Wandering on Woodbury
I hope you enjoyed last week’s column, its always a pleasure to uncover new talent and it looks like Exmouth has a healthy future with local journalism!
This week I want to continue in a similar schools-related vein, but this time it’s all my own words I’m afraid. As this week I’d like to invite you to join me on a virtual visit to Woodbury common, a retelling of the trip Woodbury Salterton Primary School and I made last week, in glorious sunshine.
The school met me in the Castle car park, and while I was waiting for them to walk up from school I must admit a knot had formed in my stomach. Woodbury Common isn’t an area we manage at the District Council, as it is in the safe hands of Bungy Williams and the Pebblebed Heaths Trust, so its not an area I feel as intimate with as say Fire Beacon Hill or Trinity Hill, and yet in a few moments 30 students and their class teacher were going to join me for an entire day on the heath – would I be able to find enough to keep their attention for the next four hours? I needn’t have worried.
After a brief breather to allow the group to catch their breath after a very smart march up from the village we got underway.
I used the castle to illustrate how heathland, for all its wilderness feelings, are in fact of human construction. The castle at Woodbury is thought to have been in use between 500 and 300 BC, with a brief reprieve in the Napolionic Wars at the beginning of the 1800s. In its first incarnation, the wooden-walled palisades would have protected the local population and stood guard over the surrounding lowlands. Perched high on the hill this would have been a splendid place to spot your enemy approaching, giving you a day or two to prepare for his arrival. The point of time we were speaking on is really important, as this is an Iron Age fort and it wasn’t until the discovery of iron, that heathland was created in any serious scale.
Before the invention of iron tools, people couldn’t physically chop down very many trees from what was an almost completely wooded landscape. When iron axes were available larger tracts could be felled, on which domesticated animals could graze and so a rough ericaceous habitat was created, we call heathland.
So, enough of the history, we were there to study natural history, so it was off for a nature walk for the rest of the day and see what we could find. In total, 54 animal species were spotted and discussed, and quite a few of the plants too…
We looked at the three different types of heather that grow in Devon, and nestled below the heather we found countless common lizards, some of which were obliging enough to allow themselves to be caught by me and studied in closer detail. Green tiger beetles flew off with every footfall and small heath butterflies swarmed.
There were birds galore overhead with stonechat putting in a late appearance and yellowhammer feeding on the paths ahead of the group. One of the students noted that for a bright yellow bird, yellowhammer are very difficult to spot on the ground! Swifts blasted overhead and buzzards wheeled lazily in the blue skies. After a shady lunch taken under the pine trees we set off again in search of carnivorous plants, and headed over towards the boggy parts of the reserve.
Amazing sundew glittered on the wet flashes, their tempting red-tipped leaves ready to entice flies to their doom and subsidise their meagre nutrition from their roots. The idea of meat-eating plants is a wild and wonderful one and the kids really took a keen interest in them.
We climbed a steep hill out of the gully and one eagle-eyed student spotted the brilliant glimmer of a velvet ant, a beastie I was really hoping to see. Velvet ants are in fact members of the wasp family, with the females being wingless and therefore look rather ant-like. They are about two centimetres long, with a vivid turquoise abdomen, crimson thorax and black head, they are simply stunning. The child bent to pick it up as it was so colourful, but luckily it disappeared between the pebbles before he could grab it. I say luckily, as the females have a really serious sting and it would have been a nasty lesson for both of us!
By the time we marches back up the hill to Woodbury Castle a few of the kids were beginning to tire, and I must say I was getting a bit thirsty too! They had a trek back to school to contend with, while I jumped in the ranger-mobile and headed for the cool of the office – you can have too much of a good thing you know?
Finally, a quick post-script as promised to class three from St Josephs school earlier today. I was out with them on the estuary and one of the class – an East Devon Junior Ranger, naturally – found the rarest animal on the estuary, Ophelia bicornis, while digging in the clean sand. He was very proud, and I was extremely pleased to see one as I don’t think I found a single specimen last summer. These little worms are only found on the Exe and one other location in the country, so we were justifiably happy to see it! After showing he rest of the class, everyone fell to their knees in the bright yellow sand and wouldn’t stop digging until each of the 32 children had found one! Well done class 3!