the factories, warehouses and terminals of industrial America and Europe.
"Today only 2 per cent of the orginal forest remains, with fewer than 1,000 acres of virgin timber still standing.
"A lot of the old structures the pine built are now being demolished which allows the painstaking process of re-salvaging a small piece of history. The Historic Timber Company rescues these timbers and ships them to our yard in Ireland where they are de-nailed, re-sawn and machined into historic pitch pine flooring."

My plan is to use it as a doorstop. I already have a box made from an old apple tree which works well as a doorstop - pity we tend to keep the doors shut all winter!

HUON PINE
This is scrap wood reclaimed from a dump in Tasmania, Australia. My friend Paula brought this Tardis style box back to us after we helped look after her daughter Izzy and their pet guinea pig. It's a much paler wood and was turned into a box by workers at Resource Work Cooperative, a not for profit which runs the Tip Shop  and Collectables - both sell items found on the South Hobart tip, mostly from McRobies Gully tip site. This is a real example of art for trash. Here's what Paula said about it when she gave it to us:

"Huon pine is one of the slowest-growing and longest living plants in the world. It can grow to an age of 3,000 years or more. Only the bristle-cone pine of North America lives longer.
Huon pine is found in western Tasmania, the central plateau and in the Huon Valley. Houon pine is a relic of Gondwana - the first pollen records date back 135 million years. 

"International headlines were made with  the discovery of a stand of Huon pines on the west coast that is more than 10,000 years old. [Wow!] All the trees are male and are genetically identical. No individual tree in the stand is 10,000 years old, rather the stand has been in existence for that long.

"Convicts on Sarah Island in the west of Tasmanai cosntructed ships from Huon pine. The wood contains an olil which retards the growth of fungi, hence its early popularity in ship bilding. later piners on the Franklin and Gordon rivers felled Huons and floated them downstream.
Today the tree is wholly protected and cannot be felled. However wood on the forest floor remains usable after hundreds of years and is still prized by modern woodworkers, not least because of its sweet aroma.

"Huon pine can be seen along the Huon pine walk at Tahune in the Huon Valley, the Teepookana Forest Reserve, West Coast, Heritage Landing on the Gordon River and near Newall Creek on the Mount Jukes road south of Queenstown. The working sawmill in Strahan will give samples of the timber to visitors and many craft outlets sell Huon pine woodcraft.

Over to you
Go admire the wood you are using - it's sure to have a fascinating story to tell. And if you do buy any new wood (or wood products) be sure to check that it has the FSC tick logo that assures you it has come from a woodland that is sustainably managed.

Essex discoveries part 1

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love travelling around the UK. Here's some ideas to fill your holidays and keep your carbon footprint low. This post about Essex is by Nicola

It's a swap thing: Pete was born in Herts, and I was born in Essex. But he's all Essex humour and I'm the posh bird from Hertfordshire. Although we didn't meet until I was 29 years old for a time we'd both lived pretty much equi-distance from Bishop's Stortford, the Hertfordshire market town that protects us from Essex. Or vice versa. Anyway, ahhh.

Nell, 9, is intrigued by Essex, she's hardly ever been there and yet there's a map on our corridor wall with rings around all the places that are family important (and yes, Nasty and Ugley, High Easter and Cold Christmas - we lost control of the highlighter pen!). And so the plan is get-to-know Essex better. It also means we've got a travel theme and Nell hopefully won't feel so cheated by her friends and their climate-bashing tales of "when I was at the airport...".

We've started well this Essex-themed Easter holidays well with a quick walk through Hatfield Forest, just outside Bishop's Stortford. Hatfield Forest is a remnant of the Great Essex Forest, mimics a medieval working woodland and is now run by the National Trust. As an added bonus it's opposite Stansted Airport working as a seriously green lung by the bypass and perimeter fence. Using a very easy to follow map we walked around the lake created by the one-time owner, a Hugenot refugee, who built a shell house for picnics - the shells (see pic left) are from the Caribbean and Africa, brought to the UK in the ballast of the ships that created such wealth for some of the old families (there's clearly a link to slavery here). The nice volunteer guide inside the Shell House encouraged the girls to play with these shells... And I swear I spotted the shells of African land snails too...

