A sign for Cadbury World wasn’t far from where we left the motorway just before 9.30am, and somewhere called Catshill was passed through on what seemed to be the Birmingham Road; the hotel and spa place where this Woodland Trust event was being held wasn’t spotted fast enough to get into, so Mum demonstrated a 3 point turn, and the building looked like it had seen better days, people gathering looked like they’d seen better days, my teeth started chattering – and only stopped when we entered the building.
We were each given envelopes, I grabbed a little packet of biscuits, and lots of tables with glass water bottles and metal containers of tea, coffee, hot water, and herbal teabags on – and people beginning to gather round them were in a room with a massive projection board showing an (small – compared to the size of the screen) aerial photo of Pepper Wood. I found myself a strawberry and raspberry teabag, saw a man (early 70s ish) wearing glasses who had an extremely specifically trimmed moustache, the ceiling looked like it was disintegrating a bit, and a staff member put on a headset with a pompom sort of microphone on 1 end and started saying stuff, followed by a man called Ian talking about the extension to Pepper Wood. Mum put her wellies on, everyone boarded a bus outside at 10.23am – and we sat at the back.

The bus moved at 10.36am, 8 minutes later was by a pub called The Swan, I tied my hair back in extreme winds, and at 10.59am we set off through a gate, across a field with decomposing cow pats in, through another gate, and in that field a man with a cap on, said stuff about this place being at a very embryonic stage, held up an ordinance survey map with a blue patch and a green patch on (and I wanted my fur hat). The other half of this group of older people was going further off down the field, the man said something about hedgerows that I couldn’t hear due to the gusts, a muddy brown Labrador was walked past by a man with a flat cap on, Mum talked to another staff person (who wasn’t very audible due to the gusts), and I stuck my foot down a small hole, fell over and whacked my right knee before the next stop.

Something about cows, 80% of something I forgot being tree scrub and 20% being grass was said, followed by bomb craters (1 got pointed out) and the Nazi Luftwaffe, I continued to desperately want my fur hat, and Lady Godiva (from the 11th century) riding naked through Coventry was mentioned before taking a left turn, and further along the slopes at 11.17am everyone stopped and had another bomb crater pointed out. I noticed a girl (late 20s) with false eyelashes on stood next to a thin wrinkly woman holding a walking pole, and noticed how far the line of electricity pylons extended; the man said he’d talked to the tenant farmer (called Nigel) here – who doesn’t believe there’s a huge rabbit population, and it was 11.27am when we turned left, a wire fence was along the edge of the field, and the bloke stopped everyone and talked about natural colonisation, forms of ground preparation, a chain farrow, and sheep

I was freezing, noticed a thin lady wearing a skirt and a sock hat, and then another woman came up to me and said she’d noticed me taking photos, and a few mushrooms on a tree trunk – and asked if I wanted to photograph them, and showed me (and I thanked her very much).

Another thin staff person said some stuff I forgot (and later remembered 1 thing said – which was that there were 140 species of plant in the field); then we went up a long hill, under some power lines, and Mum pointed out the amount, and different types, of animal poo on the grass (and her hair was all over the place). Then the thin man called Paul talked about natural colonisation, said tree planting allows you to engage with people, that he was getting a buzz from putting woodland in, and that the word ‘forest’ is generally associated with wide areas of conifers; the thin woman in a yellow raincoat with a walking pole and a girl (my age ish) who I assumed were grandmother and granddaughter asked if I’d take a photo of them with the girl’s phone – as they’d seen me with my camera and thought I was the 1 to ask (so I took a few), and there was a brief chat. We all turned right – through a gate, and went up a hill next to a massive pylon, turned right again through a brown field, and there was another slight hill loads of acorns under an oak tree at the top, and after another field we were back at the bus at about 12.35pm – feeling very blown around.

When the bus moved, ‘community concern speed enforcement’ was on a sign somewhere, further along Lickey Hills and Cadbury World were signed. Back at the hotel just before 1pm, Mum asked 1 of the blokes from the charity if they do this often (and he said they hadn’t done 1 of these before), and a woman she spoke to said something about having been to Pepper Wood before – when it seemed rather flat (which was explained to me as the bit we’d been shown around being a new part acquired by the Woodland Trust), and we continued in this queue for lunch until about 1.10pm – and I decided to try the interesting looking stuff (and photographed my plate). A staff member came over and asked about my notepad – and I explained things and showed him my info card, read out a couple of excerpts and mentioned the Buxton Butchers logo seen earlier – which he looked up on his phone and thought it looked like a banana hammock; and our conversation was halted just after 2pm, when a woman stuck a microphone on her head and turned the projector on to start a presentation. And the day continued…. we made it home at 5.40pm.