It is said that spending time in forests does wonders for our health and mental wellbeing. But even those who work in forestry don’t always appreciate the benefits of paying a recreational visit to one of the UK’s beloved woodlands. In the first entry in an occasional series, Carolyne Locher takes a walk through the woods of Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve to see what it can offer, and speaks to reserve manager Steve Walker about the work that goes into its upkeep.
EVIDENCE suggests taking a walk in nature is good for our health, but there may be limited time left in which to do so.
As DEFRA considers which of the ‘Designated Landscapes Review’ (Glover Review) recommendations it can implement, this urbanite is exploring some of the most notable woods to be found among England’s 44 national landscapes (10 National Parks and 34 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty).
One weekend afternoon, Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve proves popular with scores of visitors making the most of a break in the autumn rain.
Emerging from under the spreading evergreen canopy of the last yew in the grove is a drone. Around the pilot, people chatter about what is revealed on the remote control’s screen: a bird’s-eye view of everything and everyone within a 250-metre radius.
Four hikers rest beside the Dew Pond, created eight years ago to increase the amount of water in the reserve. They gaze back at the steep path that led them down from the ‘Devil’s Humps’, two Bronze Age barrows (burial chambers) at the top of Bow Hill. Three others ascend a moderately steep trail path and disappear through a gap in the 100-year-old yew forest wall.
Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve is just north of Chichester in West Sussex and lies within the southern edge of the South Downs National Park. In times past the home of Bronze Age settlers and a rehearsal site for troops training for D-Day in WWII, the 149-hectare National Nature Reserve (NNR) received its designation in 1952, and now accommodates around 100,000 visitors a year.
Managed by Natural England, the NNR forms part of the larger Kingley Vale SSSi (for lowland chalk grassland and yew forest). It is a Special Area of Conservation and a Nature Conservation Review Site Grade 1. The best known of its 14 ‘scheduled ancient monuments’ are the Devil’s Humps.
Kingley Vale, a dry three-sided valley, contains a mixture of deciduous woodlands, one of the ‘finest yew forests in Western Europe’, and a grove of veteran yews said to be among the oldest living trees in Britain. Estimates put these veterans at around 2,000 years old. With their centres rotted away, there are no growth rings to prove this, but most experts agree that some of the yews are over 500 years old, with the oldest measuring up to five metres in girth. Although the trunk of the Great Yew is not this size, its impressive canopy secured its nomination as one of this year’s Trees of the Year in the Woodland Trust Awards.
Visiting Kingley Vale is easiest by car and free parking is available in the small car park just beyond West Stoke village. From the car park, a 15-minute walk north along a well-maintained track offers views of undulating arable land divided by a strip of private woodland. Five yards beyond the boundary, children – perhaps a forest school or a private birthday party outing – laugh and chatter while building wigwam-shaped shelters out of long broadleaf poles.
At the end of the track, a swing gate leads into the Nature Reserve, with well-marked pathways offering several ways to explore. For a comprehensive visit, the Hidden Nature Trail (with map displayed on an information board) covers a 4.4-mile loop. An online version is accompanied by questions designed to promote engagement and education and provide answers to the questions posed at 24 of the 25 ‘waymark’ posts. Access throughout the valley floor is considered easy, though steep climbs to and from the hilltop are unsuitable for wheelchair access and mobile phone reception is sporadic.
The Hidden Nature Trail begins on a wide forest track dividing the woodlands on the valley floor. To the west, a clearing dotted with pointed-capped field mushrooms ends with a half-finished pole shelter below the bulbous bole of a mature yew tree. To the east, the Forest Information Hut is lined with panels recounting the physical and human history of the landscape, the myths surrounding the yews, plus flora and fauna, ending with suggestions on how the landscape might develop in a changing climate.
A family of three generations ambles along the track. Where the path divides, they go one way and the trail goes another. Walking this narrower trail seems to offer more possibilities for adventure and discovery. Minutes pass before telltale red berry-like arils offer a clue.
