Woodland Survival
If you go down to the woods today you’ll meet Richard and Daniel Pope and their workhorse Defender 110 Hi Cap
Ever wondered what it takes to work in the forestry industry? A Defender is a good start
Spring is in the air as the early morning sun filters through the dew-laden canopy of fresh leaves. Most of the world is asleep, but Richard Pope is already stirring, woken by the deafening dawn chorus of the wild birds in the chestnut coppice that surrounds his home. He gets up, boils a kettle for a cup of tea and smiles. The life of a forester is a hard one, but he wouldn’t want it any other way.
“I love my job, which is just as well because it’s all I’ve ever done,” says Richard, 66. “I’ve worked in forestry all my life and I couldn’t do anything else. I’m probably unemployable. I certainly couldn’t work in an office.”
Richard has the weather-worn complexion and hardened hands of a man who has toiled outdoors all his life. But he hasn’t done it alone: standing outside is a very careworn Defender 110 Hi Cap that is his constant companion.
“It’s a Td5 but you’d never know unless you scrape the mud off the badge,” he laughs, with the obvious affection of a man who values his essential workhorse.
In an age when the now out-of-production Defender has become a fashion icon, with rich folk and footballers buying blinged-up versions that seldom go anywhere muddy, it’s heartening to meet one that genuinely works hard for its living. Richard’s Defender has covered 225,000 miles, most of which have been off-road. Diff lock and low box are used daily and the bumps and scratches in the bodywork bear testament to the hard knocks it has received while carrying out its duties among the unyielding tree trunks on Richard’s 95 acres of mixed woodland in East Sussex.
The nearest small town to here is Battle, so named due to its proximity to a pivotal event in British history. As every schoolboy knows, it was here that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066, which resulted in William the Conqueror, from Normandy, defeating King Harold and winning the English throne. It was the last time these islands were invaded by a foreign power – and Richard is keen to point out that here in his wood, in 2017, there will be no foreign invasion either. “No Japanese pick-up would ever stand up to the punishment I give my Land Rovers,” he says. “They are real working vehicles. I’ve driven nothing but Land Rovers since I moved here.”
That was back in the early 1980s. The first was a Series IIB forward control pick-up, which had a huge carrying capacity, but was a bit underpowered to tackle the arduous terrain in the woodland. A series of Hi Cap long wheelbase Defenders followed, including his latest, which is a 2000 model that he bought secondhand in 2008.
The rolling countryside here is a mixture of sandstone and clay that gets really claggy in wet weather, which means mud terrain tyres are a necessity, even though they are a bit noisy when he ventures onto tarmac to deliver logs and firewood to his customers in the neighbouring towns and villages.
But hauling heavy felled trees from the forest to his yard
“No Japanese pick-up would ever stand up to the punishment I give my Land Rovers ”
is too much even for a Defender and for this job Richard uses a 1980s Ford County tractor. Its power take-off is also invaluable for driving the saws and other machinery, which include a log processor and a peeling machine that strips the bark off chestnut fencing stakes and leaves a point in the end so that they can be hammered into the ground.
Richard began his career in forestry on a large country estate near Lewes, but it was always his ambition to own his own wood and run his own business. When the chance came up in 1983, he didn’t hesitate, even though it meant living with his young family in a caravan for over two years until he got planning permission to build his own home on a plateau in the middle of the wood.
“I would never have got planning permission if I hadn’t opened up access to the wood to the general public,” he says. “In order to do that, I needed to live on site as a warden.”
Richard’s house was built of wood, much of which he harvested himself from his own trees. It was designed by an architect and took a team of three skilled carpenters two years to build and the stunning end result has featured in several architectural magazines as well as on local TV. But more importantly it was a family home and Richard’s son Daniel, now 45, grew up there.
Daniel spent many years working in London, where he organised major art exhibitions, but while working in the city he pined for the world of the forest he loved so much as a boy and has recently returned to work in the wood with his father – literally a chip off the old block, in fact.
“I’m hoping to semi-retire eventually and then Daniel will take over,” says Richard, proudly. “It is reassuring to know that my son will be continuing my life’s work.”
Richard’s wood consists of several species of trees, including ancient oaks and giant beeches, as well as the important coppiced chestnuts. Coppicing is an ancient woodland practice in which trees are regularly cut back to the ground every few years, allowing new branches to sprout from the base which are harvested after a few years.
Besides being a truly sustainable business, coppicing is also hugely beneficial to the local flora and fauna. Cutting back the top growth allows light to penetrate to the woodland floor and encourages wild flowers to flourish, including great swathes of bluebells and rare orchids in the spring. Rare insects including endangered butterflies also flourish here, like the beautiful White Admiral, which flits through the dappled woodland glades in early summer.
Wildlife here also includes foxes, badgers and deer, as well as woodland bird like nightingales that arrive in spring to build their nests in the dense thickets, then come into full song after nightfall to provide Richard with the perfect lullaby after a hard day’s toil.
But not every night in the wood is peaceful. One night in October 1987, just a couple of years after Richard’s home was completed, the Great Storm roared in. You know, the one BBC weather forecaster Michael Fish dismissed before hurricane-force winds – the strongest for over 300 years – demolished half of southern England.
Just hours before the storm, hapless Fish had told BBC1 viewers: “Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t, but having said that, actually, the weather will become very windy, but
most of the strong winds, incidentally, will be down over Spain and across into France.”
That night, of October 15 to 16, saw 22 people lose their lives and an estimated 15 million trees were flattened. Sussex was particularly badly hit, with winds of 120 mph recorded. Richard recalls: “It was the most terrifying night of my life. We could hear trees crashing down all around us. I was worried that our wooden house would get torn down by the hurricane, but it withstood it.
“The next day, it was carnage. Whole plantations of softwood conifers had been flattened and all the tall trees, too. The old oaks and beeches suffered badly, but the chestnut coppices survived.
“I spent the next two days clearing the fallen trees from the main road on the edge of the wood and it took me two years to clear up all the damage inside the wood. Earlier this year there was a big fuss on the news about Storm Doris, but that was nothing. It caused hardly any damage and wasn’t in the same league as 1987.
“But everything comes full cycle. After I’d cleared up the
mess left by the Great Storm in 1987 I planted lots of new trees and some of them are now big enough to be harvested. In forestry, you are always planning for the long term.
“It’s the same with Land Rovers. My Defender Hi Cap may look neglected, but it isn’t mechanically. It is a workhorse and it’s not looks that count. Like all machinery it is important to keep it properly maintained and serviced and, if it is, it won’t let you down.
“There are a few things I would change with Defenders, like the annoying way your clothes get caught on the door latches every time you climb in or out of the cab, and the fact that it gets so uncomfortable. It would be nice to drive one for over 40 miles without getting backache. But the important thing is it does its job and, apart from the usual maintenance, never stops working.”
Whether it’s about Land Rovers or forestry, Richard has passed on plenty of important lessons in life to his son Daniel and there’s no doubt that even after Richard has finally retired, there will still be a man and his Defender hard at work in this glorious woodland.