Westonbirt National Arboretum

This afternoon Carrie and I took a walk amongst the trees of westonbirt national arboretum. The arboretum is just off Junction 18 of the M4 and is open all year round, perfect for families and quiet walks. We use westonbirt to hone our tree knowledge, we prefer the Silk wood, which is a network of paths through unmanaged broadleaf woodland where wildlife abounds.

We always take a few stuff sacks in the rucksack to take advantage of the seasonal productivity of the woodland, This time of year in early September, wild foods are in abundance, today we collected blackberries, elder berries and wild apples which we will make into a fruit crumble later in the week (we quite often do this in a dutch oven on courses at this time of year).


Westonbirt really comes into it's own in the autumn already the nut harvest of hazelnuts and sweet chestnuts are well on the way, signalling the telltale signs that autumn is soon upon us. The amber tinge on the sycamore leaves is pointing to the oncoming season, the golds and browns will soon be joined by the vibrant fire of the japanese maples and the red osier dogwoods.

In addition to our fruit haul, this afternoon's walk yielded a number of sycamore bowdrill sets, some tinder fungus, 2 bags of birch bark for firelighting on the foundation course in two weeks time, a couple of walking staffs and a few spoon blanks which will become spoons over the winter months. just in time for the new course season!

Back soon

Andrew