A day in the forest - Tall Trees Trail

After leaving Puttle's Bridge, we set off for a short drive to Blackwater, where we went on the Tall Trees Trail.

The trail started up with a few tall oaks (there was bad news however - the algae causing the "sudden oak death" had struck here and spreading so several areas were fenced in to minimise spread via human shoes). As we walked, the oaks were soon replaced by even taller coastal redwoods.

Then we came upon the tallest redwood in England - standing at 110 metres ( a good 10 metres higher than Big Ben!!). Apparently it's still young and fully grown redwoods can grow up to twice the height!!! Amazing!

The top of the tree was lost in the canopy and we were probably too close to see it anyway. The bark was unlike any I've seen before - soft, almost spongy like the husk of a green coconut - apparently it's fire resistant. It took all four of us, fingertip to fingertip, to encompass the girth of it's trunk.

We moved on, taking time to enjoy the natural beauty of the surroundings...

Knock knock - who's there? Don't know what tree this was but the bark sounded almost hollow.

Then we came upon these two Giant Sequoias. Giants indeed, each about the weight of 18 elephants, they're the biggest living creature I've seen (haven't seen a blue whale yet, so can't compare). Since they're surrounded by very tall coastal redwoods they don't seem so tall from afar. The second picture would give you a better idea - the specks beneath the tree (you have to enlarge the picture) are two standard sized adults!! In the third picture we were standing a little in front of the line of the trees.

We didn't even try to encompass the trunk this time - it would have taken at least 10 if not more to do it.

The biggest living tree in the world (General Sherman) is of the same type but weighs more than 2000 elephants so these two babies have a long way to grow. Also they are about 150 years old whereas these trees can live for 4000 years!!! The google map link to the trees is here

Moving on from the giant sequoias, the forest became darker with shorter trees forming a dense canopy. We reached the BrockHill car park.

From here we were supposed to cross the Rhinefield drive and loop back, but we lost the trail here as there were no markers!! We were lost (not quite so dramatic as we could always go back the way we came - but still...). We found a car track and started following it, not knowing where we were going. We started discussing possibilities of climbing one of the tall trees to get a better view but there were no volunteers. We came upon a bunch of ponies grazing away - we pondered if we could ride them - however the fact that none of us rode a horse before was a slight issue. The ponies gave us suspicious looks and a wide berth.

Luckily a forest commission vehicle was coming down this trail - we hailed it (here) and the kind driver pointed us down this narrow trail (yes there is a trail in this picture) which met up with the Tall Trees Trail and we traced back our footsteps to the Blackwater car park.

Back at the car park Uma treated us to some nice ice cream (thanks Uma!!).