A Walk in The Woods

I have been spending too much time indoors over the last few months and felt a real need to get out into the outside world last weekend. It was time for a family outing to the woods at West Stow and a meandering walk in the drizzle. I normally hate the rain, but was so desperate for fresh air that I managed to keep my moaning in check for at least an hour. The day was punctuated by a reckless murder of crows, a beautiful oak tree and the discovery of a piece of Victoria industrial architecture that I fell in love with.

Crows

The road to West Stow is long and straight, with trees and broad fields and common land on each side. As I sped towards the car park I was aware of a rising movement to my right. A flock of crows rose lazily from the brown earth of the field and moved in the direction of the road. Expecting them to continue rising into the air I did not slow down and it took me a second to realise that they were in no hurry to get out of the way of the car. They passed across the road at no more than seven or eight feet and I swear I could feel the beating of those wings as we passed under them at forty miles an hour. Looking back in the rear mirror I could see them dropping the few feet to land in the opposite fiel, completely unaffected by their near death experience. Confident little buggers. It's one of the many reasons that they are my favorite bird.

An Adventure

We bundled the children out of the car and let them chose which way we went. Children spend so much of their lives being told what to do by parents and teachers it was great to let them have control of the days adventure. My son used his new found stick to point in the direction of the river - "That way" and off we went. He and his sister also took the opportunity to stamp flat every mole hill that they came across. This was clearly important work requiring a large amount of giggling and falling over. It wasn't great for the moles, but the children's attention to detail was admirable - no molehill went unstomped. My learning point for the day - when you are under five you have not had an adventure if your wellington boots do not have an inch of compacted mud on the soles and the knees of your trousers are similarly caked.

Oak Tree

We stopped to give the children a snack under an oak tree that was growing in a dip in the fields. The trunk had split, with two major trunks growing away from the base. We sat on one of the thicker branches which formed a natural bench. Above our heads were a few brown leaves refusing to succumb to the wind. My wife found a pair of acorns, and as she explained to the children that they are the seeds of the tree we were sitting on and I wondered how long it would take them to grow into a tree big enough to take my weight. As we wandered away from the oak, I realised that it was one of the few trees that I can actually recognise and promised myself that I would try and learn a little more about tree in general. They surround us but I hardly pay attention to them. Having done some research whe I learnt that oaks rarely produce acorns before they are twenty years old, and sometimes it can be as late as fifty years. They can live up up to 200 years. If I had planted the pair and they had thrived in the damp soil eight generations of my family would be able to enjoy the tree before it died. Trees live on a completely different timescale to us.

The Pump House

The West Stow country park used to be a water treatment plant. Now, the fields around the site are mostly empty but the Pump House remains. Its a classic piece of utilitarian Victorian architecture, built in 1886. From a distance it looks like one of the non-conformist chapels you see when working in the Dales, with its long windows and high pitched roof. The building is beautiful but it is starting to fall into disrepair. Time and the vandalism were starting to take their toll. The mortar was falling away from the bricks, a few ominous cracks were growing across the retaining walls and the original window glass has been replaced with that nasty transclucent plastic, reinforced with steel wire, to keep the curious and local yobs at bay. I pressed my face against, the plastic to try and peer inside but all I could really see were the thick ropes of old cobwebs and the milky light from the windows on the opposite side. The heavy padlocks on every door and access point made it clear that visitors were not welcome and to make sure yellow signs proclaimed - "Danger - Building May contain asbestos". It just made me want to go in there more. I did some research when I got home, and the local council had said they were planning to refurbish it in 2005. It looks like they might have forgotten. I wonder if I could buy it and rebuild it in my garden?