Clear winter skies make for a frosty but brilliantly sunny morning; the low slanting light is soaked up by the conifer stands, but lances through the high ash forest.
Wakerley Great Wood is a substantial mixed plantation and woodland, managed by Forestry England. It is less renowned than the similarly sized, nearby Fineshade or Fermlyn Woods: probably because it does not match their depth of richness in wildlife. It is, however, popular with mud-speckled cyclists, who become increasingly frequent as the morning defrosts. A network of paths span the wood and a dedicated mountain biking trail weaves between conifer trunks, up and down the slopes, including some reasonably exhilarating banked s- and hairpin bends.
Exploring the muddy paths to the west leads out of the conifers and into ash woodland with a smattering of hazel. The ground is sporadically deeply pitted with surface mines. Here in medieval times people laboured to dig out ironstone, and the air would have rung with the clang of picks and scrape of shovels, the stone being carted to Wakerley and fed into the iron smelters.
Today the tits chirping in the trees are competing in the soundscape with a distant cacophony. A mechanical booming thunder, interspersed with clanking and bangs, drifts in from the west. I set off to investigate, leaving the mud and crossing into deep rustling leaves, the knee-high brambles catching at my laces. I clock the distinctive jagged outline of the leaf of a wild service tree (Sorbus torminalis), a signifier of ancient woodland and proof that some of the more fussy or enigmatic species still survive.
Reaching the edge, I peer through the blackthorn hedge at an expansive open quarry, as, on cue, a lorry piled high with buff rocks grinds past on the adjacent dirt track, trundling noisily off into the distance. Quarrying returned to the ironstone strata in 2017, this time for construction.
The song may have changed but the principle remains – wildlife can thrive after mineral extraction. Unfortunately, under current plans, most of the new quarry area would be returned to arable, missing the opportunity to boost the tree cover and carbon storage.
