the bluebell wood

There is a small, narrow patch of woodland about half a mile from home that we have always called the bluebell wood. There is a footpath running through it and we make a special effort to walk there in late April/ early May when the bluebells are in flower. The photograph above was taken five years ago when I posted several pictures and wrote about how peaceful and calm the wood always felt.

This winter we were out for a walk and found the little wood looking like this. The forked tree in the centre of the photographs remains but many many other trees had been cut down.

The whole place looked very open and bare, not a woodland any more. We wondered at the time whether the bluebells would have survived. It was obvious from some of the tyre tracks that there had been heavy vehicles in the wood and the soil was quite rutted and disturbed in places.

This week we went back. There are bluebells but it is very different from five years ago, much brighter with all the trees gone and sunlight reaching the ground. This is the same forked tree in the foreground.

It looks very different from May 2010. Below is the footpath now

and next, the same section of path five years ago.

It feels completely different without the trees, I preferred it as it was.

There haven't been any trees planted yet so it could be interesting to watch it regrow naturally. Some of the hazel stumps are already sprouting and I am sure there must be a few acorns that might grow in the sunlight. In time it may well be a woodland again though there won't be any mature oaks in my lifetime,

but at least there are still bluebells.