Walk no 2 - 15 May 2026

Walking in Lower Woods Nature Reserve followed by tea and discussion in Hawkesbury Upton Village Hall, hosted jointly with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust

May is the month of expectation, the month of wishes, the month of hope - Emily Brontë

Walk no 2 saw us gathering at Lower Woods Nature Reserve on a blustery May day with shafts of bright sunshine interspersed with heavy downpours.  Fingers crossed to avoid the worst of it, we were greeted by Neil Lodge, a true man of the woods, who runs the nature reserve and lives in Lower Woods Lodge, built with stone from an adjacent Roman Villa and looking as if it grew from the earth itself.

Neil has deep knowledge and an extraordinary passion for the place, and he guided us in two parties, morning and afternoon, wandering through the woods and pausing to point out features we would so easily have missed without him.

Our theme for this walk was nature recovery, and Neil was quick to explain that nature needs somewhere to recover from.  Lower Woods is a great place to start as it is not only a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a formally identified ancient woodland (in constant woodland cover for at least 600 years) but is probably much older. It holds many indicator species of ancient woodland including the wild service tree of which we saw a splendid example. 

Neil explained that the woodland we see today is by no means the same as that which our medieval forebears would have known. There would have been a rigorous coppicing regime, wide rides and a sparser canopy, with long views across the woodland.  Wildlife would have been present in abundance, attuned to the management regime and in harmony with human occupation.  Today, with the abandonment of coppicing in the early twentieth century along with new planting to meet the various demands of industry for pit props, matches and the like, that age-old harmony has gone. Though Lower Woods is still a wildlife-rich site it urgently needs regeneration and that means active management. He is working to re-establish coppicing but today is faced with new challenges, especially from deer which are present in huge numbers and browse intensively. 

Though depleted, the reserve provides a crucial reservoir for what is now a much bigger vision, to encourage species to spill out into the wider countryside.  In a series of stops, Neil described how cattle – the British White – have been reintroduced to support a sustainable grazing regime and measures put in place to protect young coppice against browsing by deer and grey squirrels.  He showed us where song thrushes use a stone (rare in this very wet woodland) as an anvil to break snail shells, two of the ten species of orchid present locally, and the wide rides which are perfect for butterflies.  We saw many examples of ash die-back which is devastating the large quantity of ash in the woodlands.

Early Purple Orchid

Great Butterfly Orchid

Thrush Anvil

Neil also showed us many indicators of the extraordinary history of the woodlands, once part of a much greater woodland from Kingswood to Bath.  Medieval banks divide the woodland into compartments, and the site of a Roman Villa has been partially excavated revealing unusual and beautiful mosaics.   We walked along Plumber’s Trench, an ancient packhorse route from the Severn to the Cotswolds and crossed The Walk – a cutting in the woods which once provided a line of sight from Wickwar Church to the Hawkesbury Monument.  With intensive woodland management it may do so again one day. 

Inspired, despite having been drenched - twice! - we made our way to Hawkesbury Upton Village Hall for a welcome cup of tea and delicious cake provided by GWT.  

We then enjoyed two short talks, first from Andrew McLaughlin, CEO of GWT who described the charity’s ambitious programme for nature recovery across the county, drawing on the Lawton principles of bigger, better, more and more connected, and thus the need now to work at a landscape scale.  He ended by describing GWT’s forthcoming Mission Wild: a £3m appeal for transformative action, and a rallying cry for the vital importance of nature for all our lives.  He was followed by Safia Gilder-Hodgson of the Western Forest, a new national forest supported by the Government with the aim of creating a tree-rich landscape across Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and the West of England.  To achieve that will depend on working with famers, landowners and local communities.  She stressed that the word ‘forest’, while conjuring up images of densely planted conifers is not that, but a patchwork of woodland integrated with other uses including farming. This ‘mosaic’ structure is what the WF wants to create, and to do that will work with everyone who wants to be involved, helping them with funding and paperwork to make it easy to plant and manage trees in the landscape.

There followed a lively debate, with several people seeking to enhance nature in their own land but finding confusion in the number of grants and schemes available, including some contradictions and obstacles – they would welcome help!  Hedges were agreed to be a wonderful way of creating better nature connections, but there was a confusing array of grants, and with farmers feeling under pressure they would welcome support to access them.

Several people with local community roles spoke up to say that there was too little connection between these ideas and local preoccupations, such as the shortage of affordable housing and poor public services. Local people may be supportive, but largely unaware of these initiatives and would welcome the chance to hear more and get more involved.

There was an appetite for greater visibility of plans for nature recovery and woodland enhancement, and in particular to make the case for the benefits access to nature can bring to everyone’s lives. Engaging children and young people was a particular concern, especially as for children there is a gap when access to Forest Schools stops, and young people are often forced to leave the countryside for education, jobs and housing.  There was also too little connection within and between parish and district councils, though the Badminton Estate was praised for bringing parish councils together recently.

The meeting closed with a wide sense of opportunity:  to better connect people and local institutions, to share the benefits of nature recovery more widely, and to involve people more closely in plans to promote nature locally.