In the latest in an occasional series, Carolyne Locher takes a walk in two woodlands that are always working, come rain or shine.
IT is late in the day and the Wye Valley is a wet, wet place. The rain enhances the feeling of achievement for having walked the Mailscot Wood Trail, ending in a stunning view of a deep gorge with a river running through.
Symonds Yat Rock and the Mailscot Wood Trail sit within Forestry England’s 1,380 ha High Meadow Woods, a small section of woodland which is also part of the 126-square-mile Wye Valley area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB), located at the very westerly edge of the Forest of Dean (administrative county of Gloucestershire) and on the border of Herefordshire.
Created in 1971, the AONB is the UK’s only cross-border Protected Landscape (England/Wales) and the Wye Valley is the birthplace of British tourism. In the 1750s, the Reverend John Egerton entertained his guests with two-day boat trips along the River Wye (between Ross-on-Wye and Chepstow) and visitors have flocked to the area ever since.
Planning a visit to this part of the world is rather like being let loose in a candy store. In autumn, the best way to gorge is to take a week and visit the castles, bridges, churches, the intriguingly named Devil’s Pulpit, arboretums, nature reserves, ponds and woods, as detailed in Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Tourism’s self-drive ‘Leaf Peeping’ tour.
With a day to spare, it becomes a guessing game to identify a woodland walk that combines moderate fitness levels with memorable views.
Browsing Forestry England assets, the walking routes offered by the Ramblers Association and the recommendations of individual bloggers, there are too many options. In a bid for clarity, an email to the FC is followed up with a phone call. A soothing voice asks: “What is it you really want to see?”
“Symonds Yat?”
“Try the Mailscot Wood Trail.”
Forestry England’s Symonds Yat ‘trails map’ details a series of colour-coded dots or dashes, specifying walking trails and cycle paths. The Mailscot Wood Trail is a challenging, hilly 4-mile walk taking 2.5 hours, featuring a ‘mosaic of trees and a panoramic view of the river’. A side trip along the Peregrine Path (with a possibility for sighting raptors) and over the Biblins Bridge (a potentially vertigo-inducing span of oak connecting gorge tops across the River Wye) could also be a possibility.
The ‘walk day’ forecast is for sun and cloud with a chance of scattered showers later. Symonds Yat Rock is the first and most popular stop on most visitor itineraries and the car park is relatively busy. Finding a space near the trail’s entrance, parking (paid for by text) costs £7 for the day. The ticket appears to be valid for the day in all Forestry England car parks in the area.
Information boards detail the Wye Gorge’s ‘Geology’ and the Symonds Yat Hill Fort’s ‘Archaeology’. ‘Forest Habitats’ informs that this is a productive working forest, ‘maintained to deliver a wide range of benefits, particularly landscape and biodiversity,’ including four kinds of ‘raptors’ (buzzards, goshawks, red kites and ravens).
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Steady streams of visitors pass the banks and ditches (Iron Age hillfort ramparts) on their way towards the café. Signs point to the various viewpoints, with plenty of socially distanced benches, from which to enjoy the scenery. We veer off behind the toilet block and join a narrow downhill path that leads to a less populated viewing platform. Viewed through tree trunks (Gloucestershire), a wide River Wye flows, left to right, below the tree-covered slopes of the Doward (Herefordshire) towards the infrastructure of Symonds Yat (West).
Symonds Yat takes its name from 17th-century sheriff Robert Symonds and the regional word for ‘gate’ or ‘pass’. The villages of Symonds Yat West and Symonds Yat East sit on opposite sides of the River Wye at the bottom of the gorge. Connected via a passenger ferry or a five-mile drive by car, visitors can find pubs, accommodation and river-based activities here. Also on the eastern side, Symonds Yat Rock towers 120 metres above the river. Managed by Forestry England and receiving 200,000–220,000 visitors a year, it is probably the Wye Valley’s most famous viewpoint.
The Mailscot Wood Trail starts from the bottom of Symonds Yat Rock car park and follows a steepish descent beneath a mixed tree canopy. Shrubs soften the path edges and small streams flow in gullies around abandoned wigwams. Here and there, sunny glades flourish with gorse and bracken, and brambles flush with blackberries ripe for picking. Red kites are said to favour the mature oak, beech, small-leaved lime and wild service trees, while rarer broadleaf species found here include large-leaved lime and whitebeam.
Trail arrows indicate right or left and the path weaves and undulates, sometimes narrow with shoulder-brushing branches, sometimes wide with grassy scalloped edges, a firmer cycle path or forestry track. We exchange hellos with returning walkers, pausing often to remove too-warm outer layers of clothing or to examine black beetles appearing to sun themselves.
There are no detailed points of interest along the trail, and it takes time to realise that the map’s dots and dashes are irrelevant, with any connection to the Peregrine Path or Biblin’s Bridge probably long gone.
A working forest is a busy place. ‘Works in Progress’ signs mark out the worksites, and log stacks are bound with ‘Keep off’ signs. Stem ends are marked ‘PIT’ or ‘CHIP’.
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The rain begins, gently at first. We don waterproof layers. It stops and layers are removed. The rain returns and soon the world is reduced to what can be seen from under the brim of a leopard-print umbrella. We follow a cyclist as he pedals uphill. Further along, the thickly needled lower branches of conifers overhanging a turning point provide better shelter than a quivering mass of nylon. Goshawks are said to build their large nests in the 40–60-year-old larch and Douglas fir growing in woods on the other side of the Rock.
Two hooded hikers join the trail from the right and we all slip back through a gate into the relative shelter of the woods. During a particularly wet five minutes sheltering beneath a thick-stemmed broadleaf, water drips down my neck.
At some point, a few minutes are spent walking a tarmac road. For the first time in two-and-a-half hours, we think we know where we are. Back into the woods, we squelch our way along a tacky forest floor. A large boulder and abandoned wigwam look familiar from the first downhill section and we make a last determined push, uphill to the car, one of only a few left.
Soaking the seats, soaking the floor, boot treads filled with mud, the storm’s last burst thunders down in rivers between the windshield wipers. Sandwiches, three hours after starting out, have rarely tasted this good.
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The rain moves on. The café is about to close. A staff member agrees that a warm drink and large slab of cake are a good way to finish off a wet afternoon on a damp bench at a viewpoint.
Unable to resist, we did visit the Rock viewpoints earlier. Then, a fellow visitor, a sunhat-wearing Cornishman, was so moved by the experience that he generously shared his story, setting out at 3 am on a rare day off, walking along the river and up the gorge side to finish his journey, standing behind a crenellated wall 120 metres above the Wye Gorge, drinking in the view.
It is quite something to think that the view today is similar to that seen by Iron Age hillfort-dwellers 2,500 years ago: the River Wye oxbowing its way ever deeper down through the limestone and sandstone of the Forest of Dean plateau.
A day later in the heart of the Forest of Dean, the combination of clear blue skies, sunlit mixed conifers (hemlock, larch, pine and spruce) and a crisp air promotes an alpine feel at Mallards Pike Lake.
Once a royal hunting ground, the Forest of Dean is still owned by the Crown. Covering 11,000 ha, approximately 10,000 ha are forest and managed by Forestry England. Before tourism arrived, the main sources of local employment were iron working, coal mining and forestry.
Locals remain passionate about their woods. Fierce resistance in the 1990s to the proposed sell-off of oak forests was aroused again in 2010 in opposition to David Cameron’s proposed sell-off of much of England’s public forest estate.
Mallards Pike receives 160,000 to 180,000 visits a year, and as expected the car park is rammed, visitors double-parking until they can secure a space. Voices, laughter and the repetitive whizz-whirr of the Go Ape zip-wire (or Forest Segway) echo across the valley.
Forest notice boards highlight Forest of Dean parking assets and an Ordnance Survey map details ‘2019 Staple Edge harvesting ops’: three separate thinning contracts and two areas of coppice to be left to regenerate naturally.
We may well pass through the largest compartment, Staple Edge Wood, on an (approximately) three-mile, anti-clockwise meander around the shortest of the three Soudley Circle walks.
Accompanied by a Forest of Dean Ramblers Waymarked Walks leaflet, the instructions are often detailed down to the approximate nearest yard.
We begin as two of many enjoying the lake’s shore path. After 120 yards, we cut up through the trees to find ourselves the only people on a wide forest track.
‘After a quarter of a mile, turn right up a steep slope’. Calf muscles burning, we pause to admire the sun skimming the tops of youthful natural regeneration to cast dapples on the thinned plantation forest floor.
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Puffing onwards, forest signs warn of working machinery. Emerging from the woods at the top of the slope, we feel exposed. A lively stream of conversation is evidence that the bungalow owners are out and enjoying their gardens. We race for the cover of a narrow path between young and older plantations and resume a leisurely pace, expounding theories on how to differentiate bracken from fern.
