There’s a stillness in the air, though we share this Inclosure’s gravelled track near Burley with others. A runner passes us on his way out. We’ve not gone far before we have to stand aside to allow two riders to pass on ambling ponies.
A cyclist speeds by, head down, and later we greet a family group enjoying a walk. Like so many of the people who come into the New Forest, their purpose is primarily exercise.
As soon as we can, we break away from the track and into the woodland itself. Most of the trees have shut down for winter, but one larch is holding back, its top a crown of golden needles that have yet to drop.
Where brushwood has been cleared away, grey beech trunks rise like cathedral pillars, their interweaving branches creating a vaulted ceiling. We walk in a silence broken only by the crackle of leaves under our feet and the scolding of the blackbirds we disturb.
Robins, too, are here in number, and among the beeches we find one tree that seems inspired by their colourful breasts. It’s so coated with rusty-red algae that it simply demands to be
looked at more closely.
Unlike the craggy, fissured oaks, the smooth surface of the beech is tactile. Its bark invites touching, creating an urgency to run the hand over it. That intimacy is broken only when meeting a coarser lichen or patch of moss.
A dim shape in a deep crevasse is revealed by the light of a smartphone to be a colony of slugs. Too compacted against the plummeting temperatures to be identifiable, they are safe from the frosts and should survive many successive days when the thermometer reads below zero.
The woodland floor itself varies greatly. We walk through some areas that are almost bare; one patch is a seed-bed for hollies and firs; bracken infests others.
We pass dormant wood ant heaps, all with pits showing that they have been attacked by some predator. As we consider this, a green woodpecker lands in a pine close by.
