Bit of an unusual one for you here, kinda inspired by the recent spate of "cars left to die in weird places" threads. Well, I've got a weird vehicle left to die in a fairly normal place, just to put a different spin on things. Not exactly a car, but since we all clearly enjoy looking at the humbling sight of Nature reclaiming just exactly what She wants, I felt it might be of some interest to peeps. And there are some nice photos of trees, too, for those who like that sort of thing.
So, shall we begin?
I'm fortunate enough to live on the Sussex coastal strip right on the edge of the South Downs National Park, an area so marvelous it could be argued to be God's own countryside if Yorkshire hadn't already trademarked that one. However, the downs and the sea guarantee their own micro-climate, just like LA only without the irritating accent (we've even got our own L.A, or Little'ampton as it's otherwise known) so it's often nice weather for wandering through the forests and hills, even in winter. Should you happen to do this, you can spot all kinds of strange revenants from the days when TWOCing was its most fashionable, and the price of scrap meant you may as well burn out your old jalopy in a chalkpit as pay some breaker to weigh it in. For example, up the path to Chanctonbury Ring you can spot several rotting carcasses in the slopes and trees when the leaves aren't yet out to obscure them
I actually have no idea what this wing is from, it looks old Brit to me but the barbed wire and precipitous slope make it too difficult to get down and search for clues amongst the other remnants returning to nature down there. It's been there as long as I can remember
If you were to cross the main A24 through this valley and take the Long Furlong towards Ferring, you would come to the small village of Clapham hidden away in a fold of the Downs. The village is notable not just for its age and tiny size, but the church which is literally hidden away in the woods that run in a hangar above the village. The rutted mud road to the church is all but impassable in really wet weather, and so dilapidated I can't get my RX-7 up there at all. It's worth the trek though because it's a lovely little old building in traditional Sussex flint and mortar.
There has been a place of worship here since Norman times, the current restored buildings date mostly from the thirteenth century, although local folklore has it that this has always been a place of human worship. Legends abound about the place... druids, wiccans and all kinds of other cults treat it as significant. There are tales of eldritch creatures in the woods and dogs turn up dead on a spookily frequent basis. Come up here at dusk and the glowering woods pressing close around the little church clearing definitely seem to exude an almost tangible feeling of menace and intrigue. They were here long before we were, and they don't want to give up their secrets. wander through the cemetery and the tilted, age-worn and be-lichened stones with their inscriptions effaced by the hand of Time speak mute testament to the transience of Man's time in this world
Oooh, scary! But we're intrepid types and we're not put off by local folklore. So we set off into the combs, heading up the hill. And even though we're not worried, we make sure to keep a close eye on Bob. It's not a work of fiction that something kills dogs in these woods...
Great bench, though, and that fits nicely into our theme of life and death. Made from local wood salvaged from trees felled in the Great Storm (the one Michael Fish said wasn't happening). And everywhere you look there's the same story being told. Things die, things rot, things grow in the ruin. This Ash (Fraxinus exelsior) is dead, it just doesn't know it yet. Canker has got into it, and it's rotting from the inside out, its pulpwood turning black from the disease even as it struggles to put out new leaves to greet the warming, strengthening spring sun
This one stands a chance though, if it can avoid Die Back disease. It's got pretty benign fungus infection. These woody galls are the fungus known in woodsman's lore as King Alfred's Cakes because they resemble the famous king's greatest culinary failing. If you break one open, it's hard as wood and you can see the growth rings in it telling of its age, just like the trees on which they grow
Even if the Ash should fall prey to parasitic death, it's not exactly the end. It'll die, and fall, and then its wood and nutrients will pass into the ecosystem and be used again. It is, without any homage or royalty being owed to Elton bloody John, the circle of life
Everywhere you look there's evidence of this constant struggle to overcome, the fight toward the light and the battle for nutrients. Even the new shoots growing in the graveyard of old stumps have to compete with the fungus to reach for the canopy
As we reach the crest of the hill, we come out into open pasture woodland. This is what the Downs used to be like in time immemorial before the War effort ploughed over the enclosures and copses into intensive farmland. Animals have been grazed in these high woodland pastures since there were men here to manage them. If we look along the open grassland along the ridge, past the standard trees scattered like parkland, we can just make out the shape of what we've come here to see, indistinct still in the distance and overshadowed by the woods. But before we can get there we have to plunge back into the rustling green darkness of the next hangar. Spring here is a magical time, when you can see the life amongst the rot come bursting forth in unalloyed joy. The anemones bring a constellation of stars to the forest floor
and following on their heels, the bluebells carpet the world in a swathe of glorious purple as far as you can see. They give depth to the coppice stands that normally defeat the eye and if it wasn't for the faint rumble of traffic from the road below you could well imagine yourself in the ancient forest that once stretched from the sea across the weald and beyond. Niah-cat here models a bluebell patch for reasons of proportion, lol
and after the bluebells the rarer plants, more tolerant of shade and less numerous but no less wonderful, the orchids spark like tiny strings of jewels in the deep shadows amongst the roots
at the very top of the ridge is a superb ancient Beech tree. Fagus sylvatica is a great chalk downland species, its shallow rootplates spread out wider than its canopy and give it great purchase in the shallow, hard soil. This tree has been here nearly as long as the Church. I once measured it and calculated the age from its circumference and it's something like five hundred plus years old.
