Forest

As we edge closer to summer, camping holidays are even more appealing, whether that’s by the coast or amongst woodland, and an expert has said there’s one item everyone needs to pack

It’s that time of year again when I’m thinking about packing up the car and pitching up the tent for a weekend camping escape, but there’s one item that canvas enthusiasts shouldn’t forget.

While the British weather is somewhat unpredictable, when it does bless us with sun-soaked rays and warm temperatures, it’s the perfect time to head out on a camping trip. After all, what’s better than waking up to coastal vistas or the backdrop of enchanting forests and exploring the nearby surroundings before dining al fresco with a BBQ?

Yet before heading out on any camping adventure, there’s one packing essential.

Forest Ranger for Forest Holidays, Gerry O’Brien, told the Mirror: “My number one tip for everyone is to pack comfortable socks. If your feet get cold, the rest of you is going to be cold as well. So bring appropriate clothing for the time of year, but as we know, we can get all sorts of weather in Britain. Be prepared for all weather.”

As a forest ranger based at the Forest of Dean, Gerry has a wealth of knowledge about the otherworldly scenes of ancient woodland, rustic bridges, snowdrops, and spiralling rivers that make up the UK’s area of enchanting landscapes. There’s even an abundance of campsites in and around the Forest of Dean, which make for an ideal weekend escape or half-term break.

For those looking to spend time in the woodland, Gerry advised not to pack too much into one itinerary. “It’s great to pre-plan activities or to visit certain areas you’d like to see and do, but it’s good to weave in some non-scripted time because that’s often when you find the magic.

“So have a bit of time where you can tune into yourself and do what you feel in the moment, be spontaneous.” For those who might opt for a stay with Forest Holidays in one of their woodland cabins, rather than camping nearby, the expert added: “You might want to relax on your decking with a cup of tea and a good book.

“Or you might fancy a walk in the woods or something more high-energy, you can read off that if you have unplanned time. We’re so wired to be so busy all the time, but it’s good to take it back a bit and slow down.”

The forest ranger added: “One of the most magical things is just stopping. Maybe sitting in the forest for a while, we’re always going from A to B, so just stop and sit somewhere. Having a little sit mat with you is always handy, and just put your phone on do not disturb.”

In another piece of advice for people looking to appreciate the great outdoors, Gerry said: “It sounds a little corny, but tap into your inner child. You can create a little scavenger hunt with the children, go on a mini-beast hunt together, or make a den or fairy house in the woods. There are lots of hands-on, immersive experiences you can do together.”

To discover a magical corner of the country, you might want to book a stay at Forest Holidays in the Forest of Dean, which provides an array of lodges, cabins and treehouses, some boasting outdoor hot tubs for relaxing beneath the towering canopy. Meanwhile, accommodation providers such as Sykes Holiday Cottages and Holidaycottages.co.uk also offer various properties throughout the area, not forgetting the camp sites nearby and those trusty cosy socks for any UK trip!

Do you have a travel story to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

Wood’s spot-kick, smashed high beyond Emi Martinez, was his 200th career goal and gives Forest something to defend at Villa Park next week.

The New Zealand international only returned this month, having been sidelined since October with his knee issue.

He missed the entirety of Sean Dyche’s reign, having surgery in December, but started the quarter-final first-leg draw in Porto three weeks ago.

Lucas Digne’s baffling decision to raise his arms and handle the ball as Omari Hutchinson tried to keep it in play gave Wood his chance with 19 minutes left.

There was an audible cheer when Wood stepped up to take the penalty – Morgan Gibbs-White having missed from the spot against Strum Graz and Braga this season.

There was a sense of expectation, which is only fair as Wood has not missed a penalty in 10 years – since failing to score against Hull for Leeds in April 2016.

He has now scored 28 successive spot-kicks.

“That’s what I have to do and that’s what I try to do. It’s the job, the responsibility that my team gives me,” he told TNT.

“It’s cup competitions. They come down to small margins at times. Both teams played very well. But it’s small moments that can potentially change games. Thankfully it went in our favour tonight and hopefully again next week.

“It’s one leg of the tie. It’s nice to have the advantage but going to Villa Park will be a tough game. They’re good at their place. But we’ve done the job here at home and now hopefully we’ll build into next week.”

