Scowles First Light

Two consecutive dawns in late April delivered heavy overnight frosts, negligible wind, cloud free eastern horizons at sunrise and low angled warm light to illuminate scowles woodland. The latitude of the Forest of Dean, modest elevation above sea level and post spring equinox, ensures the duration of first light at sunrise lasts only a few minutes.

First light provided illumination of the interior woodland and mineral workings, although the ground flora is sparse, limited to flora able to cope with deep shade cast from beech and yew trees. Given the environment and nature of light, I was reasonably happy with the images made, although another trip in a fortnight might produce more pleasing results as the sunrise azimuth will provide a better angle of first light at another scowles location.

I do enjoy the photography challenges presented by ephemeral light in a woodland environment, although with negligible wind, there are opportunities with twilight and post first light to fall back on.

The previsioned atmospheric daffodil woodland photograph - theory and practice

The forecast was for clear skies, a windless dawn and an overnight frost. An unusual combination for late March in recent years and the warming rays of an early spring sun could potentially raise ethereal wisps of vapour or even better a blanket of vapour. With low angled sunlight shining through mist and tree trunks onto a carpet of wild daffodils, it would be the atmosphere that would do justice to a daffodil wood. The alarm was set.

Frost free wild daffodil carpet

On the drive to the wood the roadside foliage was covered with frost and the walk along the woodland ride was over frosted foliage. The woodland daffodil carpets were frost free, c'est la vie.

A wild daffodil wood sans frost

Suffice to write, the desired atmospherics didn't materialise, a slight haze would be the best description, sigh.

The sun rose quickly into a clear blue sky, which gives a small window for photography before harsh lighting and cool blue shadows dominate the scenery. With no prospect of overhead cloud, the camera gear is packed away and time to go walkabout, enjoy the sights and sounds of a spring woodland, with the warming rays of the sunshine.

A trip to a daffodil wood

The county flower of Gloucestershire is the wild daffodil and its stronghold is in the north-west of the county where it borders Herefordshire, in an area called the Golden Triangle.  There are fields, meadows, churchyards, orchards and woodland that are carpeted in wild daffodils, some of the best displays are in Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust nature reserves,. The video is courtesy of the GWT.



It was a fine spring day to visit the wood, with a chorus of birdsong as a backdrop and large bumble bees visiting the flowers. The woodland hinted at its ancient credentials with coppice stools of small leaved lime and emerging foliage of other flora indicative of ancient woodland. Probably at least a week early for the peak of daffodil flowering, but nonetheless a good day for a spring walk. One day the weather will align to produce a dawn that would do justice to the atmosphere of a daffodil wood, until then it is a matter of waiting patiently.

A daffodil wood.

An Ancient Woodland Yew

I am fortunate to live in an area where ancient yew trees grow and a visit to a local wood emphasised this point. We had been exploring the woodland, following the boundary, avoiding the plantations and walking the geology, when I recalled the wood has an ancient yew, so a detour made to show Nic. I do not profess to be an expert in ancient yews, however I've viewed yew trees with known planting dates from the 17th and 18th Century and also some of the oldest Yews in the UK. A 300 year old oak or beech tree will turn heads, a 300 year old yew tree rarely merits a glance, by most definitions yew is a slow growing tree. There was a research study of Yews at Alice Holt some years ago that demonstrated the slow growth of woodland yews. The yew we detoured to, is not of the size of churchyards yews, but as a wild yew in a woodland habitat it certainly has an aura of great age.

King Yew and Nic

Nic asked me the history of the yew, sadly I could only recollect some hazy details, it had been possibly a decade since my last visit and a while since I'd rea up on it. I was fairly sure it had a name and some of the ages attributed seemed far too conservative. Viewed from one direction the tree appears of some age, a view from another direction reveals a morphology that hints at a great age. The tree appears to be in a rejuvenating state where new wood is being grown over deadwood, the cause of the deadwood can only be speculated at; disease, trunk collapse, vandalism, storm damage, lightning strike or more probably the capacity of a senescent yew to rejuvenate itself.

King Yew - new wood growing over dead.

On returning home I looked up the tree on the Ancient Yew website, the yew is known as the King Yew and now has some history ascribed to it; a possible boundary tree in an Anglo Saxon charter of land granted in 956 AD by King Eadwig to Bath Abbey. Which suggests that the Yew tree in the 10th Century was of a suitable stature to be assigned as charter landscape feature.

The Shaden Tuft oak

Within the Churchill Inclosure in the Forest of Dean, there stands a large pollarded oak, it has been named the Shaden Tuft oak and unusually for a woodland tree, has been assigned a fairly precise planting date of 1599 and has been used as an example for dating of veteran and ancient trees in a Forestry Commission report. In an historical context, at the time of the oaks planting, Queen Elizabeth I was the reigning monarch and William Shakespeare was putting quill to ink and writing some of the finest works in the English language. The tree has also withstood some remarkable weather - great storms, droughts and the cold of the 'little ice age'.

