‘I’m not sure I really like this forest,’ my girlfriend said to me as we walked along a small path. ‘It’s not really thick enough, it doesn’t feel particularly adventurous.’ About 30 feet further on whatever track it was that we’d been following had all but disappeared and we were wrestling our way through brambles and holly bushes in an attempt to plough through the undergrowth of Savernake Forest.
This Ancient Woodland provided the perfect excuse for us to get off the sofa for a Sunday morning walk. The sky was blue and the sun was out but there was sharpness in the air that betrayed the turning of the season, summer was unmistakably taking its leave and ushering in the brown leaves and blackberries of autumn.
Parking can be found at the Postern Hill picnic site, overlooking Marlborough, on the boundary of one of the forest’s so-called ‘distinct areas’. From here we set off unguided and largely uninformed on our walk (maps are available from the shop at the camp site, we just chose ignorance) with nothing more than a vague notion of heading off somewhere into there trees.
The picnic site itself was relatively open and filled with families eating, barbecuing and playing. As well as parents and children this spot is evidently a hit with dog walkers and cyclists and there are four tracks for them to enjoy in this region of the woodland, but we chose to follow none of these and blazed our own trail into the forest instead. We found what must have been a deer track and followed it, constantly having to untangle ourselves from the thorns of overhanging brambles as we ventured further and further from any other living being.
Of course our isolation did add something to the experience and it was nice to enjoy some of the more beautiful but less visited areas of the forest, but it wasn’t an easy trek. Every time we came to a small clearing we looked around in the hope of finding a recognisable path, only to find ourselves forced to carry on without.
Away from the provided tracks the forest is largely unmanaged. Fallen trees are left to decay to provide habitat for invertebrates, while dead standing trees tend to be left where they are. The overall effect is that Savernake remains as natural as possible, much as it would have been when Saxon kings wrote of it in AD 934. One downside to this, though, was the particularly disappointing point where beer cans and drinks bottles had been left lying around, but considering the size of the area there was surprisingly little litter.
After about half an hour of trekking the trees up ahead began to thin. Peering through the edge I could see an open field, at the far end of which was something large and white. I looked closer, it was a sightscreen: without having any idea where we were going, we’d wandered all the way across to Marlborough Cricket Club. Never mind though, we might have ventured way off course but at least we’d finally re-connected with civilisation. Except we hadn’t. Civilisation teased us, sitting tantalisingly close but the forest was determined not release us. No matter where we tried, any semblance of a path had finally disappeared and we could do no more than gaze abjectly at the neatly mown verges just a matter of feet away, denied access to them by undergrowth that would have needed a machete to pass through.
Resigned to defeat with freedom at our fingertips, we turned and tracked back the way we’d come. ‘This definitely isn’t a walk to do wearing a dress,’ my girlfriend lamented as she unhooked her skirt from yet another bush. As we eventually emerged back out into the clearing of the picnic site we saw a well laid track that cyclists and other walkers were merrily wandering along without a care in the world. Perhaps that would have made a more sensible option, but at least my girlfriend got the ‘adventurous’ forest walk she wanted.
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That Cluckin' Bustard 