Ancient Beeches of Bramshaw Wood...

New Forest

Despite getting a nice swan Blip (HUGE thanks to ALL for getting it to #2 in the Spotlights) and a reasonable sunset, I was kicking myself for wasting a wonderfully sunny fine autumn day yesterday.

I was still after a final autumnal shot, in the New Forest. No buses actually go there from Salisbury - they stop at points at the two main roads that run along the east and the north of the National Park, and you have to walk the rest of the way.

Nomansland, supposedly named as it was both, or neither in either Hampshire or Wiltshire, with supposedly one (long) house being in both counties... at least that is the local hearsay and obviously no longer applies. Anyway, short walk from bus to said village and then a good stout walk to the ancient woodland of Bramshaw Wood.

What I've always liked about this wood is that much is on a steep incline and so you get a better perspective and views. BUT with the sunshine definitely in short supply (my forecast was for dull all day, so I was lucky getting any shine). But the low sun angle at this time of year meant that almost all the wood and especially its very old trees were in shadow.

Unlike the regimented and man-planted glorious beeches of Grovely Wood, the ancient woodlands in the New Forest are totally unmanaged. Trees grow where the acorn or beech mast falls. No one saws up the many felled by the storms last year. Or any year. Paths were created by animals, over hundreds of years. Much of the ground is covered by low growing holly or other scrub. And bog, or bracken. There is no manmade drainage either, so it is often muddy or waterlogged.

This does make the these parts of the New Forest a delight to walk in, but a bit of a nightmare to keep on track and to not get lost. Because the wooded parts of the New Forest today is mostly turned over to production timber for the Forestry Commission, these rarer precious havens, thankfully, are not frequented by cyclists and they are not specially marked on the map either. But an experience in map-reading and the local geography (I was brought up and raised in the Forest, after all) does help in singling out such traditional woodland.

I took the tripod, thinking perhaps that exposures might run into seconds, which they did in those shadowy depths. But using the optimum mid aperture on my lovely old and super-sharp Nikkor D 17-35mm f2.8 and so I used it throughout.

Lots of detail in LARGE

Generally, I was disappointed with what I got. Most of the leaves had fallen and as I said, the very old trees were well in the dip, which is presumably how they've survived from the winds of time for all these centuries. The best autumn colour came from earlier shots of much younger trees.

This one though mixes a fair amount of gold colour and a nice old tree. Not the oldest, by far, but one certainly about 200+ years old. That's even older than Bruce Forsyth!!!!

Posting this now as I have to find a couple of decent birthday cards, one being my really good friend Luke, who's 30th it is.

Derelict Thursday Challenge again, tomorrow, folks! Just tag your entries derelict Thursday correctly and that's all you need to do!