Autumnal Walk in Lower Woods

After days of rainy weather, the sun was at last bursting through burgeoning, cumulus clouds still threatening sporadic showers. My keenness to be back out in nature's embrace, meant that I was happy to take the chance of getting wet, and go for a walk in the Autumnal woods. I hurriedly packed a lunch, threw my rucksack over my shoulders, and drove out to Lower Woods near Wickwar, a large, ancient woodland of some 750 acres, that I have come to know and love in recent years. It is managed jointly by the Gloucestershire and Avon wildlife trusts, and was known as a bit of a hidden gem. However, the overflowing car park on my arrival, indicated that it is hidden no more. The combination of the day being Sunday, nicer weather, and many thousands of Covid19 pandemic refugees had meant that a formerly quiet spot was now not so quiet. Fortunately, the woodland is big enough for every man, woman, child and their dogs to disappear into.

I took a path I know well, and quickly removed my trail running shoes, to let my feet feel the mats of fallen leaves, and the mud oozing up between my toes. The wetness cooled my feet, but not uncomfortably so, and I was pleased that I could continue to walk barefoot in nature up until late October. Walking barefoot has given me a kind of 'sixth sense' when walking in nature, allowing me to feel all the nuanced textures of the ground beneath me. I get the occasional prickle from a bramble or thistle, but our human foot soles are fairly tough and are clearly evolutionarily designed to encounter such rough terrain. It is ironically man made surfaces such as roads that pose dangers, as they seem to attract broken glass thrown from passing vehicles. Lower Woods is well known for its wet mud, one part being known as Lower Wetmoor and, after the recent rains, it fully lived up to its name. I was soon up to my ankles in dark, rich, wet mud, and had to watch my step, not to slip over onto my backside, nearly doing so on several occasions.

The trees were just turning yellow as the nights cooled and the days shortened. I stopped to admire the bright yellow Field Maples; such Acer trees always produce the most spectacular and vivid Autumn colours. The many young Hazel trees with their large, tooth-edged leaves were also turning from pale green to yellow like a fading memory of summer. The large Oaks too were bowing respectfully to the season and slowly discarding their precious canopies of leaves. I realised just how many acorns each oak tree drops as they felt like so many mini cobblestones under my bare feet. I thought of all those thousands of potential new Oak trees gestating in thousands of acorns scattered across the woods. I looked down the long path with leaf curtains of yellow drawing in on either side. Suddenly there was a bustling commotion in the air behind me, with crows cawing angrily. Then the cause of their ire appeared, as a large buzzard, with long, grey speckled, fanned wings, glided low and nonchalantly over my head. I smiled inwardly at the timeless, and strangely comforting, battles of the crows and the buzzards that must stretch back millions of years. May it always be so.

I passed through a gate and onto a new wide thoroughfare between the trees, known as a 'trench'. I have read that this used to be an old road from Gloucester to Bristol and that the trenches were created to stop bandits and highwaymen from ambushing the passing stagecoaches. I don't know if this is true, but it's an evocative story nonetheless. I turned off the increasingly muddy trench as it headed down to the Little Avon River that winds its wild way through the woods, and walked down through the woodland to a beautiful rivulet that feeds the river. I washed the mud from my feet as I crossed the rocky stream, where I have found many ammonite and ancient clam fossils in the past, carved out of the beds of limestone by the waters. On the other side, I stopped by a favourite large Alder tree that stands guardian to a lovely bend in the stream. With its five trunks arranged in a circle, you can stand in the centre and feel that you are ensconced in its dark red wooded heart. Nearby was a leafy collage of interlaced Field Maple leaves lying in yellows, browns, auburns, oranges and reds like a patchwork quilt for the sleeping Earth. I came out by the river, which was swollen with recent rains, as it wound its way under a small footbridge and on towards the Severn Estuary.

I turned up a path that leads to a more open area where the wood's great Oaks can be viewed in all their seasonal glory. The sun was now blazing white and low, backlighting, and illuminating the trees' canopies in a breathtaking way. The almost imperceptible transitions from the dark and pale greens of the lower canopies into the yellows and oranges of the higher canopies, was nature at her most artful. I found a convenient wooden bench to sit on and marvel at the sunlit autumnal scene as I ate my lunch. A small reconnaissance crew of three muddy dogs ran on ahead of their human owners, lifting their forepaws up onto my lap, in expectant greeting, and sniffing at my lunch hopefully, before being called away by their owners with apologies. I love the indomitable joy, curiosity and enthusiasm of all the canine family, and wondered wistfully whether wild wolves would ever run in English woods again. I chose to believe, inspired by the dog's seemingly boundless hope, that they would someday return, and that the ancient night-time howl would be heard by English ears again, as they once were.

I headed back along the path whence I had come, and turned around to admire the sunlit oak filled valley one more time. I turned up a new wide 'trench' path on the right, shuffling through a thick carpet of bright yellow aspen leaves, by the tall thickly ridged trunks of their parent trees. There were still enough leaves on the aspens for the leaves to whisper like ancestral voices in the gentle breeze. My feet were alternately pummeled by fallen acorns under oak trees, and then soothed and massaged by wet mud and clover. I stood for a while in the warming sunshine to survey the woods on either side of me, before the sun slid behind thicker clouds, with the sky darkening and the air cooling, portending an approaching storm. I started to make my way back, slip-sliding on the thick mud at the bottom of the hill which had been churned up by so many walkers before me. As I returned to the alder by the small stream which I had passed earlier, two young men with rucksacks, blaring out EDM music from some hidden source, walked by me. These young lads were not typical woodlanders and it was heartening to see them exploring the place. I have a feeling that the current Covid19 pandemic which has blighted so many lives, may have a potential silver lining, of turning people away from shopping malls and urban pursuits which weren't available during the pandemic 'lockdown', and back to nature's solace in changing times. I had certainly never seen so many people in these woods, where I have walked alone all day, without seeing a single human soul, in years past.

I returned the way I had come, back up the hill, and along the muddy path, with the sunlight still dancing in the autumn leaves, the different layers casting shadows on each other, and the veins of leaves delineated sharply like miniature tree crowns, where the light fell. I wiped the mud off my feet with dock leaves as best I could and squeezed on my trail running shoes to reluctantly insulate myself from the Earth again. The woodland had worked its restorative magic, as I sighed deeply, already looking forward to my return when a biting winter may have clawed its icy grip onto bare tree branches, sillhouetted black against white snow-filled skies.Read more