Tag: access

Exits, Entrances and Crossroads

A post for West Stormont Woodland Group

Is there an artist in the wood?

There is, really, only one easy way into and out of Five Mile Wood – at least in October. That’s from the south end on the Stanley to New Mill cottages road – currently a bit of a no man’s land thanks to the dualling of the A9. Here the track is clear, broad, made for forestry vehicles – and you can even park! At the north end, there is also the old straight track I’ve written about before, from South Barns and beyond that, with a diversion to Bankfoot. Follow the line of this track and it will take you to Dunkeld, once a mighty ecclesiastical seat. I learned last week that from Dunkeld to the wood it’s five miles – hence the name.

I wonder what happened to One, Two, Three and Four Mile Woods?

But once through the gate at the end of the straight track, the going is tricky. At this time of year, wellies are essential, thanks to the legacy of ditches, boggy ground and waterlogging that followed the felling of the trees here. When did it become the norm for forestry practice to leave such a mess? However, with care, agility and thanks to the enterprising actions of previous walkers using felled timber to ford the worst ditches, you can get to the main path that circles the wood.

Deer, birds and other animals have their own paths off into the undergrowth, but for humans, the area where trees were felled before the Commission ceased to work are becoming impenetrable, Gorse crowds thickly on either side of the track, requiring constant maintenance to keep it from meeting in the middle. Self-seeded birch, larch, Scots pine and willow are all growing well, but there are no paths between them in this baby wood. Then there are the trackside deep ditches, another legacy of forest drainage operations, not impossible to cross but very off-putting.

So walkers, joggers and cyclists stick to the circular path and leave the wood by the way they came. Someone on Trip Advisor found the wood disappointing, and the circular track through felled forest boring. But I wonder. We undervalue landscapes that aren’t “finished” – such as newly planted gardens and self-seeded woods at the start of succession. The prettiest part of Five Mile Wood may be the winding bike-track under mature trees which shoots off from the main path near the south entrance, but the burgeoning growth of pioneer vegetation in the centre – the “gap site” as some call it – is vibrant with hidden life, resounding with the flickering flight of small birds and bubbling with amphibians and aquatic life in the ponds and ditches created for drainage. Even the nuisance gorse is a rich nectar source for pollinators and home, each bush, to thousands of spiders and other invertebrates. It’s not what we are schooled to believe beautiful, but in terms of ecology and resilience, it is every bit as valid as ancient oak climax woodland. Not all landscapes can be measured in human terms – though the amount of carbon sequestered by rapidly-growing trees and shrubs will be enormous and far greater than that in a carefully-planned, gardenesque setting. And humans need carbon sinks as much as every other life form.

People like to have choices, though. Choices about where to enter the wood – entrance points close to all the settlements that lie within walking distance. New tracks to follow, new routes to explore, the chance to come out into the sunshine at a different point from where you went in. Paths that cross, diversions, sidetracks, viewpoints. I don’t think they should be the main focus of the wood, or dominate the richness of undisturbed wildlife in the centre. There must be places that are no-go areas for humans, where nature can get on with it, and prove, as ever, that she will make a better job of it than we can.

And then, let our tracks meet and link wood to wood, as we learn to walk more, and be more in nature and less apart from it. Then we will lose our expectations of park furniture and entertainment, and realise the woods aren’t, in the end, all about us.

Bees, Butterflies and an Old Straight Track

5mile wood1

The things you do in a lockdown. I wouldn’t normally walk from the house to Five Mile Wood, I’d call in on my way to somewhere else, parking the car. It’s not an especially long walk, but since they felled most of the trees on the Bankfoot side, cavernous ditches and hollows have made the entrance to the wood treacherous, wet and debateable, and the track to get there goes on a bit and is not especially interesting.

Or so I thought.

I marched out from Bankfoot on one of those dazzling, sun-struck mornings of which we’ve seen so many this April. We crossed the pleasantly deserted A9 and the field to the edges of Cairnleith Moss and turned right along the track to North Barns. The path stretched ahead in a tediously straight line, the wood in the far distance looking nearer than it actually was. At some point, I turned round to let the dog catch up.

5mile track1

It was a VERY straight track. North, it pointed directly at Birnam Gap, the space between the hills where every Great North Road is forced to pass. Ahead of me, beyond Five Mile Wood, the conical East Lomond Hill in Fife lay in a direct line. Suddenly, it fell into place. With these landscape markers aligned, this was the ancient route north – preceding the drovers’ track above my house, which preceded the winding old A9 through Bankfoot village, which went before the current A9. They all run roughly parallel, and all have to go through Birnam Gap. (Later I consulted the maps: this old straight track seems to have continued beyond the wood to meet the Tay at Waulkmill, then probably followed the straight road through Stormontfield, and on to Perth or beyond).

5mile track2

On either side, vast, treeless fields stretched forever, brown, homogenous, dusty and devoid of hedges. In a hollow beside the track were a dozen beehives. I realised the field I’d just passed did contain a crop – oil seed rape, yet to flower. That’s why the bees were there. A farm vehicle traversed the horizon on the other side, trailing an enormous boom sprayer. Dust and chemicals billowed behind it. The smell in my nostrils was like an airport runway. How on earth, I thought, did the bees keep going, while waiting for the rape to flower? There were no wild flowers in this agricultural desert.

5mile entrance           5mile gorse

Reaching the edge of Five Mile Wood, I crossed the gate into the ravaged landscape of felled trees. The footpath sign directed me, and I could see where I needed to be, straight ahead on the old track, but a new route had to be picked to get there. Others had succeeded; makeshift log bridges across water-filled ditches, meandering paths that skirted the boggy areas. I reached the main path which circles the interior of the wood amid the heady coconut-scent of gorse – and there I found the bees, working the flowers sprung up in the new heathland created by felling. Beautiful birches, freed from forest, leaves just opening against a vivid sky. A border of dandelions edged the path, dancing golden and perfect in the sun of noon. Goat willows, pioneer trees of clearings, still in flower, had attracted a small swarm of peacock butterflies. In the new landscape of a one-time forest the bees and butterflies and all the creatures of the heath found sanctuary.

5mile birch     5mile peacock

Returning home, I thought about how important this chameleon landscape is, set against modern farming. I thought, too, about the old straight track that entered the woods, and how its purpose was muddied by activities that had made it so hard to follow. I thought how approach and access is so important, in any plans we may have for these woods in the future.

5mile dandelion