Left down a wide ride between plantations, trees on the compartment edge have had a final thin and seem taller the further downhill we tread. As the light intensifies, counting the forest tracks we have crossed does break the flow, but also feels empowering.
The compartment on our left ends abruptly. The brash left between stumps on a small clearfell provides the chance for adults to play. A bow is bent and an arrow loaded, an archer framed against the forest edge.
Piles of roundwood, small to the left and large to the right, are stacked before a goalpost indicating the height of vehicles allowed below the power lines. A shimmy through some shrubby broadleaves marks a return into denser mixed cover. On the banks of the stream, fallen branches are again repurposed for play.
Aside from a few yards along a well-used cycle track, the route back is through the woods, skirting tree roots, coppice and the occasional snapped-out stem, to the lake, where trees are reflected with colour-perfect clarity.
Memories can seem more visceral when laid down in ‘adversity’: Symonds Yat, adventuring through a mosaic of working woods, differing ‘pathscapes’, head down into the rain, wet camera, wet neck, the relief of a damp seat and a stunning view, whatever the weather.
Mallards Pike remains a balmy blur of amble, chat and play: an archer or a globetrotting rock star, playing a brash-fashioned Flying V guitar.
Q&A WITH A FORESTRY ENGLAND SPOKESPERSON:
Q. These walks were made in between lockdowns in 2020. Have you seen significantly more visits during the last year as a result of the pandemic?
A. Yes, we have seen a significant increase in visitor numbers over the last year. From the six sites with ‘Pay and Display’ parking, we had 40,000 more vehicles in August 2020 alone, up to about 100,000 more people in one month than is usual. With no extra help, our seven rangers keep things running smoothly, working through the pandemic and lockdowns, keeping the forest open for those that are able to visit.
Q. DO YOU EXPERIENCE ISSUES WITH LITTER, VANDALISM OR ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR?
A. Litter is a big problem, especially last year with an increase in numbers, particularly with visitors who seemed unaware of how to behave. Other anti-social behaviour has included fires, dog mess, poor dog behaviour, illegal off-road motorbikes, raves and a small amount of vandalism. Our communications focus on trying to mitigate this by educating people on what they can and cannot do in the forest. We have been working with the local police force where necessary.
Q. WHAT FOREST WORKS ARE GOING ON IN MAILSCOT WOOD, HOW MUCH PRODUCTIVE TIMBER WILL THEY RELEASE?
A. Mailscot Wood is undergoing a thinning operation. When complete, the work is planned to yield about 3,500 m³ of timber, chip and firewood.
Q. CAN YOU SHARE ANY DETAILS OF MANAGING A WOOD THAT GROWS UP THE SIDE OF A STEEP GORGE?
A. Most of the steep ground in the gorge is within the Upper Wye Gorge site of special scientific interest and is managed as minimum intervention woodland, including Lady Park Wood, a 38 ha national nature reserve.
There are some very rare Sorbus on the rocky outcrops that we try to protect through avoiding them.
Trees are managed for safety on a reactive basis using highly skilled cutters, climbers and winches. Where woodland is managed for timber on steep ground it is usually hand-felled and winched using traditional skidders or high lead excavator-based machines.
Ash dieback is a massive issue at the moment. We are currently taking ash showing substantial infection out close to roads, housing and heavy-use, public-access areas, using mechanical means as far as possible.
Q. ON THE MAILSCOT WOOD TRAIL, IN ADDITION TO THE CLOSED/OPEN TREE CANOPY AS A RESULT OF WOODLAND MANAGEMENT, IS THE PATH PURPOSEFULLY MANAGED WITH NARROW EDGES AND WIDE EDGES TO CREATE DIFFERING EXPERIENCES FOR A VISITOR FOLLOWING THIS TRAIL?
A. The trail has been here for at least 20 years. Before it was an official path with waymarking, it would have been unofficial desire lines. Sections of these lines would have been linked up to the forest road to create a circular loop.
Q. AT MALLARDS PIKE, THE LAKE IS VERY MUCH A FOCAL POINT. IS IT MAN-MADE AND CAN VISITORS ENJOY ANY LAKE-BASED ACTIVITIES?
A. The lake is manmade. There are permitted lake-based activities, particularly to support education groups, as well as try-out sessions and bookable courses. These are all currently paused because of COVID-19.
Q. THERE IS A LARGE BIN AREA. WAS IT BUILT FROM TIMBER FROM THE WOODS AND IS IT A FORESTRY ENGLAND OR COUNCIL RESPONSIBILITY?
A. This was built using FSC timber from a local supplier. Forestry England are responsible for it.
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