Old native English beech trees

A few days ago I planned to visit John W, in Whiteshill, high on the valley of the Painswick stream, to have a chat as we walked through nearby woods.  The grey sky was hanging low, and there was snow on the tops of the hedges high on the Cotswold hillsides, but the air was thankfully completely still.

John suggested parking at Shortwood, beside the Cotswold Way and at the edge of the larger Standish Woods.  The car park was nearly full as this is a dog walker's paradise.  We chose to head off along some old embankments which are part of the hill fort that once commanded the scenery below the Cotswold scarp and the Severn Vale below.  John wanted to take me to see some original, or native English beech trees, which have survived on a near vertical slope, which has probably never been managed as working woodland because of the difficult access.  

From near the end of the ridge, where the land drops down to the vale below, a side valley ran back towards the main escarpment thickly wooded and very quiet.   We dropped directly down the hillside, which was a little daunting with my camera hanging round my neck and the short grass rather slippery in the near icy conditions.  The beeches were magnificent with huge branches spreading nearly as wide as the trees were high.  their trunks were much thicker but mot as tall as the imported species, which are most commonly seen now in 'English beechwoods', as they provide better crops of timber.

John is a mine of information about botany and he kept me informed about the many mosses and lichens we encountered.  We stood beneath and by the near ground level branches somewhat aghast at their magnificence.  Soon after I took this picture, we came across the biggest tree which was only a few yards further up the valley but on exactly the same sort angle of slope.  It had several low limbs stretching out parallel to the ground, and then we noticed that two of the limbs had fused together to form a mass of twisting, curving and tangled branches from just these two limbs. They were even touching the ground at several points but without digging into it or gaining support from it.

These two trees were the first I came across and I was amazed by the root system of the farther tree which had nearly as extensive an array of roots spreading up the hillside as well.  In places there was only bare soil as no other plants could survive under the expanse of summer leaves, and only dog's mercury seemed to be present at all there, as its leaves appear and the plant flowers before the beech leaves appear.

On the hill above is the ridge heading south-westwards which was the site of the iron-age hillfort.  We then headed further down the hillside to the valley bottom before walking up to the head of the valley to find a forestry trail where the National Trust have been felling trees to clear space within the rather unkempt woodland.  There is so much woodland which is not managed anymore, which seems crazy to me.  Woodland is a huge resource, which could provide a healthy industry and supplies of local timber, just as it always had done until the second world war changed everything, or so it seems to me.