Warning!

I find it amazing that nature can never be stopped. We try and keep it back, to tame it, to stop it but it just keeps going, regardless. Never is this more apparent than when you try and put up a barbed wire fence around a sapling. This is what happens a few years later.

Natural fence post

Today, after lunch, Day-z & I went and investigated Tankersford Common. Mirinda spotted it on the map on the weekend and expressed a curiosity about it. Naturally, it was up to us to check it out and report back.

Of course, before that I Skyped with mum and dad (for a very enjoyable hour and a half), it being a Tuesday and all. A couple of ham sandwiches later and we were off and out.

Tankersford is the other side of the garden centre so we took the bridle path that runs alongside Reeds Road until we reached the actual Reeds farm. Emerging from the foliage we dashed across the road and took a small road that seemed to lead off into the woods. The signs ran out pretty much before they started so we just guessed where we were going. Eventually a path led off the track and went into a field. We decided to take it.

We didn’t go very far before we hit a fence. Basically we were in a field (about five acres) in which were two abandoned farm buildings, lots of nettles and…well, nothing else. We followed the fence until we returned to the track.

We then came across this rather friendly bit of signage.

Naturally, we completely ignored it, keeping our ears open for the unmistakable sound of chainsaws. We left the track and headed up a rough path in the direction of Tilford. We hadn’t gone far before we found the area the tree choppers were working in. A huge swathe of land, bare and tree-less was spread out before us while a small group of workers and their vehicles sat huddled some distance away.

One of the workers started waving. I waved back. Then I realised he wasn’t really waving but waving us away. I decided it would be wise to leave so we turned around and walked back the way we’d come. No bullets followed us. We went back across the road after answering an old woman’s odd question of “Out for a walk, are you?” as we passed her tending her garden.

We decided to have a walk around Farnham Heath instead. It was an awful lot friendlier.