Rendlesham Forest April 2019

Last night we tried to do Daisy's walk. Daisy was a woman who loved this Forest and the walk was her favourite route. It used to be one of ours too. Two and a half miles, it was perfect for small children, long enough to seem like a long walk, not so long that we'd end up carrying them. It was varied - it went past fields, through beeches and pines, tall trees and scrub. A boardwalk across the wet soggy bottom of the wood, then broad sandy paths in sunshine where we once saw an adder basking. 

Now there's no information about Daisy and the waymarkers have gone. We end up walking a slightly different route. We don't find the boardwalk. We cross the road and walk back to the cabin, past a gypsy camp, past the airfield. 

This is a strange place. (- RAF - Orford Ness - Felixstowe Ferry - Bawdsey - more on this Anna). So no wonder it's a UFO hotspot. The airfield is cordoned off. A huge area hopping with rabbits. If you were an alien wanting to land, this would be a good place. The Forestry Commission have made an information board about the sightings - supposed sightings - they don't want to commit. But they have set up a trail in case you want to look for yourself. 

6am I go for a walk in my own. Four miles and only skirts a corner of the forest. There is alight rain than you hardly notice, until you realise your hair is wet. I like it here, I like the big square grids and the trees that stand in silent battalions. They're a bit creepy, like a silent army all standing in rows. At a signal they might all spring into action. Who will make the signal? Foresters? The government? Secret Service? Aliens? The trees are like an ancient army from a film like Red Cliff. 

The long wide rides are easy to follow. The grids make it like an American city, there are blocks. The path from our cabin goes between two. On the right hand side a block of pines, dark, fragrant, waiting. It seems as though this side is quieter. Is that possible?

On the other side a the new growth of silver birch - the pioneer, the chancer, taking advantage of the open space, filling it with its pale trunks and a froth of new spring leaves. 

For me, this is Red Riding Hood's wood. The wolf would appear from a stand of pines and the encounter would take place on one of those wide verges. If she sticks to those wide straight paths, she'll get to Granny's house no problem. What could go wrong? 

At Upper Hollesley the forest meets the open land of the Common. Over there tall pines are growing in groups rather than in straight lines. Further on there is a road - I can hear an occasional car. I see a car arrive at the far end of a ride. A man gets out and begins to walk in my direction. He is the first person I have seen. Perhaps we are the only two. He has a dog. I see it is a golden retriever and I relax. They are such bouncy dogs, such happy-go-lucky dogs. We pass each other and say good morning. I rub the dog's head.

Sometimes the forest opens out and there's a big clearing, a bit of the Sandlings reasserting itself. In the south of the forest the paths are pure sand, and you can feel a different landscape lurking in the ground, beneath the roots of trees. It makes the forest's occupation of the space feel shallow, temporary. The forest is a planted thing which will go and the sand will remain. 

The forest smells so good after days of sun then a bit of rain. It smells of pine, but sweet, with almost a hint of cannabis. As I walk eastwards the path becomes darker, still soft with sand, but you can see how it would turn to mud in wet weather. There's something else mixed with the sand, maybe clay.

This part of the forest is called Scotland Fen. The paths aren't so straight here, and there's a wet smelly ditch filled with dense growth of sallows. It's becoming familiar. We used to walk here too with the girls when they were tiny. We used to follow the red route, which was longer that the blue route - which was suitable for pushchairs and wheelchairs. Both routes took you to The Bird, a huge wood nightjar with a sloping tunnel you could climb up into a dark inner room inside the bird's head, where there was a fireman's pole down to the ground. Once our youngest daughter fell from its beak. 

 Look, here's Little Red's Granny's house on the other side of the wood. 

This is the way to The Bird. This is a walk back into the past. The girls are in their twenties now and we live in a different part of the country. Strange to come back. To not have a bag full of snacks and nappy changes. To be here so early in the morning, without the shouts of children, running feet. 

You can see how Little Red would be tempted by a winding a path, a path that took her past this wooden crocodile. In this forest it would be easy for the wolf to tempt her from the straight and narrow. 

I walk round the bend, and another bend, and there is no huge wooden nightjar. I walk the route again, carefully following the blue waymarkers. It is gone. Later, I ask Kim from the house if The Bird has gone, and she doesn't know anything about it. She's never heard of The Bird. Somewhere between me leaving and her arriving it has flown away, or sunk into the sand. 

more here about recreational stuff in the forest - cycling, husky racing.

It's a strange thing to come back. To try to do what you used to do in the past and find that you can't. The waymarkers have gone. What was there before is no longer. No Daisy's Walk, no wooden Bird. But for the first time I've had time alone in this forest. Morning runs when only the rabbits and deer were about, when the newly risen sun sat at the end of a long forest ride, between two stands of pines, and blinded me, so I could barely even look at my own feet. I think this is important. Trying to retrace the past and failing, but finding something new.