He scored in last Friday’s 5-0 Premier League win at Sunderland – his first goal since a penalty against Midtjylland in October – and has six goals in 19 games for club and country this season.

Wood, 34, has explained he will have to manage his knee injury for the rest of his life – but after watching so much of Forest’s battle against the Premier League drop from the sidelines, he is just glad to be back in action and scoring.

“That’s all I wanted to do,” he said. “I wanted to get back fit and firing to help my team as best as I can at the end of the season. I knew we had a lot to play for when I was fighting to get fit and it’s showing. It’s some big competitions to be a part of.

“We’re in the crunch end of the season. We need to perform on both parts and we’ll be looking to do that for sure.”

I was on a road trip to visit a friend late in March when my phone started lighting up. The Trump administration had just announced a sweeping reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service. People — among them current and former agency staffers — had thoughts.

Under the overhaul, the Forest Service will move from a regional to a state-based leadership structure, relocate its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and close nearly three-quarters of its research stations. A news release described this as a much-needed shift to streamline the agency and bring its leadership closer to the forests and grasslands it manages, which are primarily west of the Mississippi.

But a common refrain emerged among the sources I spoke with: The Trump administration is trying to break the Forest Service, they claimed, to pave the way for privatizing or even selling off the 193 million acres of land it oversees.

On a recent podcast, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said this is false, that the reorganization is about prudently stewarding taxpayer dollars, not dismantling the agency. Trump officials have also said that a public lands sell-off is not part of the president’s agenda.

I figured the controversy would die down a bit by the time I wrote this newsletter. But nearly a month later, it’s still top of mind for most of the former firefighters and recreation and environment advocates I speak with.

“I worry that I sound paranoid like a conspiracy theorist — why would anybody want to break a federal agency?” said Rich Fairbanks, a former Forest Service firefighter and board member of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “But that’s exactly what they appear to be trying to do.”

To him, the reorganization smacks of an attempt to sow chaos and drive experienced employees out the door. He described the decision to move the headquarters to Salt Lake City as a red flag. Not only is it likely to prompt more staff departures, he said, but Utah is widely seen as the epicenter of an ongoing movement for states to take over federal public lands. It’s also home to Sen. Mike Lee, who last year proposed selling off millions of acres of public lands.

Max Alonzo, a former Forest Service firefighter who now works as national secretary treasurer for the National Federation of Federal Employees, similarly believes the administration is setting the agency up to fail. He noted the president has also proposed deep cuts that would slash the USFS operations budget by 44% and eliminate funding for forest and rangeland research to refocus the agency’s mission primarily on timber sales.

The administration plans to replace its nine regional offices with 15 state directors. These changes to leadership structure make little sense to Alonzo unless the intention is to lay the groundwork for an eventual state takeover of the agency and its lands, he said.

“They’re putting the chess pieces in place to get rid of our national forests,” he said. He believes the goal is to open the door to more mineral extraction, logging and drilling.

“It’s all about breaking the government so people decide the government doesn’t work,” echoed Hugh Safford, a UC Davis researcher who worked for the Forest Service for over two decades.

Safford is concerned that the move to shutter dozens of research stations will prevent Forest Service scientists from doing on-the-ground work on issues affecting local lands, like seeing how different ecosystems respond to wildfire, pests and drought. This research has driven some of the most important global advancements in fire planning and forest management, he said. He would know: Until 2021, he managed a staff of ecologists that provided science support to Forest Service leadership.

“They are destroying the research part of the agency,” he said. “These plans are so draconian and so depressing my hair stands up when I even read about them.”

Dave Calkin worked for 23 years at the Forest Service, overseeing a team of scientists that researched wildfire management. He took an early retirement offer last April, just after the agency terminated thousands of probationary employees, including a young researcher in his office.

“The more you can demonstrate government isn’t working, the more you can argue to privatize and sell off public lands,” he said. “And that’s clearly one of the intentions of everything they’re doing.”

More recent land news

Although administration officials would later distance themselves from the effort, the Interior Department helped craft talking points that Sen. Lee used to pitch his controversial proposal to sell off federal public land last summer, Chris D’Angelo of Public Domain reports.

