Taking a Walk
Patrick Barkham
Look out for the dog-sized Costa Coffee cup and vacate the thundering A46 Coventry Eastern Bypass by the BP garage. Park by the dumped bedstead, the overflowing wheelie bin and the Lucozade bottles discarded in the brambles.
There cannot be a less promising beginning to a walk. When I clambered from my car, traffic decibels forbade thought. As bewildered as a badger caught on a motorway, I blundered up the track beneath a mobile phone mast towards Piles Coppice.
Two old oaks like sentries guarded this small wood on the top of a low hill. Beneath them was a carpet of last year’s dried leaves and fluff combed from the coats of dogs by doting owners. The stream of rubbish slowed to an occasional digestives wrapper. As the rubbish died away, so did the vehicular din. Just 100 yards from the road, the wood worked its magic and swallowed the whole commuting clamour.
A path wiggled ahead, through shiny-leafed hollies, with the bare branches of oaks and small-leafed limes rising above like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral.
A small English woodland is the most astounding miracle, particularly when its incomparable atmosphere survives intact and envelops us, despite the depredations of roads and houses all around. And Piles Coppice is particularly perfectly formed: roomy and elegant, filled with mystical oaks, attended by silver birch, wild cherry and hazel, wrapped in honeysuckle, and encased by perimeter banks from early medieval days or even earlier times.
I could walk through these 52 acres in five minutes if I hurried. I would pass it on the train to Coventry in a couple of seconds. And I could live here for a lifetime and still be surprised by it every day.
As the name suggests, Piles Coppice is an ancient woodland that was once coppiced regularly, its trees periodically harvested for their timber before regrowing. But the wood hasn’t been harvested for its trees for more than 50 years and the result is not an overgrown tangle but elegant stands of enormous, small-leafed limes, spaciously situated on a springy woodland floor.
I took a circular path around the wood anti-clockwise and, near its southern edge, found a magnificent lime with 13 trunks, waving like triffids. The silhouettes of these and other old oaks are mysterious and marvellous in midwinter.
But spring is the ideal time to visit Piles Coppice, when its floor turns first into a sea of wood anemones and then a scented ocean of bluebells. Even locals overlook this little wood: one regular walker says her neighbours don’t know about it, and routinely travel to admire bluebell woods in Northamptonshire.
I walked beyond the coppice, across Redland Meadow, the path meandering like a river around a freshly fallen sallow, to look at neighbouring Brandon Wood. This big brother woodland was a totally different beast: a plantation laid out with rectangular tracks. I swiftly returned to Piles Coppice which, after the briefest of encounters, already felt like home.
A few of the wood’s friends are now at loggerheads with its owner, the Woodland Trust, and current manager, Warwickshire Wildlife Trust. Conservation orthodoxy says old coppices should be coppiced, to let sunlight into the woods and allow flowers and sun-loving forest insects to flourish (and to hell with shade-loving beetles and moths). Having walked it, I hope that Piles Coppice is left alone.
I thundered down the A46 to reach it; so I can’t wring my hands about the way traffic has destroyed so much rural peace. Instead, I’ll raise my hands in praise for the enduring miracle that beauty and joy can be found in tiny pockets so close to the areas we’ve ruined.
*Leave the southbound A46 by the BP garage. Postcode: CV3 2ZZ. The gate to Piles Coppice is on the left before the garage. Numerous paths lead around the wood. OS Explorer 221 Coventry & Warwick