A walk to discover the scarily useful trees that live in the National Trust Standish Wood, Shortwood and Haresfield Beacon
Once upon a time, as many stories begin, and not long after we moved to Stroud, my partner Anthony and I did a storytelling event with the National Trust in the woods above the town. We’ve been returning there ever since, to walk, sunbathe and picnic. It’s a wonderful area, ranging from the sweeping beechwoods of Standish Wood and across Shortwood to the views out across the River Severn and the Forest of Dean. This month’s walk explores what you can find growing there as we traverse the wood based on one of the stories I told at that long ago gig – a story that I called Mickey and the Trees.
The story was based on one from Estonia, but of course the trees there are not the same as the trees here in southern England. I researched the lore of our trees to discover what would inspire Mickey on his journey of discovery. Our walk starts at the car park, and we’ll head left into the cool cover of the beech trees of Standish Wood. In the Middle Ages it was owned by far-off Glastonbury Abbey, and they took away 12 cartloads of beechwood every year until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. In the Middle Ages, people probably weren’t allowed to gather firewood, but they may have been afterwards. Mickey was a lad who lived nearby, and he’d been sent by his mother to gather some, but he was lazy. Gathering was hard work. Far easier, he thought, to do something that would have been absolutely forbidden in any age – to cut down a tree!
Follow the path along the top of the wood until the Cotswold Way veers down towards the middle of the wood. Better get out of view, thought Mickey, but not go too far. He selected a fine beech tree, got out his axe and was about to start chopping when a voice came out of nowhere, crying, ‘stop, stop, don’t cut me down!’ Mickey stopped dead and stared around – the voice was coming from the tree! But Mickey was bold and cried back, ‘and why not? I need your wood!’ The tree had an answer: ‘I’m far too useful to be cut down, Mickey, I’m the Mother of the Wood. You bring your pigs into the wood to eat my beechnuts – and when times are hard you can eat them, too. And that’s not all – my bark can be used to fight fevers, cure coughs and ease stomach pains, and if you take back a twig to put under your pillow you might see your future sweetheart. You see, Mickey, I’m far too useful to cut down.’
Mickey agreed that the beech was too useful, and he moved on – but everything was a beech tree! Walk on until a footpath takes you down to the bottom of the wood, then walk back up towards the car park. As Mickey got to the edge of the wood he saw a different tree, with fine narrow leaves, and thought that that would do well enough. But as he raised his axe he heard ‘stop, stop, don’t cut me down!’ from the tree. ‘Why not,’ he cried, ‘you can’t be as useful as the beech!’ The ash said, ‘I am the World Tree, the tree of magic, and witches and wizards make their staffs from my branches! I’m a wonderful timber tree, so you’d waste me in burning. You can make pickle from my fruits and my bark will cure your worms and clean your wounds, so you see, you can’t cut ME down.’ Sad to think that now ash dieback maens it’s more difficult to find an ash and its uses are disappearing.
From the car park, head onto the open hillside of Shortwood, with views out towards the Severn and the Forest of Dean. Perhaps among the trees that run to the left of the open grazing Mickey might find the tree he wanted? And there were little trees, some still with white, frothy blossom. They looked more manageable! He raised his axe … ‘Stop, stop, don’t cut me down!’ By now Mickey was pretty exasperated: ‘You can’t be as useful or as scary as the ash!’ he cried. ‘But I am,’ said the tree, ‘I am Hawthorn, the Tree of the May, and I’m very good for the heart, helping heart conditions, and in love, too, because in May you carry me at weddings, to bring good luck and fertility, and I’m that big hearted I can have up to 300 species of insect growing on me, so you see you can’t cut ME down.’
Leave the trees for a little bit and walk down to the topograph to view everything from the Severn bridges to your left, the Black Mountain and Bannau Brycheiniog in Wales straight ahead, and May Hill to your right. Then turn right and head across the meadow towards the far corner, where you’ll pick up the path to Haresfield Beacon. Mickey tramped that way, too, and he saw the hazel trees there were the trees of knowledge, giving hazelnuts to eat and twigs for water-divining, withies for baskets and fishing rods, and roses that were in full pale pink bloom, and gave their hips for jam and wine, and the holly that gave its berries to brighten the winter and feed the birds.
Follow the Cotswold Way through the gate and along the path, then go up the steps by the small car park and onto Haresfield Camp and Ring Hill, the ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort. Here Mickey sat down and stared out towards the Malverns and could see the tower of Gloucester cathedral, which Oliver Cromwell was supposed to have shot at from the beacon. He was hot and tired and fed up and still had no wood. ‘It seems like every tree is useful,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I should’ve just picked up fallen wood from the ground like my mother asked.’ As soon as he said that, up popped a strange little man, dressed in clothes from a hundred years before. ‘I want to thank you for caring for the trees,’ said the little man, and he handed Mickey a wooden wand. ‘Show this wand to the bees when you want honey, show it to the birds when you want berries, and to the moles when to want to plough your fields – but never, ever use it against nature!’
Mickey thanked the man and took the wand with trembling hands. He started to walk home, and it’s time for us to turn back, too, and follow the paths back to the meadow, walking along the top of the field to the car park. Mickey took his wand home, and he had all the honey, berries he wanted, and all his field was well ploughed. But one day, the next spring, when it just seemed as if summer was never going to start, he got so fed up that he held the wand up to the sky and cried, ‘I want it hot, hot, hot!’ But that was against nature, and the sun came out and, in the often vicious way of fairy tales, shone so hot on Mickey that it burned him right up! After that day, the little man was never seen again and trees never spoke to humans any more – but they continued to be just as useful and as beautiful as they always have been.
ESSENTIALS
Distance: 4 miles
Duration: 2.5 hours.
Level: Good paths, some fairly hilly
Parking: Shortwood National Trust car park
Refreshments: At the weekend Off Road Bean is often serving coffee in the car park, and in summer there’s often an ice cream van.
Transport links: 63 bus Stroud to Gloucester stops nearby, where the road from Stroud turns towards Edge, a short walk along the road to the car park.
Map: OS Explorer 179
LINKS
Route: gb.mapometer.com/walking/route_5445793
Haresfield Beacon and Standish Wood: nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/gloucestershire-cotswolds/haresfield-beacon-and-standish-wood
Kirsty Hartsiotis is based in Stroud and available for hire as a storyteller and speaker. She is an Accredited Arts Society lecturer. Her books include Wiltshire Folk Tales and (with Anthony Nanson) Gloucestershire Ghost Tales and Gloucestershire Folk Tales for Children. She is also the curator of decorative art at a Gloucestershire museum.
