I found a map published by Natural England which shows the location of all the ancient woodland in England. That is land which has been wooded for at least 500 unbroken years.

I pored over the map. I thought it would lead me to everything unspoilt and mystical that was left in the landscape. There were a few flecks of green shown around Talaton, indicating the remnants of the forest which had once covered these lowlands.

The nearest fleck was a little woodland which bordered the A30 road, on the Escot estate. I cycled up a dead end lane, now cut in two by the howling dual carriageway, and left my bike at a gate marked PRIVATE. I jumped over silently under the deadening screech of tyres on tarmac and walked into the woods with a buzz of trespasser’s adrenaline.

The woods are described as ‘semi-natural’ under natural England’s designation. Walking in through the sawn limbs of planted pines and furs, imported from elsewhere for their wood, I felt ‘semi-natural’ would probably be a generous description. In fact the trees are mostly non-native pine and chestnut, which now provide valuable habitat for wildlife but are more a symptom of human interference than a sign of ancient, intact wildness. Rhododendron thickets smothered areas of the understory, where their smooth branches hadn’t been cut back. No fern or bulb will emerge in the constant gloom beneath their thick, waxy leaves.

Churned up vehicle tracks gash the forest floor. You are never more than 30 metres from a track. It seems the Exeter Quad Bike Company are using this wood; leading half bored kids in a slow procession through a soon-forgettable day out, meanwhile carving through the ancient woodland in their trundling convoy. I followed one of these slimy tracks further into the woods, coating my shoes in mud.

In some places, between the tracks, there were little stands of old giant trees reaching up, and I felt lifted by them.

But there was something off about it all. It gave me an unpleasant feeling, one compounded by the rot of autumn. What I had seen on a map as a precious, untouched fragment was in truth a noisy and degraded semi-plantation, a sad product of human interference and mistreatment.

New research on the perilous position of our woods: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/08/uk-forests-face-catastrophic-ecosystem-collapse-within-50-years-study-says-aoe