A family hunt
Next stop was just outside Great Dunmow (a place Pete could remember his Dad recalling the Saracen's Head and his mum rolling her eyes at the metropolis) for Great Garnetts farm by Barnston. This is where his dad, Denis May, had his first tenancy farm, eventually moving to the other side of Essex when offered more land for his dairy herd.

The big house at Great Garnetts was Elizabethan, with tall chimneys. There's still an interesting arch in or out of the stable yard and we hope to find out more when we go to the farmers' market held just about once a month (except August when everyone's too busy harvesting) - in 2010 they are on the 2nd Saturday of each month so try 10 April, 8 May, 12 June, 10 July, 11 Sep, 9 Oct and 13 Nov.

When Pete's mum, Sheila, moved in to the semi-detached farm cottage (see pic above) there was no heating except wood fires. I think she said there was no water as well. It must have been terrible for her especially looking after a four year old and Pete for his first eight months. No wonder he puts up with the cold... The farm cottages look picture perfect now and I think Lola and Nell were a tad jealous of the three children rolling outside with a pack of black labradors.

We also went to the pub that Denis used to walk to after his chores were finished. Lucky for us The Spotted Dog, in Bishop's Green (tel: 01245 231598), a lovely old thatched place, had just been redone and opened on 1 April (five days ago) as a gastro pub which still served real ale. We had our dog, so we ate on a bench outside, thinking about Denis all those years ago propping up the bar with a few old farmer friends. Maybe.

It's an irony that Denis felt so strongly that organic was a fad, and now even the old pubs are going all foodie and his old farm has recreated itself as a farmers' market. Obviously it's not all organic, but the locally grown element - pork and turkey - is key to this farming renaissance.

Tree heaven

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but try not to rack up their carbon footprint as they go. Here's how...

Walking along the twisting sanded path between some of the rarest, most impressive and unusal trees in the world is a treat. Add autumn colour from mid October through November from Japanese maples and you ‘re in for a sensory treat at Westonbirt, the National Arboretum in the postcard perfect Cotswolds. The collection is split into two enormous woods, the Old Arboreturn which dates back to the 1850s, or Britain’s largest collection of maples (and others) in the Silk Wood - an area so large it can take two hours to tour even without detours and the opportunity to gaze up trunks oohing and ahhing.

Lola’s learning the history of the Silk Road at the moment – the trade route that allowed East and West to switch influences, more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road – so it was no surprise that she turned us towards Westonbirt’s Silk Wood for a Sunday morning stroll. We enjoyed finding the tented weeping holly and a weeping Japanese cherry, the ubiquitous sequoia (not yet super tall but big and soft enough to be easily recognizable). But our party’s favourite – all ex or current Friends of the Earth employees/contributors, bar the two children – was the rare Japanese tree that smelt of caramel/burnt toast.

Westonbirt Arboretum is huge and plays an important role even now collecting rare species, preserving seed and raising super-trees. It’s a tree gene pool but also a feast for the eyes. Autumn inspires many tree events, most you can just turn up for, but see the list here www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt but there’s also xmas lights, winter walks, photo displays, fungi hunts etc. If you’re taking younger children, get your under 5s trying the “exploratree” play area or other activities, see www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt-families.

Like Kew Gardens Westonbirt showcases British gardeners’ ability to grow just about anything, hinting at the English colonial presence all over the world, but it’s also a place you can know nothing about trees or plants and just enjoy a stroll knowing you won’t get very lost, and even if you do someone will be able to direct you to a coffee shop.

And if you’ve never been there before, don’t be distracted by the woods, first go to the Great Oak Hall, open from 10am-4pm, and find out where to see some of the 100 champion trees (VIP trees with blue ID tags) and when to join the free info tours.

Westonbirt Arboretum is disappointingly hard to reach by public transport (and you’ll need to pre book taxis) but if you do arrive by foot – try the Monarch’s Way www.ramblers.org.uk/ out of nearby Tetbury http://www.visittetbury.co.uk/ which bypasses Prince Charles’ Highgrove – then the entrance fee is slashed.