10. Peckham Rye Park with Charity Wakefield

08/08/22 • 24 min

Woodland Walks - The Woodland Trust Podcast

Charity Wakefield’s passion for the natural world shone through when we caught up at her local green space. I met the actor, environmentalist and Woodland Trust ambassador at Peckham Rye Park to talk about trees, wildlife and acting.

Charity explains how nature has made her happy since the tree-climbing, den-building days of her childhood. She is concerned that people have lost their connection with the environment, but is hopeful for the future and encourages us to recognise that we can all make a difference. She believes in ‘people power’. We also talk eco-friendly fashion, filming comedy-drama The Great and climbing a tree to learn her lines in Lewisham!

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. Adam: Charity Wakefield is an actor, environmentalist and Woodland Trust ambassador. She starred in BBC One’s production of Rapunzel, Constance in The Three Musketeers at the Bristol Old Vic, and Elaine in the Graduate at the New Vic. She had a lead role as Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and has been in Doctor Who, the Halcyon, Bounty Hunters, amongst other productions. And she’s now starring in the TV series, The Great about Catherine the Great. Well, I met her at her local park to talk about acting and the importance of the natural world. Charity: So now we are at Peckham Ride Park, which has been my local park for most of my time in London. I now have a baby so there’s lots of kinds of mother and baby groups around the area. I have lots of friends here still. Adam: Are you a country girl or did you grow up in the city, or? Charity: Erm, I, I never thought of myself as a country girl. I did grow up though in and around East Sussex. I used to live in a couple of different places down there. We moved a bit as a kid. Adam: Sorry, why don’t you, you grew up in the country, why did you not think of yourself as a... Charity: I don’t know Adam: You know you thought of yourself as you felt your inner urban woman early on? Charity: I just don’t think I grew up with any sense of identity if I’m honest, because I also live a little bit in Spain when I was very small. And like I said we moved around quite a lot. So actually I’m an actress and I trained at drama school and going to drama school at the time of going to university for most people if you do that, that was the first time I really had this interest to work out where I was from, or you know you kind of try to identify yourself by telling each other, and also drama school, in particular, you’re looking at different kind of life experiences and personality traits, because it’s material for you, right? So, you start kind of realising ‘oh I that this background or that background’. Yeah, for me, being from the countryside just meant desperate driving as soon as I can. I could drive about a week after my birthday because I had secret driving lessons with friends and my dad and stuff. Yeah, I guess I have always loved the countryside and I sort of you know had friends you know the family were farmers and we used to go and make camps in the woods. Adam: Well, that’s good, and talking of woods we seem to be, what’s down there? That’s a very wooded area, shall we go, you lead on, but shall we go down there? Or Charity: This is the Common, this is Peckham Ride Common, and erm I think it was, has been around for at least a couple of hundred years and it’s a really big open space with some really huge trees in the middle. They’re probably like, lots of them are London planes and oak trees, and I think this section we’re about to walk into was actually sort of closed off at the beginning I think it was a big common and this was owned by an estate. A sort of family estate and then opened a bit later which is why as you can see it is much more formal Adam: I was going to say, so we are leaving a sort of really a very large green area with the Shard poking its head above the trees, so your urban environment, but walking into this much more formal sculptured... Charity: And actually you can walk the whole perimeter of this, and this is quite close to the road here but the other side is as you can see really big open and free, so it must have been quite weird at sort of the end of the 1800s, I suppose that kind of bridge between a really rich family that owned this huge part of the park in the middle, so this is yeah, now we are under these beautiful red-leaved trees, you probably know what that tree is? [Laugh] Adam: No, no, no, no, let’s not embarrass each other by [Laugh] Charity: [Laugh] Okay no tree testing Adam: No tree testing [Laugh] Charity: Okay Adam: Well, this is, this is beautiful, so let’s.....

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9. Langley Vale Wood, Surrey

Langley Vale Wood is a really special place. Created as part of the Trust’s First World War Centenary Woods project, it’s a natural living legacy for the fallen that symbolises peace and hope. Memorials offer space to remember in an evocative and moving tribute. As well as these important reflections on the past, the site has a bright future. Previously an arable farm that became non-viable, nature is now thriving, with butterfly, bird and rare plant numbers all up.

Join site manager Guy Kent and volunteer David Hatcher to explore the ‘Regiment of Trees’, the ‘Witness’ memorial and Jutland Wood. Discover too how the site is being transformed into a peaceful oasis for people and nature and why some of these fields are internationally important.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

