It is said that Great Britain has the least density of forestry in Europe but on our travels we have marveled at the enormous great log piles found all over the continent and can only surmise that the continentals have been a lot more forward thinking than the British and have been busily replacing the logged crop of trees for generations.
The most amazingly interesting log pile was in Germany, Bavaria to be exact - and in the front of a very modest house!! There were 4 in total, and they almost dwarfed their surroundings - quite monumental in scale really and obviously a work of dedication and craftsmanship. Most people simply lay an elongated strip or two and then continuously pile up in neat rows to form a very decorous and functional stack, but not our industrious Bavarian - the stacks were beautifully domed at the top, tapered in elegantly and were braced with poles and wires to ensure stability in all weathers. Brilliant!
We have never seen anything the like of since but will keep on looking !Another slightly more interesting pile was spotted in Alsace - this one was square, again in a modest garden, but definitely without the wow factor.....
I remember one very sad and shocking occasion… as a child I had happy times going ‘nutting’ or as we would say in Welsh – hela cnau – with my mother, brother and aunty Netta on my grandparents farm where we lived at that time. The old woodlands were along the top and sides of a valley running down to a brisk stream at the bottom and to me at that time were a magical place for exploring and playing. Childhood is a wonderful thing.
We took along an old hessian animal feed sack and a few ancient walking sticks with which to reach up and hook down the nut clustered branches – what fun it was to ramble and discover the treasures of nature!! These hazelnuts were then stored until Christmas and brought out as a treat, were cracked open with great delight and munched with a mouthful of dried figs or dates. The shells were thrown onto the fire. Simply delicious.
Can you imagine my horror then a dozen or so years later on going to visit my uncle and aunt on the farm to discover that things had changed drastically !! My uncle had actually had a grant from the government to clear the woodlands and convert the land into extra grazing for the cows!! All that moss covered forest had simply disappeared and now there was grass…… that’s the sixties for you – progress? a very British slash and burn policy which thank goodness we are now reversing and actually encouraging farmers to plant hedges, forests etc…. phew….
Perhaps we’ll see a few monumental log piles here in Britain in the future ?