Ducking beneath a thick, green, berry-laden screen reveals a different world: a grove of ancient yews. Growing from tactile green-brown pillars of solid, split, hollowed stems, or from secondary shoot buttresses self-set in the forest floor, spreading arcs of branches form a series of hushed, contemplative interconnecting dome-like spaces.
One of England’s three native conifers, the English yew (Taxus baccata) is a slow-growing, edge-colonising conifer. Here, the mature and veteran yews sprout prodigious new growth from the trunk, or they layer, their pendulous springy branches rooting deep in the forest floor prompting new growth and new trees.
Natural England calls these yews Ancient Watchers. As these groves have grown, so too has the folklore that surrounds them. Druids worshipped here, witches convened here. Local legend has it that men from Chichester planted the yews in AD 859 following their triumph over the marauding Vikings.
Mature yews are most commonly found in churchyards. Theories as to why suggest it was to stop livestock grazing on church lands (most parts of the yew are poisonous) or to purify the air around plague victims’ graves. For centuries, it was customary to carry yew branches (in place of palm leaves) on Palm Sunday. Churchyard remains have been found in this valley bottom and these yews may well have graced the churchyard or parish boundaries.
During WWII, Canadian and British troops used Kingley Vale as a firing range and Spitfires from neighbouring airfields carried out strafing exercises. Unexploded munitions have turned up. In 2013, an unexploded mortar was destroyed in a controlled explosion and recorded for posterity on YouTube (‘Secrets of the High Woods’). Aside from bullet scars, the trees and yew groves survive.
Although these groves are fairly easy to stumble across, they are not marked on the trail map. In one, two trees have fallen in opposite directions creating a narrow path between upended rootballs. Where the underside remains in the soil, the trees continue to grow. Where the topsides have acquired a mossy green covering, they appear as gnarly, tapering witchy fingers.
The last yew in this grove corridor stands alone. It could be the ‘Great Yew’ but again it is not marked on the map. From what appears to be a single trunk, arcing and mossy branches have layered, up to three times in places. Some branches look like long suckers, others grow as separate trees. Parts of the prodigious canopy are fenced around, possibly to stop grazing animals and any ensuing damage.
Emerging from under the evergreen canopy, a moderate climb eastwards to the forest wall is rewarded with the sight of butterflies flitting across the chalk grassland meadows. Sheep grazing declined over these slopes a hundred years ago, allowing yew seeds (scattered by birds feeding on the veterans below) to establish themselves under the protection of hawthorn and juniper nurse crops. They grew into ‘one of the finest yew forests in Europe’.
The three trail-following walkers re-appear from the gap in the forest edge. “That slope is hard work,” admits one. Only 100 years old, the forest is young and dense, while the trail is steep. Levelling out along Bow Hill, it follows an ancient holloway to the Devil’s Humps, where sheep huddle and a small herd of cows rest before the next downpour. The cows were introduced four years ago, part of a general push to create rougher grassland for the reserve’s invertebrate and reptile populations.
Looking down into the valley, ancient yew crowns form dark, tufty clumps above the valley crease, with the tightly packed crowns of young forests stretching east and west. In the middle distance, layers of misty Sussex hills give way to watery slivers of Chichester Harbour and end in clouds hogging the horizon rather than clear views of the Isle of Wight.
The trail loops back and down around the reserve’s western perimeter. From the slightly slippery path, a number of tree stems bear spray-painted rings or dots, indicating a programme of ash-dieback management in progress. The trail notes suggest visitors look in this area for evidence of deer browse lines (fallow and roe), and, where the yew forest grows most densely, birdsong (from robins, blackbirds, chaffinches and more) can be heard.
Ending back at the trail start, three hours have flown by. In terms of health and wellness benefits, Kingley Vale offers much to a visitor; the contemplative ancient groves, a vigorous walk through younger woods and calming misty Sussex views.
Q & A: A RESERVE MANAGER'S PERSPECTIVE
Steve Walker has managed Kingley Vale NNR for four years. In his mid 30s, Steve swapped a career in landscape gardening for an apprenticeship with Natural England. He manages the reserve with support from the senior reserve manager (East Sussex) and a small army of volunteers.
