I was taken this afternoon on a personal guided tour of a local wood, Hillhouse Wood in West Bergholt. It came about because last year I did a woodland charity talk to one of the clubs in the village, and fell into conversation with one of the organisers of the Friends of Hillhouse Wood over tea and biscuits. On hearing that I'd never actually visited their wood (though fortunately I had mugged up on some of the details beforehand, and knew a bit about it, including the fact that it had an active volunteers' group) he invited me to come back in the spring when the bluebells were in flower. I accepted with alacrity. It is always interesting walking around any landscape with somebody involved in looking after it, who knows it well.
Hillhouse Wood is beautiful, simply stunning. My host had picked his timing for the bluebells perfectly, given that the date of our visit was fixed a month ago, and they were looking wonderful. The expression 'a sheet of blue' is a cliche, but that's what you get in Hillhouse Wood, great open expanses among the trees so thick with bluebells that you couldn't take a step off the path without trampling on them. Our guide told us, though, that by Monday they flowers would be starting to fade, so if after reading this you feel that you want to see them for yourself you need to get up there in the next couple of days.
It is designated an ancient wood, which in woodland terminology has a precise meaning, that a site has been continuously wooded since at least 1600, though the locals believe Hillhouse Wood to be older than that. Bluebells in Essex are strongly associated with ancient woodland, though that's not the case all over the UK. It is around 40 acres, but feels larger as the paths cross and meander and the ground undulates so that you never see all of it at once. The soil is light, acid sand, and the trees are oak, ash, alder in the damp parts, and sweet chestnut, plus hazel and field maple. There were elms, before Dutch elm disease claimed them, and the friends of the wood are now worried about the future of their ash, as well they might be. After the bluebells comes the bracken, and the woodland floor would be covered in a thicket of brambles after a couple of years if the volunteers did not go over it every autumn with a mechanical flail.
The bluebells have hybridised to an extent with Spanish ones. Our host pointed out how some were more upright, or had one or two odd flowers on the opposite side of the stem to the rest, or even flowers all the way round. The utterly wild British bluebell has a flower stalk that droops over at the tip, with the individual bells arranged in a line up one side of the stem only.
Before the bluebells come wood anemones, though they've mostly finished flowering by now, with only the leaves to indicate their presence. There are purple orchids, whose precise location the friends don't advertise, red and pink campion, stitchwort, and ramsons by the stream. There are two ponds, one with great crested newts, though we didn't see those, but we saw our first speckled wood butterflies of the year, and a thrush, which I thought was large enough to be a mistle, but but my friend who knows more about birds thought was a song thrush. And there were nightingales, singing. After my tour of the reserve at Fingringhoe a few years back, and subsequent purchase of a nightingale CD, I am more confident than I used to be about identifying those, but our host was clear that there were two. Apparently the males arrive before the females, and start singing to advertise their presence and entice the ladies in.
It is a really, really good wood, and now I've galvanised myself to go there (another advantage of accepting the offer of a guided tour was that it forced me to take the time away from the garden) I'm sure I'll be back. Though possibly not by 3.45 am for the forthcoming dawn chorus walk. If you want to visit, you can park your car in the lane by the old church, taking care to leave room for agricultural vehicles to get by, and it's a short walk up a track to the wood itself. There is space, but not loads, so I'd avoid peak times, though.
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