If you go down to Lambridge Wood, you’re in for lots of lovely surprises

THE other evening I was enchanted by the sight of a clear, colourful rainbow illuminating the sky to the east.

Rainbows are always a welcome sight, another of nature’s treats.

The next day is warm with an intense blue sky and fluffy white clouds, just how it should be in midsummer.

I spot a honeybee moving with precision between flowers and wonder at its sheer industry.

My friend Matt Coome arrives to pick me up. We’re off to explore Lambridge Wood to the north-west of Henley.

On the way the roadside verges have taken on different hues. The foxgloves and ox-eye daisies at Peppard Common are still roaring on and now joined by common mallow (Malvus sylvestris).

This is a relatively tall perennial with distinctly dark-veined, purplish, five-petalled flowers. It’s a lovely adjunct to nature’s colours as they progress over the summer months.

After leaving Greys we surge upwards with Greys Court on our left and National Trust parkland on a sweeping hill to our right.

We then take a left turn and go through the tiny hamlet of Broadplat and onwards along a single-track road that eventually meets the A4130 Henley/Nettlebed road.

Come late July and August this “rat run” will be home to rare orchids of the genus Epipactis, the violet and green-flowered helleborines.

Both seem to prefer to grow on the edge of the road instead of the relative safety of the immediate woodland.

As we approach a fork in a narrow road near Bix, we take a sharp right turn uphill into what looks like a track into the woods due east. This soon becomes a road once more and we continue, passing through classic Chiltern beech woodland until we find the spot where I ask Matt to park. He has not been here before and is quite animated.

I’m pleased to say there are prominent signs informing the public to stick to the official footpaths and bridleways as this woodland is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and should be treated with respect.

We take in our surroundings and then agree to stroll around part of the wood that belongs to my friend and Henley resident Professor Richard Fortey.

He wrote a book about his patch called The Wood for the Trees: The Long View of Nature from a Small Wood, which I recommend.

This woodland is dominated by beech but there is also a generous proportion of oak, cherry, ash and the occasional wych elm with young yews, holly and field maple on the fringes.

The sunlit canopy above is still a fresh green, the trapped air cool.

We saunter down a wide, stony incline towards the ancient monument of Grim’s Ditch. Most authorities agree that this was constructed in the Iron Age but nothing is certain except that it is a prominent feature of this wood, which was once open landscape. I spot some large male ferns (Dryopteris filix-mas) and some woodland grasses including wood melick (Melica uniflora), wood meadow-grass (Poa nemoralis), wood millet (Milium effusum) and tufted hair-grass (Deschampsia cespitosa), all attractive in their own way.

Dappled summer sunlight combined with the slight breeze adds to this serene setting.

A small portion of the understorey is made up of bracken and bramble but there is plenty of space for the seeding bluebells, flowering enchanter’s nightshade (Circaea lutetiana) and hoary willowherb (Epilobium parviflorum).

Before we meet a crossroads just short of the old ditch we meet a professional dog-walker trying to shepherd her group of nine charges on their way west, not a job I’d like as I’d not be able to concentrate on nature.

Matthew examines his map and seems beguiled by all the possible walks here — up, down and along, west, east or south. There are unlimited combinations in this wood, all 182 acres of it.

Lambridge is probably the best waymarked wood that I know and I particularly love the stencilled white, directive arrows on the smooth beech trunks, which must be a wondrous aid at night with torchlight.

We head westwards through the trees, the dogs now out of sight. From time to time we note that some of the naturally occurring beech saplings have mesh protection, from browsing deer, I presume.

We meet another crossroads — west to our entry point, southwest to Broadplat or east back to the car.

We take the latter, which initially is a nearly black muddy path, and meet two young women out walking with a huge but nonchalant Irish wolfhound. I want one too.

Stopping every now and again, we hear the songs of chaffinches and blackbirds on the woodland margins along with the clacks of jackdaws. In the interior it’s the caws of crows and the hasty flapping of unnerved wood pigeons above.

As in what seems like every Chiltern woodland, there are some comically shaped trees.

As we approach the final 50 yards of our walk, we spot some holly bushes that have obviously been damaged by storms. Fresh stems reach upwards, the rest near horizontal.

Our path narrows considerably and becomes difficult and muddy. With Matthew’s help, I make it through unscathed and, more importantly, vertical.

The pair of us will return to explore further as there is so much more to this wood that I’ve not yet seen and who knows what is to be found — a ghost orchid maybe?

Back in the car, we retrace our route, slowly at first through the trees passing the entrance to opulent Lambridge Farm with its commanding views across Fair Mile and on to the tricky junction near Brawns House.

We leave Broadplat and as we pass Greys Court a weasel races across the road like a supersonic sausage.

Matthew drops me off in central Caversham and as I walk home I spot bumblebees moving between the blue flowers of green alkanet. Bees again.

I remember as a child being entranced with Lyle’s green and gold-coloured tins of golden syrup depicting a dead lion surrounded by bees.

When I get home, mother informs me that this imagery is out of the Old Testament when Samson killed a lion and then found that a swarm of bees had created a comb of honey in the carcass.

I still love the words on the tin: “Out of the strong came forth sweetness”. If only that was always true.

vincent.ruane@hotmail.com