Chandlers Wood

Entry to Chandlers Wood from Skyswood Road.

Following my walk along Highfield Lane the previous week, I chose a destination today which I had not visited for fifty years.  I wanted to start and finish in two small remnants of old woodland:  Skys Wood and Chandlers Wood.

Once again the morning was warm, with a clear azure sky; not too hot up the hill which is Kingshill Avenue and its well-proportioned Nash-built homes with their first floor shutters, many of which remain in place.  Queen's Crescent connects with Skyswood Road where is found the main entrance to Chandler's Wood.

Back at Skys Wood the pocket of trees is relatively open with sunlight streaming down to the woodland floor, and occasional walkers being taken by their dogs on a morning stroll or brisk run.  Close by is the children's playground, quite busy as I passed by.

Little sunlight reaches the woodland floor at Chandlers Wood.

While I had often visited Skys Wood – and in any survey I would expect a substantial majority of active people have – I doubt whether more than a small minority have entered the altogether darker, denser planting of Chandlers Wood.  It is hemmed in on all sides by the ends of gardens along Sherwood Avenue, the dog-legged Skyswood Road, Bentsley Close and The Ridgeway.  You are constantly aware of fencing panels around the perimeter, but it is just as easy to become absorbed in the scuttling of birds and squirrels, and the breaking of small twigs underfoot.  I discovered once more the steep-sided dell which may, at some distant time in the past, have been the source of chalk for liming or building.

Neither remnant suggests ancient wild wood, but of long-neglected managed woodland tapped for the timber it produced for building.  Not one human – with or without a dog – made a visit during the half-hour I was there, but occasionally there was evidence of activity: small piles of cut branches and quartered trunks.

Though I had become used to the cool interior, stepping out into the sunlight again reminded me that this was a morning with the temperatures in the mid twenties.

The Uno bus firm could have chosen its colours to match the Olympic palette.  If it had been asked to provide bus services in an around the Olympic Park, its smart fleet would have been quite at home, adorned in its pinks and purples.  It wasn't, but the company was, like a family dressed in its best clothes, able to promote the Games just by being itself.