The oldest woods - blackberry season approaches, 19th August

On home ground again.

These trees, mostly (but not entirely) oaks, are part of what remains of the some of the oldest woods on the Common (known as Café Wood), and include oaks still standing that were planted in the 18th Century.

They are very tall, it's quite hard to get the idea of their size. (Not a patch, of course, in any way, on the vast and ancient oak I remember from childhood, the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, which was even then held up by chains, but we were allowed to play in it's huge, hollow centre, several of us enclosed within it's ancient, musky trunk. Now, you can't. Like Stone Henge it's cut off from the far more recent arrivals on this planet. But then, the Major Oak is thought to be around 1,000 years old. Maybe it deserves a bit of peace).

 

And, at the edges, the blackberry season is (just about) upon us: