How Tun Woods.

 

Early autumn day, dove-grey skies, 15 degrees centigrade, ash leaves down and beeches turning. 

Boots on and time to walk in the fifteen acre, man-made patch of woodland at the top of Ormsgill Quarry. 

   It’s a broad-leaf woodland, only twenty-one years old, so isn’t mature by any means- it was planted over an area originally a wide expanse of school playing field. It was possible to walk right to the edge of the sandstone quarry in those days. That’s been screened off with fences and clever planting now, thank goodness. On the first day of a teaching practice at Ormsgill School, a pupil lifted his shirt and showed me a scar running from neck to belly-button from when he fell off the quarry and landed on a washing machine! Walney could be easily seen from the edge, back then. Not so easy now, but the views are still stunning.

 Early autumn has been full of heavy rain and softer temperatures, so nature’s die-back isn’t in full swing in How Tun Wood. The paths are muddy and littered with the first fall of ash and beech leaves, but most of the canopy is still intact: you will find ash and beech, birch and rowan, holly and hazel, and dog roses twined in with hawthorn in the hedges. The Woodland Trust maintain the site, and some sickly-looking ash trees (and other species) have been marked for felling at the end of next year. That must have been a difficult decision. Sensible people don’t want to fell trees at the moment. To walk in the wood in high summer is to realise the power of trees to cool the earth. 

Everyone loves a forest or a patch of creepy woodland, don’t they: think about the stories of your childhood and how many used the setting of trees. Or TV programs- Game of Thrones or Last Kingdom. Trees are iconic. What other living organisms can grow upwards in cathedral -like proportions? And they are our saviours, with their tiny breathing mouths on the underside of their leaves, using our waste and giving us what is vital for our own breathing. Mass planting isn’t the answer so much as conserving what we’ve got now and letting nature do the repopulation. But try telling that to the HS2 brigade or the grasping deforestation fraternity.

Nature writing is really beginning to resonate with me. It’s threaded through my novels and chasing around in my brain. October has been full of rain, hasn’t it? Reading The Lost Words and The Lost Spells has made me look at the detail of Robert Macfarlane’s work. His themes and thinking line up with my own:

'Writers continue to play a central role in conservation by engaging out hearts and minds.

Literature can convey us into the minds of others and other spaces. It can make us feel things in the gut. We will not save what we do not love.

 It is no coincidence that literature representing the natural world should emerge at a time when the natural world is under threat.'

Being grateful for organisations such as the Woodland Trust isn't enough. If we could just leave our trees alone to do their work-holding soil together, soaking up excess water and storing carbon- that would be far better than scything away vast areas, then frantically trying to replace them with planting projects.

Anyway, How Tun is well worth a visit: it saved us during the era of lockdown, as it's less than a mile from our front door. Lucky us. Taking a peek at the history of Hawcoat village is also worthwhile if you're up there.

The village has been inhabited since the Middle Ages. It was actually mentioned in The Great Survey of 1086, as Heitun, as an area of wood and pastureland. Now, Victorian cottages stand alongside more modern houses: one particular row being back-to-back residences originally. The village had once had a look-out tower, built by ship owner James Atkinson for keeping an eye on boats using the stretches of water visible from here. The golf club gives the best view of those stretches now, and of the weather.

Residents of Barrow, and especially Hawcoat, may remember seeing who my family always referred to as The Smart Tramp. Though with his suave outfits and pristine silver hair and beard, he was hardly tramp-like (if there even is such a thing?). He made his home in one of the tiny cottages in Hawcoat, and we saw him almost daily before the pandemic, walking into the town centre to buy his provisions or visit the bank. He died, sadly, mid-Covid, and his house has been gutted. Here it is, looking so different, but it will always have a story to tell.

Talking of small-town stories, I have discovered an author who writes exactly those: Mary Lawson. Hers are set in Canada and although she's given her home-town a fictional name, her love of the place shines through. She's well worth a read if you like quiet prose with real heart.

Here's her take on autumn:

But then came autumn and the equinoctial gales, stripping the trees of their leaves as though they were in disgrace. The lake turned grey and sullen and the swells weren't gentle anymore: they heaved ominously, and tattered rags of spray blew off their tops. The wind barrelled down from the north, driving before it clouds as dark as slate. Pale curtains of rain swept across the lake.

Mary Lawson must have been to Walney!