A Night in the Forest

After a stressful week I decided, pretty much on a whim, to take the tarp and head east for an impromptu overnight camp in an area full of folklore, history and mystery. "What land is this?" I hear you ask (unless you follow me on Twitter)? "Why, the land of Robin Hood! To Nottingham!" Or, more precisely, Sherwood Forest. A short, 20 mile drive to the heart of the Forest and I was walking.

The part of Sherwood I was visiting hosts the main Tourist centre but it being Friday evening, pretty late already and the sun setting in the not too distant future meant that most of the visitors had gone. I set off from a side road and headed off on a broad track. This part of Sherwood is largely broadleaved, deciduous woodland and which is actively managed through a combination of selective grazing, tree felling and copicing, effectively mimicing how the woodlands have been managed historically until really the last century when our love of oil based compounds and consumption, drove out natural man made goods and the value of this type of land changed.

Pretty early on I met an old friend, Major Oak, the reputed principal hideout for Robin of Loxley, or Robin Hood as he is more widely known. This old fella is reckoned to be at least 1000 years old, and is one of a thousand-odd ancient trees in the forest, some dead, some alive and some clinging on to life, surprising everyone in the spring. Major Oak has been supported for one hundred years or more through a system of upright scaffolding (painted a sympathetic green) and wires and braces in suspension on high. The 'Major' reference refers to the chap that named the oak rather than it being a name given by Robin...

There is debate about the tree itself. It is simply massive in real life but the debate surrounds whether the tree is one or a few trees which have grown together, resulting in the hollow centre. As the tree has grown the slit has closed substantially but a few years ago the hollow centre was reckoned big enough to fit an entire rugby team.

After pondering this massive tree I started off on another path, this time part of the Robin Hood Way, a 107 mile walk skirting Nottingham and weaving around northwards before ending at a small town called Edwinstowe. I didn't have a big walking objective for this walk though; I just wanted to get some air, explore an area I don't know that well (though there is a family photograph with me aged about 6, stood in front of this very tree) and to have a camp out. With time moving on I thought I'd better suss out somewhere to camp. I wanted to get farther in to the forest, away from easily, road accessible areas and where I might be encountered by dog walkers and early risers.

Heading north west I only disturbed grey squirrels as their presence was revealed by their noisy rustling of leaves as they bounded between acorn larders. There is a lot of life abound on the woodland floor at this time of year and they were the noisiest reminder given the longhorn cattle were nowhere to be seen...

Passing out of the broadleaved reserve into a plantation I was reminded of Army presence by repeated large green signs warming of MOD activities, that blanks and explosives may be fired. I was already aware the Army leased some of the land so this wasn't a surprise and it wouldn't have been the first time I had bumped into soldiers on exercise while out backpacking. On this occasion I was in solitude though and emerged out of that darkness into a pretty area of heathland. Mixed birches and oak, larch and gorse with heather and dead bracken, broad swathes of open land with thickets. Beautiful. I struck off down a narrow path and spied some thick gorse bushes I thought would provide some decent cover, though if anyone did want to annoy me I'd be easily spotted with my verdant tarp!

A spot with crushed bracken looked like a great bed so I lay down my pack and started to set up camp. I found it a bit easier this time to set the tarp in a hanging lean to config and the stakes sank firmly into the ground. I used knots instead of line loks to tension the guylines, which held the tarp pretty well. Glad of the heavyweight silnylon groundsheet with the sharp, dead bracken, the NeoAir was next, followed by poofing out my sleeping bag to air. After a hunting and gathering exercise of twigs I got cooking. For dinner I'd brought homemade dehydrated chilli with half a pack of Sainsbury's 2 Minute Meals Long Grain Rice which is already partially cooked, so I only had to boil some water to add to the chilli, and then the rice later on. I put these in their freezer bags inside my sleeping bag to help air it and retain some of the warmth as I'd not brought a pot cosy with me. While that was going on I went off to collect more wood to stoke my fire with.

The sun started to set as I had my snap. It was blissful, and to be truthful I found it exciting to be there, out in the open again after a month since my last camp, and my mind started thinking about all the different walks I want to do, where I want to go, where I want to explore or just sit and observe. My mind started on overdrive down this pattern of thought but as the sun set within half an hour or so the temperatures started to fall, so with more wood collected I took comfort from my sleeping bag and retired.

Or so I thought as another hour then two, and then three rolled by, my brain still on overdrive and sleep seeming far off. It was a staggeringly clear night and the stars, the galaxy, was just above head level. I felt as if I could almost reach out and touch them. The more I looked the more constellations I saw, infinite into other worlds. The sound of a helicopter of some sort at around 00:30 was a less welcome interruption than the Tawny Owls making their presence known, screeching a little. They are pretty common and in a wooded area like this to be expected. I love to listen to the different night noises, creatures giving themselves away, or markedly demonstrating their authority over life or territory.

The clock ticked on and getting towards feeling a bit fed up that I wasn't sleeping and without it seeming as if it would be arriving any time soon, I decided to pack up and walk out. Once I made that decision it made the lack of sleep worthwhile and added an extra sense of adventure to just a local camp out. I packed everything away quite quickly, surprised at the amount of moisture on my tarp, only using my headlamp towards the end to check I'd not missed anything. The stars were so bright I didn't need my lamp much at all, and I walked with the aid of trees I'd spotted earlier, now silhouetted against the sky or amorphous shadows. Crunching over the bracken and occasionally getting tangled I finally made it to the path on the heath, adjoining a very dark plantation area.

The friendliness of the open heath seemed to regress into the dense shadows of the conifers and a chill swept over me and down my back. I flicked my headlamp on and confirmed where I was, before turning it off and being plunged into darkness. An owl called again, but it was a familiar noise, though not the twit-twoo of childhood. I felt a bit safer. Rather than retracing my footsteps of earlier I decided a more direct route, following the boundary of the conifers, along an old track, rutted and me stumbling until my vision returned.

Passing a gap in the plantation I checked the map, again sacrificing my night vision. But I could count how many more gaps on the map I had to walk past before my turn, so once again lights off and walk. I started to very much enjoy the liberating feel of walking in the middle of the night and as I finally found my turn, now into the forest proper, I felt safe and secure. Dark, gnarly shapes came towards me as the ancient trees appeared. I wondered what they had seen through their life, surviving the 1500s with the rape of the forests for the battles with the Spanish Armada, supporting woodland industries like charcoal burning and being the backdrop to so many peoples lives.

Rustles in the dead leaves gave rabbits away as they were shocked to be disturbed at this time. Who goes there? Feeling my way along the path, glad of my walking poles where the path was pitted or rock strewn, I made it back all to quickly to the car. An unwelcome set of headlights blinded me as another late journeyman sped past. But rather than viewing this as a failure, of not lasting out through the night under the tarp, instead I created a memory that will last me a lifetime, of feeling a certain bind with the forest, seeing it, feeling it alive at night with not a human living soul around. I was sure to return.