Trump has withdrawn hospitality executive Scott Socha as his nominee to lead the National Park Service, reports Jake Spring of the Washington Post. That comes as many parks face their peak seasons with a dramatically reduced staff and the agency braces for more potential cuts, my colleague Justine McDaniel writes.

It’s not just the Park Service: The president’s budget proposal also seeks to decrease staff at the Bureau of Land Management and eliminate its wilderness management funding in favor of focusing on energy production, reports Christine Peterson of Outdoor Life.

The Trump administration is again planning border wall-related construction inside Big Bend National Park, weeks after U.S. Customs and Border Protection backed away from such plans amid bipartisan backlash, according to Travis Bubenik of Marfa Public Radio, who cited an online map showing the planned construction.

A day after Bubenik’s report, the border wall map disappeared from the Customs and Border Protection website, leaving the public with no way to know where and when construction on the wall will take place, writes Mary Andino of Gear Junkie.

A few last things in climate news

Wildfire, insurance and the price of gas took center stage at the California governor’s debate on Tuesday night. My colleague Blanca Begert broke down each candidate’s defining statements.

In yet another escalation of President Trump’s efforts to obstruct clean energy projects in favor of fossil fuels, the administration said it will pay two energy companies to abandon their offshore wind projects in federal waters — including one off Morro Bay, according to The Times’ Hayley Smith.

Extreme drought is fueling wildfires in the southeastern U.S., Zachary Handlos writes for The Conversation, as concern also grows over intensifying drought conditions in Nevada and Northern California.

Winters have grown shorter in most places across the country, upending everything from tourism and recreation to the transmission season of certain diseases, report Ignacio Calderon, Ramon Padilla, Veronica Bravo and Janet Loehrke in this interactive USA Today project.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more land news, follow @phila_lex on X and alex-wigglesworth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

While Nottingham Forest struck the first blow of the weekend on Friday, Tottenham and West Ham – unusually – both play at the same time on Saturday.

The Hammers host Everton and former manager David Moyes, with Spurs visiting already relegated Wolves.

Tottenham boss De Zerbi, whose side conceded a last-minute equaliser to draw 2-2 with Brighton in their previous fixture, said “a win can change this part of the season”.

“We are suffering, they are suffering because it is not easy to play in Tottenham in this condition of the table, but I said they have to be stronger,” he added.

“We have to live every part of the day waiting for a win and preparing for a win.”

Tottenham and West Ham have to contend with similar run-ins, with Spurs arguably facing the slightly easier of the two. The average position of the teams they still have to play is 11th, while for the Hammers it is 10th.

What West Ham do have which Tottenham do not, however, is some semblance of form.

Nuno’s team have won two and lost just one of their past five matches. Spurs have not won since last year.

“The players are improving their levels and the standards,” said Nuno. “We have been solid in defence, good in attack… sometimes not so good. Finding that balance in the remaining matches is going to be crucial for us.”

Deep in a medieval hunting forest, amid 6,500 acres of heathland, a wooden bridge spans a tributary of the River Medway. Every single day, no matter the weather, people flock to stand on its slats and cheer on sticks as they float downstream.

I know this because on a frosty but sunny morning, (“a very long time ago now, about last Friday”, as children’s author AA Milne might have said), I stood with two such adults jumping up and down with delight as my little piece of oak stormed ahead and won the race.

The game is Pooh Sticks, originally described by Milne in Winnie-the-Pooh, which was published in 1926. It was inspired by the game he and his son, Christopher (Robin), would play on Posingford Bridge in Ashdown Forest (AKA the Hundred Acre Wood) in East Sussex. Just 30 miles south of London, this sprawling open heathland lies within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the book, a programme of free cultural events is planned for this summer in the forest and throughout the county. Highlights include a series of interactive performances by “the Curious Adventurer”, a puppet brought to life by 10 puppeteers. Five new walks themed around different species are launching too, encouraging people to visit more of the forest.

I joined ranger Beth Morgan to explore the real places inextricably linked to the make-believe world where Christopher Robin once played. The bridge is a short walk from the 16th-century farmhouse known as Cotchford Farm where Milne once lived (now an Airbnb), and easily accessed from the public car park off Chuck Hatch Road. “That,” Beth said as we passed a small red wooden door, tucked into the lower roots of a tall, moss-covered birch tree, “is Piglet’s house; Pooh-lovers have added them along the path.” I felt as if I was walking into a storybook.