1. What changes have you have observed since becoming manager?
Four years is quite a short time, but I am pleased the chalk grassland is slowly improving under the new grazing programme. We have introduced cattle (Belted Galloway) alongside a small flock of Herdwick sheep, grazing a larger area over a longer period.
In the woodland, a more obvious change is the rapid progression of ash dieback, which had only just arrived when I started.
2. Who supports you in woodland management works?
Most of the woodland is managed through non-intervention, but we try to maintain a good mix of rides and glades. Any tree works are usually in response to health and safety concerns and may be carried out by contractors depending on the scale of work and technical difficulty.
3. What works do your volunteers get involved in?
I have a Wednesday volunteer group specifically for Kingley Vale, and the South Downs National Park (SDNP) volunteer rangers, who come fortnightly. Work usually focuses on scrub management, visitor access and the grazing programme. Their help is invaluable, especially in light of ever-shrinking resources.
4. What were the last works you got physically involved in?
Installing a new livestock compartment with the Wednesday volunteers. We use electric fencing. It gives us more control over the grazing and avoids unsightly permanent stock fencing.
5. Kingley Vale is covered by many designations. Is it easy to accommodate differing priorities into one management plan?
The biggest challenge is managing two notified habitats (yew woodland and chalk grassland) in direct competition with one another. Without intervention, scrub would colonise the downland and revert to woodland. Our management tries to maintain a healthy balance while allowing for some dynamism between habitats. This rich mosaic of grassland, scrub and woodland is the reserve’s biggest asset.
6. What is the current cycle of woodland management in the young yew woodlands and the ancient groves?
The yew woods generally manage themselves, but large branches occasionally come down after strong winds. We try to leave the ancient groves as natural as possible, leaving any dead or fallen branches along the path edge. The main issue we have is a lack of regeneration, with no new saplings or small trees establishing. Since yew is an edge colonizer, this is partly down to a lack of suitable edge habitat, but perhaps more significant is the heavy browsing pressure.
The ‘pure yew woods’ in this part of the South Downs – Kingley Vale is a pure yew wood, a natural phenomenon in this area of West Sussex/Hampshire – have all expanded during periods of low browsing pressure. A good example is the younger woodland on the eastern side of the coombe, which sprang up after WWII when rabbit numbers crashed due to myxomatosis. This also explains why these woods are often single-age blocks with a continuous closed canopy.
We are exploring locations for future regeneration outside the reserve. We also place deer guards around any new saplings we find.
7. The reserve suffers from ash dieback. How are you managing this?
Ash dieback is progressing far quicker than expected and affecting the majority of trees. Many are fully defoliated and a few have already fallen where honey fungus has set in. This year we will be removing some of the infected trees along public rights of way and the nature trail. Where possible, these will be pollarded to leave standing deadwood, and some will likely re-shoot in the spring. In general, our policy is to let nature take its course and hope some of the trees develop natural immunity.
8. What other pest management do you implement within the reserve?
Fallow deer, grey squirrel and pheasant are all non-natives, causing significant damage to both the woodland and wildlife. While we don’t have resources to deal with the latter two, a stalker culls deer within Natural England’s part of the reserve and we try to work with surrounding landowners on a more collaborative approach to deer management.
9. What challenges could this site face in a changing climate?
In the short-to-medium term, it is likely there will be as many climate change winners as losers as more species arrive from over the channel. We have already seen new arrivals on the south coast as well as more birds overwintering. The best way we can address climate change is by improving and expanding our wildlife habitats to help species better survive extreme weather and spread to newly suitable areas. We plan to work closer with the Forestry Commission site to the north since they benefit from cooler north-facing slopes and create better habitat connectivity within the wider landscape. With water becoming increasingly scarce, the construction of more ponds will also play a key role for many species.
10. What has managing this reserve taught you?
Kingley Vale is a magical place, but most of my highlights have been the unexpected wildlife encounters, stumbling across a basking adder or a rutting stag, or witnessing a rare event such as the 2017 influx of hawfinches. In terms of lessons learnt, probably that you should never discount a good bit of scrub. People are so often focused on ‘scrub clearance’ when it’s usually in and around the best scrub (dense thorny thickets) where you see the most wildlife.
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