Many of its branches are larger than some standard trees, and it utterly dwarfs any humans nearby. And humans want to get nearby, it's such an awesome living creature that it creates its own gravity. It draws you in, you want to touch its smooth ancient skin and marvel at the old, slow vitality that heaved it toward the heavens when the town beneath was still a fishing village and the men who lived there still thought the sun went around the earth
Sadly, even this titan, this survivor of the centuries, has recently taken a turn for the worse. One of its immense branches came down in the storms of this winter, and lies in the shadow of its parent like an immense snake, spanning the clearing and disappearing into the undergrowth.
The scar left is too large and jagged and the tree is too old; it probably won't be able now to scab over with fresh bark in time. Slow infection and rot will get in, and sure as the cankered Ash, this great beech is probably already awaiting its inevitable demise. In the meanwhile, the kids clamber on its huge shed limb unaware of the dying parent above
There are reminders of the strangeness that impregnates these woods with an Evil Dead style mythos here too, if you should look for them. A strange capsule... a tribute or a time-capsule, who can tell... wedged deep in the crevice of one of the roots
And you can look up into the massive branches and see the buds tell of a new years' growth to come, and the beechmast crunching underfoot speaks of vitality enough yet remaining
...but look closer, and strangely portentous is a most unusual piece of graffiti carved into the bark. No Daz4Zoe here, but instead the simple and unarguable truth "Death is coming"
To us all. We give the wonderful old Lord of the Forest one last pat and head off along the ridge to our destination. The woods change nature here, with old seet chestnuts that were once coppice stools but have now grown into genuine canopy trees, their unmistakeably ridged bark curved and twisted with age like helterskelters. And if you look closely here, there is evidence of life and death too. A hazel nut, edged into a conveniently grippy bit of bark, its succulent morsel excavated by beak or paw to feed a new litter.
And then, finally, we reach our destination. We break out of the darkness into the bright spring day once more, in another paddock of the pastureland. Surrounded by woods, it seems a magical and private wonderland that's our alone. If you look on Google this tree is still standing, left alone by the managing farmer as a habitat and shade for the grazing animals. But again, the storms have taken their toll and now it lies broken on the sward
and there, beyond it, finally... is what we've come to see. From this distance it still looks like a stand of saplings, beyond the livestock electric fence, slightly removed from the forest wall. But what's that nestling amongst the trunks and withies?
As we get a bit closer, we can make out that this is not all Nature's work, there's some vestige of the hand of Man here too
And isn't that strange? This old combine would have been an extremely expensive piece of equipment once upon a time, and it's difficult to imagine anyone just parking it up when it went wrong
But it's been here forever, as long as I can remember, and the trees have grown through it and around it and the ground has swelled beneath it to start climbing up the wheels, and whether it was parked expecting a quick fix and other matters intruded, or what, here it's remained and here it will always remain now... until nature takes it back completely. Why was it even here? This hill has never been arable planted, the nearest fields are down the valley and over the Long Furlong road a good couple of miles away.
It's interesting enough just to look at as a study in the decay of machinery left to the elements and without the protection of paint, grease, etc
But there are several places where the tree has grown around the rusting steel of the machinery, and it's fascinating to look at the chewing maws of wood and imagine a stop-motion flickerbook of watching the living wood oozing around dead metal like a tide of bark and inane vegetable power.
The steering wheel will be fine after a re-cover!
I think maybe they ought to have used kunifer rather than steel on the hydraulic lines, though
Reckon it'll take a bit more than an oil change to get this old Perkins diesel to run again
Another place where the trees have begun to eat the machinery, even as the wheels sink further down into the soil
You can barely see the machine from certain angles as the trunks swell and grow together. Here the diesel tank can just be made out, I suspect it will be either squashed or pulled off altogether given a few years
But if you peer right in between the boles you can still just decipher the once-proud lettering of the maker's name in shreds of paint clinging on to the rusted hull
...the "MA" and "SS Y" of Massey-Fergusson just legible.