For fans of the book – and later Disney cartoons – the easy-to-follow 2.5-mile (4km) stroll to Pooh Sticks Bridge is the most popular. Just beside the bridge is Pooh’s postbox, which usually contains offerings of honey that visitors leave for the sweet-toothed bear.

The way Milne captured the magic of this place has been key to helping preserve it. “The low heath habitat we have here is rarer than tropical rainforest,” said Beth. “And people’s interest in it – thanks to the Pooh connection – is what has brought in funding to help conserve it.”

Until Brexit, the forest received about £500,000 a year from EU grants; now it is constantly short of funds. But the hope is that the anniversary plans and new walking trails will help bring more people and donations to the area.

One surprising thing about the forest is that back in Milne’s day just 10% of this open heathland would have been woodland. Now it’s 40%, meaning that trees and gorse are actually encroaching on the ancient landscape, which presents the biggest challenge and cost.

A 20-strong herd of free-roaming ponies, along with Galloway cattle and Hebridean sheep, help manage it. As I watched them meandering slowly through the bracken munching on gorse and saplings, I couldn’t help but picture Eeyore, the grumpy donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh.

Suitably, my next stop, Pooh Corner, a former post office in the village of Hartfield to the north of the forest, was actually visited by the real Eeyore (Christopher’s real-life donkey Jessica). It’s now a cafe, gift shop and museum. “So many people have either grown up watching the movies or reading the books,” said owner Neil Reed as I tucked into a pile of honey-laden treats, “but really the fascinating story is the one where we learn what happened beyond the pages – who the father and son really were.”

His small museum tells that story, through school photos of Milne, newspaper cuttings (including the first Pooh story, which was published in London’s Evening News on Christmas Eve 1925) and even a note from Milne’s former science teacher HG Wells. Also on display are the understated illustrations of EH Shepard and the more gaudy souvenirs made by Disney, who acquired the rights to Pooh back in 1961.

After my deep dive into Pooh history, I checked into Helix, a new cabin from Unplugged and Healf, on the Buckhurst Estate close to the forest. With its own wood-fired sauna and ice bath, and huge picture windows making the surrounding trees part of the bedroom walls, the emphasis is on bringing the outdoors indoors.

The following day I discovered perhaps the most enchanting thing about Ashdown Forest – that the place hasn’t been Disneyfied. The only real mention of Pooh is on the official Long Pooh Walk from Gills Lap, a 2-mile circular (a route map is available from the Ashdown Forest Centre or online for 50p). And even on that route there are no cutesy bear faces, just a sweeping sandy plateau, punctuated by clumps of trees, AKA the Enchanted Place, and clusters of heather.

Over the next couple of hours I took my time, wandering with map in hand, visiting the Gloomy Place – where Eeyore lost his house (and Christopher Milne’s donkey was put out to pasture), the Heffalump Trap (a striking lone pine with views over the Weald), Roo’s Sandy Pit (a white sand quarry) and ending with a pause at the Milne and Shepard Memorial.

Later that afternoon, I walked from my doorstep to Birchden Vineyards a few miles away. I sampled some of the white and sparkling wine varieties the family-run winery is known for, as well as apple juice and raw, unfiltered honey made by bees who feed on the flora of Ashdown Forest. Pooh would have approved.

On my final day, I decided to take a lesson from the bear I’d been following and do nothing at all. I spent the day at my cabin – where you are encouraged to lock up your mobile phone to be properly off-grid. I sat outside and listened to the call of a warbler, the tap-tap-tapping of a woodpecker and, as night fell, the hoot of an owl. I lay in the sauna and watched a family of fallow deer wander by as though I was invisible, and later I shrieked like Tigger as I plunged into an ice bath under a sky filled with stars.

Winnie-the-Pooh once said: “We didn’t realise we were making memories. We just knew we were having fun.” Perhaps, I mused, as the last of the light faded, he wasn’t such a silly bear after all.

The trip was provided by Visit England and Explore Wealden, with accommodation in Helix: The Wellbeing Cabin with Healf provided by Unplugged. Three nights from £660. For more information about Ashdown Forest and the Winnie-the-Pooh celebrations, see ashdownforest.org.