Waypoint 3 The research wood | Ranger Cadets guided walking trail
Here we come to a small wood, planted by local schooldren, during the pandemic. That makes the trees around five years old, as I'm writing this.
Feel free to cross the stile and follow the short path into, around and back out of the wood.
See if you can use Flora Incognita to identify some of the trees growing here. They are all common in the countryside.
Very often those will be older and taller than the trees here. But trees are usually easy to identify from their leaves, no matter what age they are.
Take a look also to see if the trees seem to be doing well. (You can also find an app that will tell you that.) At the time I'm writing, we've had an especially hot, dry summer and lots of living things have struggled in the countryside and in gardens.
It's to be hoped that by the time you read this, the trees in our small wood here are healthy. Take a look and see if you think they are.
Once over the stile, on your left before you enter the wood, you will see a complicated construction up against the fence. This is the Ranger Cadets' BIG BUG HOTEL.
We need insects. Some might be annoying when they fly around your face or crawl up your trouser leg, when you're having a picnic. But without insects we'd have far fewer birds.
Without insects, flowers would not get pollinated. So we'd have no crops.
Without insects, we'd all die.
So our cadets have built a luxury hotel for the insects to stay in. Actually it's both a hotel and a maternity ward, because the insects should come here to lay their eggs and hatch their young.
Take a look but try not to disturb any residents - or wake up any of their kids.
On to Waypoint 4
When you cross the stile and head to the next Waypoint, be a little careful because the path is no longer lined by the hedgerow. You'll also be walking through two fields that belong to another farmer, not Andy.
Please make sure to stay on the path, which is a public right of way, and don't stray off it on to private land.
In the first field, look down to your right at the line of trees and notice in particular the tall, airy ash trees. We'll come back to ash trees later in the walk. Not all ash trees have been as healthy as these, in recent years.
As you enter the second field, see if you can spot something that is normally hidden, in the South Downs, just under the soil surface.
Clue: It's white.
