We like to walk in Hadley Wood, normally we park in Camlet Way, Monken-Hadley but there were no spaces so we went to the car park at the bottom of Hadley Wood Road. It is a magnificent old English wood with magnificent Beech and Oak trees. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and possibly James I hunted here, it was then part of the extensive Royal hunting grounds, and I imagine stepping where royalty once rode.
There were more visitors, couples, groups, single persons than usual so we took our selves to a part of the wood we’d not before been, it was weird having to social distance in a such large wood! This new part felt and looked quite different.
I used this photo in the featured image but I like the whole photo so I repeat it here.
We absorbed energy from the trees, walked and chatted then found a convenient log to sit and stare a while. Trees talk too, chemicals drifting in the air and dialogue through the network of roots and fungi running under our feet. Even fallen trees shoot green and sometimes stumps are kept alive by nutrient supplied by the trees around it.
After a while to wandered off and came across a fallen oak tree that was being cut onto pieces. Up close like this, trees seem huge I could see how oak is so very heavy, massive.
On one of them, that looked as if two trunks had grown together, you could see marks of the chainsaw used to slice it.
Eventually we came to the bridge made of railway sleepers, that crossed one of the little ditches that run down the hill. It is near a pool that had form during the rain of last year.
I liked the contrast of shadows painted on muddied water next to clear and bright reflections of trees and sky.
More mud than reflection here.
Here the tree seems to be holding up the bank in an upside-down world.
We dodged back into the newly discovered part of the wood to avoid some walkers. Good job we did or we would have missed two shrines or, perhaps, shamanic portals to the other worlds.
I particularly liked this one. One of the stones has red markings.
Then back to the car and home.