But because this thread has the dual role of talking about new life as well as the decay of the old, if we look closely here there is more growing amongst the ruins than merely the trees that the combine's corpse nestles amongst. Climb up onto the crumbling running board and peer into the old hopper, drawn by the insistent clamour from within. Our shadow passes over the denizens within, and their innate instinct fires up. Their eyes still sealed, the change of light through lids is enough to promote their gape reflex and they reach up hopefully, expecting mother or father to provide them with a meal of fat caterpillars
but even here there's tragedy. Perhaps it fell from the nest, perhaps one of its siblings stronger and more opportunistic than the others rolled it out hoping for a greater share of the food, but this poor little fella isn't going to make it either.
Aware that we may be causing the no-doubt-watching parents distress by being close to their nest too long, we head off back down the hill, pausing as the spring sun slants across the pasture for one last look at this inexplicable and yet truly excellent revenant of man's transient past.
and finally coming out on the pasture above the Church, we pause to pet the horses and cross the stile into the back of the churchyard where bark-stripped wood is weathered almost as hard and unyielding as the stones beyond
were you to pause before returning down the track from the sighing woods and enter the Parish church of St Mary here in its secluded dark bower, you'd see that we're not the first to ponder the close relationship between life and death, and indeed folklore and religion have always merged on the point. Here is Golgotha, place of skulls, woven into the imagery of life from death
while the Lady Mary clutching her bundle of immaculate life holds her gaze out of the window, now in shade, towards the East and the rise of the sun on a new day full of life and potential
As we return to the paved streets and the bustle of civilisation, the sounds that we hadn't even realised had been so hushed for so long seem to crash back in like a wave of the sea, but something of the ancient magic of this oldest remnant of inhabited Britain has stayed with us and we notice things like the blooming of the magnolia, a plant that has remained unchanged through all the ages, since long before he first hairy human monkey stood trembling in awe of the new day
and the cherry and apple blossom filtering the westering sunlight, turning it cream and pink through sprays of flowers
and maybe we even take the time to stop and take a Japanese-influenced photo of the Sakura cherry blossom, the celebration of the new year and fresh life. And, of course, a car. Because we should enjoy them before they go the way of that poor sad, dead old MA SS Y
Hope you enjoyed that, and if not, well I did. So there. Thanks for reading as always.
So, shall we begin?
I'm fortunate enough to live on the Sussex coastal strip right on the edge of the South Downs National Park, an area so marvelous it could be argued to be God's own countryside if Yorkshire hadn't already trademarked that one. However, the downs and the sea guarantee their own micro-climate, just like LA only without the irritating accent (we've even got our own L.A, or Little'ampton as it's otherwise known) so it's often nice weather for wandering through the forests and hills, even in winter. Should you happen to do this, you can spot all kinds of strange revenants from the days when TWOCing was its most fashionable, and the price of scrap meant you may as well burn out your old jalopy in a chalkpit as pay some breaker to weigh it in. For example, up the path to Chanctonbury Ring you can spot several rotting carcasses in the slopes and trees when the leaves aren't yet out to obscure them
I actually have no idea what this wing is from, it looks old Brit to me but the barbed wire and precipitous slope make it too difficult to get down and search for clues amongst the other remnants returning to nature down there. It's been there as long as I can remember
If you were to cross the main A24 through this valley and take the Long Furlong towards Ferring, you would come to the small village of Clapham hidden away in a fold of the Downs. The village is notable not just for its age and tiny size, but the church which is literally hidden away in the woods that run in a hangar above the village. The rutted mud road to the church is all but impassable in really wet weather, and so dilapidated I can't get my RX-7 up there at all. It's worth the trek though because it's a lovely little old building in traditional Sussex flint and mortar.
There has been a place of worship here since Norman times, the current restored buildings date mostly from the thirteenth century, although local folklore has it that this has always been a place of human worship. Legends abound about the place... druids, wiccans and all kinds of other cults treat it as significant. There are tales of eldritch creatures in the woods and dogs turn up dead on a spookily frequent basis. Come up here at dusk and the glowering woods pressing close around the little church clearing definitely seem to exude an almost tangible feeling of menace and intrigue. They were here long before we were, and they don't want to give up their secrets. wander through the cemetery and the tilted, age-worn and be-lichened stones with their inscriptions effaced by the hand of Time speak mute testament to the transience of Man's time in this world
Oooh, scary! But we're intrepid types and we're not put off by local folklore. So we set off into the combs, heading up the hill. And even though we're not worried, we make sure to keep a close eye on Bob. It's not a work of fiction that something kills dogs in these woods...