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Voiceover: You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. Adam: Hello! I've got to start by telling you this. I have driven to Langley Vale today and I've been driving through suburban London, really not very much aware of my surroundings, and you come up this hill and suddenly everything falls away and you burst out onto the top of the hill and it's all sky and Epsom Downs. And the racecourse is just ahead of you! And it dramatically changes. So, it's quite, it's quite an entrance into the Langley Vale forest area. I've come to meet, well, a couple of people here. I’ve drawn up next to a farm, I don’t really know where they are, but it gives me a moment to tell you a little bit about the Langley Vale project which is amazing. It's a lovely thought behind it, because it is about honouring those who died in the First World War, and of course, there are many ways in which we honour and remember the people whose lives were changed forever during that global conflict. There are war memorials, headstones, poetry and paintings – and those man-made accolades – they capture all the names, the dates, the emotions and the places. And of course, they are vital in recording and recounting the difficult and very harrowing experiences from that conflict. But, what this venture, I think, wanted to achieve with its First World War Centenary Woods Project was a natural, living legacy for the fallen. Flourishing places that symbolise peace and hope, as well as remembering and marking the dreadful events of war, but doing that in the shape of nature and hope for the future. Both now and for many, many generations to come, providing havens for wildlife and for people – and I'm one of those people – and so it’s a great project, it's in its very early stages, but it’s a great opportunity, I think, to have a look around today. So, oh! There's two people wandering down the road there in shorts, I think they’re hikers, I don’t think they are who I am seeing. [Pause] Adam: So, Guy you're the site manager here, just tell me a little bit about the site. Guy: So, we are on the North Downs here in Surrey. It's a huge ridge of chalk that runs along southern England and down through Kent, it pops under the channel and pops up again in France. And this chalk ridge has got very special habitats on it in terms of woodland, chalk grassland, and we're very thrilled here that we've been able to buy, in 2014, a formerly intensively managed arable farm that was actually not very productive. The soils are very thin here on the hills the chalk with flints, so, pretty poor for growing crops, and we were very lucky to buy it as part of our First World War Centenary Woods project as England’s Centenary Wood. Adam: So, tell me a bit about the Centenary Woods part of this. Guy: So, the idea of the project was to put a new woodland in each country of the United Kingdom, that being Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. This is the England site, and it is the largest of the four sites. We've actually planted 170,000 trees here. We did go through a full Environmental Impact Assessment and this enabled us to find out where we could plant trees because there are some special habitats here, and there is a national character to the North Downs – national character being that much of the woodland is planted on the high ground and much of the lower land is actually open space, be that for arable use or pasture. Adam: This is a Centenary Wood, so, is this just an ordinary woodland planted in the name of those who died during the First World War? Guy: Yes. The difference is... one of the reasons this site was selected was because we do actually have history here from the First World War. We’ve got a number of memorials that I hope to show you today. One of which commemorates a day in January 1915. Lord Kitchener inspected 20,000 troops here that had gathered and recently joined, t...

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11. Tree ID top tips

Much as I love a woodland walk, my tree identification skills leave a lot to be desired, so I travelled to Londonthorpe Wood, Grantham for a lesson from the experts. We join tree ID guru Sally to learn how to recognise common trees from their leaves, catkins, bark and berries. From apple and ash to hawthorn and hazel, she also tells us more about the trees’ value for wildlife. I learned so much during this episode, and I hope you do too.

Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

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You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. Adam: Do you know what? I have been wandering around woods for many years and I've been doing so rather ignorantly. I mean, I like it and everything, but I actually don't know the names, or the histories, or the importance of a lot of the trees I am passing. So, I’ve tried to correct that, and to do that I'm taking a little lesson. I’m going back to school, and I'm doing that with the assistance of Sally Bavin, who is the assistant conservation evidence officer at the Woodland Trust. And we’re going to Londonthorpe Wood, which is near Grantham, which is in fact near the headquarters of the Woodland Trust. And she's going to run me through some of the key things to look out for in trees. Now, of course, we're coming to the end of the easy season to identify trees because leaves are a big clue. Leaves are falling off the trees, as is their wont at this time of year. But nonetheless, there are still enough of them around for me to make a good guess and I thought it was high time I learn something and hopefully have a bit of fun and share that insight with you. So, off to Londonthorpe Wood, it is! And I'm gonna meet Sally Bavin from the Woodland Trust. So, Sally, hi! We’ve met under a tree. Look at... I can tell straight away it’s an apple tree because it has apples on it! [Laugh] Sally: Yes! Adam: But I come for some lessons – gone back to school. You know, how to identify trees when they don't have apples on them, so they are not as easily identifiable. So, is this what you do at the Trust? Go around identifying trees? Is this what you do normally? Sally: [Laugh] Not all the time, but a small part of my role is, erm I lead a tree ID course. So, it's just an afternoon, we run it about every six months. Adam: Yes, I have to say, I mean I was very keen to do this, well, because I’ve gone to lots of woodlands, I am very ignorant about identifying trees. And I was thinking, we’ve gotta rush before all the leaves fall off, because then it's a lot harder, but they're still, there are trees that have got lots of leaves. So, before we start the course. Why is it important to know what a tree is – what species of tree you're looking at? Sally: Yeah, well, I think it depends. It depends on who you are as to what your interest is in the trees. I think generally for just the public it's a nice thing to note, help you understand your surroundings of a lot better and it's a sort of the first step into connecting with nature, at a bit of a deeper level than just enjoying the greenery. Because you can then look for the specific things about different species that changed throughout the seasons, and you can be expecting the apples and looking out for them in summer when they're only just appearing. That sort of thing. So, it's good for helping people to connect with nature on a more personal level. Because the type of trees in a woodland can tell you a lot about the sort of story of the woodland. So, it could help indicate whether it’s ancient woodland. It could tell you about what sort of soil types underlying the sites are and that kind of thing. What ground flora, therefore, you’re likely to sort of expect and indicate the condition of the woodland in terms of ecological health. So, if you've got lots of non-native tree species there that could tell you that the woodland’s perhaps degraded and in need of restoration, that kind of thing. Adam: Okay, fantastic, and you’re going to take me on a little journey and we're going to identify some trees. Now, I have to say first of all, about me personally, and I think others as well might find this whole thing rather daunting because there are probably thousands of tree types, and you think how on earth am I going to get to know any trees? Really as I’d have to go back to university really. Is it as daunting as it sort of first sounds? Sally: No, definitely not. There's only a handful really of really common species. So, for example, maybe sort of ten of the most common would be oak, ash, hawthorn, birch, beech, Scots pine, rowan, hazel, blackthorn and willow. And then you get to know those and then you sort of gradually pepper some more interesting species in between. Ada...