Shaden Tuft oak

If the pollarding of the Shaden Tuft oak wasn't the result of storm breakage, then it hints at the possible woodland management regime at the time and the pollarding has probably ensured its continued presence, overlooked by Royal Navy shipwrights and then successive generations of timber merchants. Whilst not being particularly notable for its age - it is entering the oak equivalence of middle age - and all being well, should witness the events of the 26th C unfold.

I have wandered past this tree, I guess on average a couple of times a year for well over a decade and its presence gives continuity to the woodland and a tangible link to the past. There's something about old trees that provides a wood with a certain je ne sais quoi and I am no doubt that the woodland would be a poorer place in the absence of the older trees.

Cathedral lighting in the woods

I have never been a fan of incorporating the sun in landscape photos, aesthetically it doesn't push my buttons, however in woodland, I am a fan of contre-jour lighting. Specifically woodland with a high canopy, where any openings or gaps in the canopy present an opportunity for what I call 'cathedral lighting'. The best lighting is from low angle light from a rising sun and the lighting effect as it passes through the dew saturated, translucent leaves and fronds of autumnal bracken, is reminiscent of sunlight through a stained glass window.

Recent weather has been remarkably benign, with no wind and clear blue skies, the prospect of clear skies holds little appeal for hills and uplands, so the woods have been visited for the sunrise in expectation of mist and fog, that expectation has yet to be fully met. After a break from woodland photography, the more visually complex scenery needed a recalibration of composition as many some images could have been better balanced and other images didn't convincingly capture the nature of the wood or indeed woodland. I am hoping that some mist will also put in an appearance before the leaves fall.

Assart and back again

An evening walk through a less visited wood in the Wye Valley and towards the furthest extremity of this wood, the forestry track cut through a stone wall. A derelict, moss covered stone wall,  surrounded by high oak and beech woodland. My initial thoughts were a simple event chronology of  building of the stone wall, planting of woodland and construction of a forestry track cutting through wall. As that stone walls are rarely constructed through an existing wood and the area of woodland on one side of the wall was carpeted in bluebells and on the other side of the wall, bluebells were colonising through a relict gateway or where the wall had collapsed, which suggested the area enclosed by the wall was once farmland, before reforestation. The light was fading and with exposure duration in seconds and mindful of the return walk to car, only a few images were made.

Derelict stone wall in woodland

Intrigued by the wall in the wood, I consulted a couple of authoritative texts and maps of the area. The general area has some history dating back to Anglo Saxon times,  a Domesday Book entry, Norman manor and the creation of a sizeable family estate in the 16th/17th C, but concentrating on the events pertinent to the stone wall and wood, it is probably best to start in first decade of the 19th C.  In 1803, Admiral Lord Nelson, following a visit to the area, produced a report on the naval timber in the nearby Forest of Dean.  The report included the following statements "These shameful abuses are probably known to those high in power ..." and  "If the Forest of Dean is to be preserved as a useful Forest for the country, strong measures must be pursued. First, the guardian of the support of our Navy must be an intelligent honest man ...". He also wrote that some oak woodlands and fields outwith the statutory Forest of Dean could be purchased to ensure a short and medium term supply of mature timber and planting of oak saplings raised in nurseries for the long term. Following an act of Parliament, replanting of the Forest of Dean commenced between 1808-1818, the events of which didn't go entirely to plan and coincidentally in 1817 the Highmeadow estate of woodland and farmland adjoining the Dean, was purchased by the Crown Commissioners.

Primary and secondary woodland either side of the stone wall

I made a return visit in better light, to make a photographic record of the derelict stone wall, bluebells colonising the secondary woodland and confirm that the wall is the one shown on the modern OS maps against known boundaries and features.

View along the stone wall

A search online produced an illustration of a village map of 1608, that also details the wall enclosing a field and adjacent woodland, the 6":1 Mile late 19th C OS map also show the stone wall traced out in woodland and the modern OS explorer map shows the stone wall, woodland and forestry track. It seems likely that the derelict stone wall was once an estate and/or field boundary on the Highmeadow estate. So what was once woodland, was then assarted for farmland, then reforested in the 1820's and has remained woodland ever since under the management of the then Commissioners of Woods and now by the Forestry Commission.

Former gateway and now entranceway for colonising bluebells

The derelict boundary wall has clearly been an effective barrier to bluebell colonisation, but where breaks occur in the wall there is still a discernible difference in spread and density of flowers, between secondary woodland and the original wood after nearly two centuries.  Another observation would be that lateral colonisation across a slope seems particularly slow, especially against the prevailing wind. I was surprised at how slow the colonisation of former farmland was, especially as bluebells are considered as one of the more 'vigorous' colonisers amongst ancient woodland indicator flora.