King's Forest at West Stow
written by kvboyle
on April 27th, 2008
(1 vote)
If you flew over East Anglia in a helicopter you’d see below you a dark and rather gloomy area of forest somewhere in the middle of the more usual fen and farming landscape. If you drove along the A11 to Norwich, you would drive through a desolate and unexciting section of the same dark, dripping pine forest. Either way, you wouldn’t feel tempted to explore further, which would be a shame, as on the boundary of this admittedly uninviting forest is a place where a much older deciduous woodland still exists among the plantations of pine and fir.
This combination of the two, the dark pines with their straight trunks looking like an army advancing and the bright, shining pockets of oak and beech are truly spectacular, particularly if you visit in October or November. Favored mainly by weekend dog walkers and mountain bikers, the King’s Forest at West Stow is also popular with bird and butterfly watchers and people coming to visit either the neolithic field barrow or the nearby Anglo Saxon Village. It is also home to the King’s Forest Bowmen, an archery club who, I’m reliably informed, try quite hard not to shoot members of the public.
http://spamandchips.net/archaeology/weststow.htm
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/wildwoods.nsf/LUWebDocsByKey/EnglandEastAngliaNoForestThetfordForestParkWestStow
Please login or register to use this feature.