This is my first ‘self-conscious’ Woodland Trust wood walking outing – from someone who picks a wood walk several times a week, if not on a coastal or rive path.
Tuesday 14 September 2021
Escaping Lewes these days takes some planning. Earwig corner, a key junction out of Lewes to the north-east is a nightmare. It takes Waze to say trust the roadworks. I do, but then trust my nose to get me to a village I have visited often enough. We get there, Evie and I. I used the Woodland Trust directory to pick a wood with easy parking to start this journey of very many woods. A little rain wasn’t going to stop us.
Entering the wood from South Street we risked getting lost in the low growth saplings that opened out into the old wood propper as we reached the first patch of water of the old moat. Evie put her feet in it expecting water, found soft mud and extracted herself promptly. We’ve had a dog stuck in the mud in the past.
Following my nose and ears I took a 30 second soundscape. I’ll identify the bird(s) in due course. Sadly as we approached one end of the wood traffic on the A22 dominated and in our 45 minutes walk there were three or more overhead planes coming into or leaving Gatwick 28 miles to the north-west.
I ditched the Woodland Trust app to identify a leaf as it is an old fashioned branched set of questions that still didn’t get a result (though it taught me something about ‘reading a tree’ if I care to indulge leaf layout, shape, surfaces, colourings and so on). I used P
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