Second Field Trip to Alice Holt Forest
Photo: Alice Holt Forest: stream and conifers on Willows Green Trail.
Photos and map by Peter Batchelor.
On Friday 8 March I took a second field trip to Alice Holt in order to spend more time familiarising myself with the forest. I had also arranged a meeting with the ever-helpful Max Gravestock so that we could start discussing logistics surrounding the forest interventions in June and beyond.
I arrived just after 9.00am and began by going for a walk, mainly retracing steps from our last visit. I concentrated on listening, and identifying prominent sounds. Spring birdsong was cheerfully ever-present, at least in areas of deciduous woodland; dense coniferous areas were quieter. The paths beneath the trees were quite sheltered and still, with wind primarily audible through movement of the upper canopy, but in more exposed areas (e.g. Genbervie Meadow) it was noticeably breezier than on our last visit. Max tells me that it does get quite windy sometimes, with the wind being funnelled down the valleys (the forest undulates more than I recalled), so this is something we will need to be mindful of when positioning the audio streamers.
The air traffic from Heathrow, 30 miles away, is a further keynote—unsurprising, given the many flights taking off or landing every day. It wasn’t as relentless as I might have expected, and while a little annoying when trying to focus on forest sounds, it wasn’t too bad; indeed, the sometimes triadic portamenti, in composer mode, I found quite attractive.
There were far fewer people about than on our last visit, when I couldn’t find a space in the main carpark (even as capacious as it is) and had to use the overspill. On that occasion, visitor activity extended past the Go Ape enclosure and around the Habitat and Willows Green Trails. This time, the area around the visitor centre, while still the busiest (in particular around the café and playground) was a lot quieter. Elsewhere I saw the occasional jogger and dog-walker; but beyond distant conversations and the jingle of dog leads (I’m sure I also heard a cowbell at one point), a bit of JCB action near the visitor centre from work to upgrade the Gruffalo path, and of course aircraft, there was relatively little audible human presence. I expected more traffic noise from nearby roads, but the canopy rustle seems to do a good job of masking this.
Max and I met and spent a productive few hours talking about plans and likely requirements for the installations. The latter mainly concerned placement, power and security, with which he is confident he and his colleagues can help us. We went for a walk to an area of the forest we hadn’t visited on our previous visit, namely to the south of the visitor centre. Max identified some possible spots in this region, which tends to be a little less frequented than to the north and west of the forest. A few of these in particular look very promising for our interventions, being quite open with relatively sparse undergrowth, and comfortably accessible from the visitor centre while nevertheless feeling relatively secluded.
I thought that pictures would be useful for members of the summer school who wouldn’t be able to experience the forest until June, so I sought to capture some. Unfortunately, the camera I had brought for the occasion yielded disappointing results, so I made a brief repeat visit on 2 April just to take photos. Having enabled geotagging, I’ve uploaded these to Google Maps. The panoramas obviously skew perspective, but should give an impression of the character of the forest.
I also grabbed some audio, as I happened to have a Zoom H6 with me.
All in all another very pleasant and productive day. Enormous thanks again to Max for his time and enthusiasm!