Great bench, though, and that fits nicely into our theme of life and death. Made from local wood salvaged from trees felled in the Great Storm (the one Michael Fish said wasn't happening). And everywhere you look there's the same story being told. Things die, things rot, things grow in the ruin. This Ash (Fraxinus exelsior) is dead, it just doesn't know it yet. Canker has got into it, and it's rotting from the inside out, its pulpwood turning black from the disease even as it struggles to put out new leaves to greet the warming, strengthening spring sun
This one stands a chance though, if it can avoid Die Back disease. It's got pretty benign fungus infection. These woody galls are the fungus known in woodsman's lore as King Alfred's Cakes because they resemble the famous king's greatest culinary failing. If you break one open, it's hard as wood and you can see the growth rings in it telling of its age, just like the trees on which they grow
Even if the Ash should fall prey to parasitic death, it's not exactly the end. It'll die, and fall, and then its wood and nutrients will pass into the ecosystem and be used again. It is, without any homage or royalty being owed to Elton bloody John, the circle of life
Everywhere you look there's evidence of this constant struggle to overcome, the fight toward the light and the battle for nutrients. Even the new shoots growing in the graveyard of old stumps have to compete with the fungus to reach for the canopy
As we reach the crest of the hill, we come out into open pasture woodland. This is what the Downs used to be like in time immemorial before the War effort ploughed over the enclosures and copses into intensive farmland. Animals have been grazed in these high woodland pastures since there were men here to manage them. If we look along the open grassland along the ridge, past the standard trees scattered like parkland, we can just make out the shape of what we've come here to see, indistinct still in the distance and overshadowed by the woods. But before we can get there we have to plunge back into the rustling green darkness of the next hangar. Spring here is a magical time, when you can see the life amongst the rot come bursting forth in unalloyed joy. The anemones bring a constellation of stars to the forest floor
and following on their heels, the bluebells carpet the world in a swathe of glorious purple as far as you can see. They give depth to the coppice stands that normally defeat the eye and if it wasn't for the faint rumble of traffic from the road below you could well imagine yourself in the ancient forest that once stretched from the sea across the weald and beyond. Niah-cat here models a bluebell patch for reasons of proportion, lol
and after the bluebells the rarer plants, more tolerant of shade and less numerous but no less wonderful, the orchids spark like tiny strings of jewels in the deep shadows amongst the roots
at the very top of the ridge is a superb ancient Beech tree. Fagus sylvatica is a great chalk downland species, its shallow rootplates spread out wider than its canopy and give it great purchase in the shallow, hard soil. This tree has been here nearly as long as the Church. I once measured it and calculated the age from its circumference and it's something like five hundred plus years old.
Many of its branches are larger than some standard trees, and it utterly dwarfs any humans nearby. And humans want to get nearby, it's such an awesome living creature that it creates its own gravity. It draws you in, you want to touch its smooth ancient skin and marvel at the old, slow vitality that heaved it toward the heavens when the town beneath was still a fishing village and the men who lived there still thought the sun went around the earth
Sadly, even this titan, this survivor of the centuries, has recently taken a turn for the worse. One of its immense branches came down in the storms of this winter, and lies in the shadow of its parent like an immense snake, spanning the clearing and disappearing into the undergrowth.
The scar left is too large and jagged and the tree is too old; it probably won't be able now to scab over with fresh bark in time. Slow infection and rot will get in, and sure as the cankered Ash, this great beech is probably already awaiting its inevitable demise. In the meanwhile, the kids clamber on its huge shed limb unaware of the dying parent above
There are reminders of the strangeness that impregnates these woods with an Evil Dead style mythos here too, if you should look for them. A strange capsule... a tribute or a time-capsule, who can tell... wedged deep in the crevice of one of the roots
And you can look up into the massive branches and see the buds tell of a new years' growth to come, and the beechmast crunching underfoot speaks of vitality enough yet remaining
...but look closer, and strangely portentous is a most unusual piece of graffiti carved into the bark. No Daz4Zoe here, but instead the simple and unarguable truth "Death is coming"
To us all. We give the wonderful old Lord of the Forest one last pat and head off along the ridge to our destination. The woods change nature here, with old seet chestnuts that were once coppice stools but have now grown into genuine canopy trees, their unmistakeably ridged bark curved and twisted with age like helterskelters. And if you look closely here, there is evidence of life and death too. A hazel nut, edged into a conveniently grippy bit of bark, its succulent morsel excavated by beak or paw to feed a new litter.
