Theo in Standish Woods

I'd arranged to pick up John W. to go for a walk at round Frampton Court lake, but when I arrived at their house, John told me he needed to be back sooner than he had planned. Plan B was to go for a walk closer to home, so we drove up the hill to the edge of Standish Woods on the hill above  Randwick. 

John and Liz both warned me that there had been a lot of tree felling in the woods which are owned by the National Trust. There has been a lot of alarm locally about the level of destruction that has ensued. The NT declared that this was a combination of good woodland management combined with some defensive measures about a new fungal infection that is spreading around the country, linked to both larch and beech trees amongst others.

I was surprised at how bad the woodland looked after the independent contractors had been at work in the last month. But they have only just started apparently and many trees were marked with different coloured blobs of paints presumably indicating their possible demise. What seems so sad is that the obvious use of modern machinery has caused so much damage to the floor of the woodland compared to traditional management using horses and manpower. These woods are famous for their massive swathes of bluebells and I have blipped them here several times before.

We walked on to the undamaged areas and Theo, John's rather delightful Bedlington dog, seemed to be having a great time. I have blipped both of them before now as well. The colours were lovely even in the rather grey cloud cover so I was glad to have visited there at this moment in this autumn season.