Yesterday a 12 mile walk from Redhill to Epsom morphed abruptly into a 13 mile walk from Redhill to Leatherhead. And so I found myself blundering unexpectedly through Langley Vale, England's WW1 Centenary Wood.
It's very large - 640 acres. It lies a mile to the south of Epsom racecourse. It's one of four Centenary Woods across the home nations. It's a long term project undertaken by the Woodland Trust. Some of it is ancient woodland. Most of it was farmland but is now being transformed into rolling woods. The planting took place over four years, 2014-2018, exactly a hundred years after the First World War. Thus far they've planted 180,000 trees. It's meant as a place of recreation and contemplation. It's part sponsored by a supermarket. It's years off looking like proper woodland. And it's just a bit unusual.
It helps if you arrive via the car park, which I didn't, instead blundering in off a chalk track surrounded by paddocks. One of the ancient tracts came first, but with mysterious risk averse signage warning that the path was muddy, which it wasn't especially. I spotted a few premature catkins. And then came large contoured swathes covered with saplings growing inside protective tubes, ridiculously many, which when you're not expecting it looks somewhat peculiar. They're going to need a heck of a lot of thinning out later.
One wooded field was particularly enormous, now populated with twiggy trees like a battalion of very thin soldiers. This impression may have been the intention. Some of the individual groves appeared to be sponsored by local organisations including a synagogue and a food company. Suddenly there were more people wandering around, which in the middle of the countryside is always a good indicator of a car park somewhere within half a mile. In the near distance you could see the green stripe of Epsom Downs and its chunky grandstand for flat racing spectators perched on top. And then it got arty.
This is Jutland Wood, or will be, comprising 6097 saplings to represent all of the fallen in that famous sea battle. Up the middle is a 'ship-shaped clearing', not that you can yet easily tell, lined by 14 oak markers each representing one of the warships lost. The numbers in the portholes highlight lives lost, while underneath are the (generally much higher) number of survivors. I appreciated it more before I read on the information board that 'the mix of native trees evokes the sight and sound of the waves', and sorry but no, that's totally stretching things.
Another sculptural feature, this time much nearer the car park, is the Regiment of Trees. This is an avenue of 80 trees intermingled with a dozen well-spaced stone soldiers and commemorates the day in January 1915 when Lord Kitchener came to inspect the troops on Epsom Downs. Back then this was Tadworth Camp, a sprawling tented city for training 8000 fresh recruits in the art of trench warfare, grenade throwing and mustard gas resilience. Unfortunately the day of the inspection was cold and snowy, Lord Kitchener arrived several hours late and I'm not sure why you'd want to commemorate disempowered soldiers succumbing to deep chill and hunger.
I did not wander down the Cherry Walk or find the Verdun Oaks, the latter a plantation grown from acorns found on the French battlefield. I did pass the Sainsbury's Community Orchard, which remains some years off apple production, and also the Poppy Play Area, which appeared to be a very small adventure playground with the word Poppy added its name. I suspect it looks more convincingly symbolic from above. I didn't find the visitor centre because there isn't one, not yet, which made it all the more impressive that dozens of Surrey residents had turned up to somewhere that doesn't serve coffee. The coach unloading bay felt hugely over-optimistic at this stage.
You'd be better off visiting in spring when the ancient woodland is full of bluebells. You'd be better off visiting in summer when the wildflowers are a riot. You'd be better off visiting in November when the Remembrance Trail would resonate more deeply. You'd be better off visiting in ten years' time when the trees have had more time to grow, more likely twenty because one day it'll be somewhere really special. In the meantime you're most likely to see Langley Vale Centenary Wood alongside the M25 about halfway between junctions 8 and 9 so keep an eye out, and maybe pencil in a visit on an appropriately later date.
Here are ten other photos from my walk, presented without comment.