And then, finally, we reach our destination. We break out of the darkness into the bright spring day once more, in another paddock of the pastureland. Surrounded by woods, it seems a magical and private wonderland that's our alone. If you look on Google this tree is still standing, left alone by the managing farmer as a habitat and shade for the grazing animals. But again, the storms have taken their toll and now it lies broken on the sward
and there, beyond it, finally... is what we've come to see. From this distance it still looks like a stand of saplings, beyond the livestock electric fence, slightly removed from the forest wall. But what's that nestling amongst the trunks and withies?
As we get a bit closer, we can make out that this is not all Nature's work, there's some vestige of the hand of Man here too
And isn't that strange? This old combine would have been an extremely expensive piece of equipment once upon a time, and it's difficult to imagine anyone just parking it up when it went wrong
But it's been here forever, as long as I can remember, and the trees have grown through it and around it and the ground has swelled beneath it to start climbing up the wheels, and whether it was parked expecting a quick fix and other matters intruded, or what, here it's remained and here it will always remain now... until nature takes it back completely. Why was it even here? This hill has never been arable planted, the nearest fields are down the valley and over the Long Furlong road a good couple of miles away.
It's interesting enough just to look at as a study in the decay of machinery left to the elements and without the protection of paint, grease, etc
But there are several places where the tree has grown around the rusting steel of the machinery, and it's fascinating to look at the chewing maws of wood and imagine a stop-motion flickerbook of watching the living wood oozing around dead metal like a tide of bark and inane vegetable power.
The steering wheel will be fine after a re-cover!
I think maybe they ought to have used kunifer rather than steel on the hydraulic lines, though
Reckon it'll take a bit more than an oil change to get this old Perkins diesel to run again
Another place where the trees have begun to eat the machinery, even as the wheels sink further down into the soil
You can barely see the machine from certain angles as the trunks swell and grow together. Here the diesel tank can just be made out, I suspect it will be either squashed or pulled off altogether given a few years
But if you peer right in between the boles you can still just decipher the once-proud lettering of the maker's name in shreds of paint clinging on to the rusted hull
...the "MA" and "SS Y" of Massey-Fergusson just legible.
But because this thread has the dual role of talking about new life as well as the decay of the old, if we look closely here there is more growing amongst the ruins than merely the trees that the combine's corpse nestles amongst. Climb up onto the crumbling running board and peer into the old hopper, drawn by the insistent clamour from within. Our shadow passes over the denizens within, and their innate instinct fires up. Their eyes still sealed, the change of light through lids is enough to promote their gape reflex and they reach up hopefully, expecting mother or father to provide them with a meal of fat caterpillars
but even here there's tragedy. Perhaps it fell from the nest, perhaps one of its siblings stronger and more opportunistic than the others rolled it out hoping for a greater share of the food, but this poor little fella isn't going to make it either.
Aware that we may be causing the no-doubt-watching parents distress by being close to their nest too long, we head off back down the hill, pausing as the spring sun slants across the pasture for one last look at this inexplicable and yet truly excellent revenant of man's transient past.
and finally coming out on the pasture above the Church, we pause to pet the horses and cross the stile into the back of the churchyard where bark-stripped wood is weathered almost as hard and unyielding as the stones beyond
were you to pause before returning down the track from the sighing woods and enter the Parish church of St Mary here in its secluded dark bower, you'd see that we're not the first to ponder the close relationship between life and death, and indeed folklore and religion have always merged on the point. Here is Golgotha, place of skulls, woven into the imagery of life from death
while the Lady Mary clutching her bundle of immaculate life holds her gaze out of the window, now in shade, towards the East and the rise of the sun on a new day full of life and potential
As we return to the paved streets and the bustle of civilisation, the sounds that we hadn't even realised had been so hushed for so long seem to crash back in like a wave of the sea, but something of the ancient magic of this oldest remnant of inhabited Britain has stayed with us and we notice things like the blooming of the magnolia, a plant that has remained unchanged through all the ages, since long before he first hairy human monkey stood trembling in awe of the new day
and the cherry and apple blossom filtering the westering sunlight, turning it cream and pink through sprays of flowers
and maybe we even take the time to stop and take a Japanese-influenced photo of the Sakura cherry blossom, the celebration of the new year and fresh life. And, of course, a car. Because we should enjoy them before they go the way of that poor sad, dead old MA SS Y
Hope you enjoyed that, and if not, well I did. So there. Thanks for reading as always.