A walk through bluebells

Saturday 17th May 2015

One of the joys of a British wood in spring is the thick carpet of bluebells that covers the woodland floor producing a wondrous display that is simply spectacular. I love to see this short-lived sight every year and make a point of doing my Charnwood Forest round on the first weekend in May when bluebells are almost guaranteed to be in flower, somewhere in their brief three week display. Last year was no different as I completed my familiar walk, but under overcast skies and with many of the bluebells still in bud. The prospect of bluebells being on display for most of May prompted me to do a search for other areas where I could see bluebells and found that there is another wood in the Charnwood Forest that is renowned for having a good display of bluebells in season: Burroughs Wood. This wood is not on my Charnwood Forest round and I had visited the wood only once before, while on the National Forest Way in 2014. It was only a week after this bluebell walk that I actually completed the trail and I was already looking back at places that I’d previously visited that demanded a return, and Burroughs Wood was high on that list.

I parked at the wood and was immediately struck by the display of wildflowers near the car park. There were only a few bluebells but it was the red campion that caught my eye, growing tall amongst the nettles. As I moved into the parkland I found many woodland flowers including some spotted-orchids that proved mesmerising but no extensive carpets of bluebells. As I wandered around with no idea where I was going I suddenly stumbled upon exactly what I had been looking for in a quiet corner of the wood. There I found a large number of bluebells covering the floor of the woodland, but also many other plants diluting the scene. There wasn’t an extensive covering of bluebells and most seemed to be near the path that was leading away from the wood, so eventually I headed back to the car park and decided that I would stop being aimless and follow the route of the National Forest Way.

The year before, on the second stage of this trail I had walked from Bradgate Park through Martinshaw Wood and Burroughs Wood to Thornton Reservoir and had noted many bluebell seed heads. On that occasion, I expressed a wish to return earlier in the season and now I was fulfilling that by walking along the trail through new woodland that lacked woodland flowers into the more established woodland of Martinshaw Wood. Almost immediately I came across bluebells, but they were still not as extensive as I’d hoped. The leaf cover was fairly extensive by this time in the year which was smothering the sunlight and leaving the undergrowth increasingly dull. Bluebells deliberately grow before the leaves in order to take advantage of this early window of sunlight. By the time they are in flower the woodland canopy has often already blocked out much of the light, which is annoying when taking pictures.

As I wandered around Martinshaw Wood I did find many clumps of bluebells even though there were no extensive carpets. My disappointment was softened by many stitchworts mixed in amongst the bluebells and encouraged me to revisit Martinshaw Wood more often in the future. After completing a circuit of the wood I returned to the course of the National Forest Way and headed back to Burroughs Wood where I had been promised extensive carpets of bluebells. I had no idea where in the wood they were to be found so I just wandered around the edge of the wood hoping to see something until I eventually reached the northern tip. When I had walked through Burroughs Wood previously I had actually taken a wrong turning and now as I looked at the bridlepath that runs along the western edge of the wood I realised that this was the route that I should have taken out the year before. Now back on the National Forest Way, even though I had never been on this part before, I followed the bridlepath to where a footpath branches off to pass through a kissing gate and into the wood.

Soon after re-entering the wood I found exactly what I had been looking for: bluebells stretching as far as the eye could see deep into the wood. It may have been gloomy under the thick woodland cover, but my heart was shining as I spread my hands with delight at the awesome sight that surrounded me. Bluebells covered every square inch of the woodland floor in a display that is special wherever it is found in the British Isles. I had found the carpet of bluebells in Burroughs Wood and it was indeed a particularly good display. Satisfied, and now happy to wait another year before I could see bluebells again, I made my way through the wood along the route of the National Forest Way all the way back to the car park.