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Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. 

Jules: Good morning. I'm Jules Acton. I'm an ambassador for the Woodland Trust. I've been in this job for 10 years this month and it's been a fantastic 10 years. I've loved every day because I get to meet some amazing trees and woods and even more than that, I also get to meet lots of amazing people who love trees and woods and who are inspired by them. So Woodland Trust members, other supporters, staff and volunteers. And I think one of the reasons people love trees so much is not just for the fact they provide all the wonderful services they they store our carbon, they provide fresh air, they can help filter pollution. But they're also absolutely entwined in our culture. And that's been taking place over hundreds and thousands of years. So our, particularly our native tree species tree species are absolutely embedded in our culture, and every old tree has a story to tell. Now, the reason we're here today is that we're going to talk about Tree of the Year and the theme of the Tree of the Year is culture and the way trees are embedded in culture. Ten magnificent trees have been chosen by a panel of experts. Each has a wonderful story to tell, and members of the public can go and vote for their favourite tree on the Woodland Trust website. 

We are here in Bradgate Park car park. It is a golden morning and we're surrounded by trees. I can see oak trees, hawthorns, birches, hazels. It's absolutely gorgeous with the dappled sunlight falling down on us through the leaves. We're here to meet a particularly special tree. It's Bradgate Park's oldest oak tree, and it's about 20 minutes walk from the car park. So I see my colleague Natasha. She's over there waiting at the edge of the car park, waiting for Matt. Hello Natasha. 

Natasha: Hello. Ohh hi! 

Jules: Can you tell us a bit about your role, Natasha and what you do at the Woodland Trust? 

Natasha: Yeah, I'm a social media officer, so I just help create and schedule all social media content, jump on whenever there's an opportunity like today. 

Jules: And today you're going to be helping with the recording. 

Natasha: Yeah, getting a few clips behind the scenes of how we record the podcast so we can share that and a few bits for our website as well and YouTube. 

Jules: Thanks Natasha. Now I think we have just seen somebody drive up who might well be Matt. He's he's appeared in a very groovy looking buggy. And here we go. I believe this is Matt. Hello.  

Matt: Good morning, Jules.  

Jules: Hello, Matt, hi, lovely to meet you. 

Matt: Nice to meet you. Welcome to Bradgate Park. 

Jules: Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about your role, Matt? 

Matt: So yeah so I've I've worked at Bradgate Park for just over 20 years now and main sort of roles on on the site are woodland management and caring for the ancient trees that we've got that that are of European importance. And I also get quite involved with the drystone walls and repairing them. I lead a a group of volunteers on a Thursday and as we go across the site, I'm sure I can show you some of the work that we've been doing. 

Jules: Oh brilliant, and you're going to particularly show us a very special tree, I believe. 

Matt: Yes, I believe we might be able to find that. Yeah, the tree is approximately 830 years old. It predates the Magna Carta and I’d certainly like to take you to the tree and tell you a bit more about it. 

Jules: All right. We're just getting ready to go and all around us are people enjoying the park, there are some people walking up hills. There are lots of dogs. There's one very cute little brown dog that's having a little dip in, in a little stream, a little brook, really at the edge of the park and it's already quite a warm day, so I think it's having a nice little cool down. 

We're back en route towards the special tree with the beautiful drystone wall to our right and across to the left are, well there’s a tree, there’s a plantation, and then there's also a sort of a bit of a wood pasture environment would you call it Matt, with some native trees dotted around in the landscape? 

Matt: Yeah, very much so. So this is Hallgates Valley. We're looking across to Dale Spinney. The park itself is 830 acres, of which spinneys represent about 10% of the parkland area, so it's quite a large proportion. All the spinneys were planted on the, on the hilltops across the park, that's that's not just by chance. And they were created around about 1830s-40s by the 6th early of Stamford and and now we see the spinneys that we've got here today so you've got quite a mature, mature standard trees. Quite a lot are softwood, but then we've got a mixture of hardwoods in there. We certainly replant hardwoods in the spinneys. 

Jules: How would you define a spinney as opposed to, you know, other kinds of woods? 

Matt: Nice easy question *laughs*. I would I would say you’ve obviously got different names of woodlands and you know we're, we're, we're in Charnwood Forest, but a a forest isn't just trees, it's clearings. And I would say a copse is a small woodland. I would say the spinney is is probably like slightly larger than that and then you go up towards a wood. I could be totally wrong! *both laugh* 

Jules: I like it though. So Matt you say, you've you've been here 20 years.  

Matt: Yeah, 22. 

Jules: 22. So you obviously love it. And what is it that keeps you here? 

Matt: I was born in Leicester and came here as a young child playing and you know to end up working here as a job, it's certainly a nice place to be coming to and huge, beautiful surroundings, fresh air and and then I've I've just got a real passion for particularly the a lot of the heritage crafts that we keep alive on the estate. So yes, we go down and we manage the woodlands, but we're actually carrying out coppicing operations and that, they go back to the Stone Age and and then other work on the site for instance drystone walling, which we're approaching a gap now that we've been repairing and is obviously another heritage craft, and for me, I I just think it's really important that we're passing on these skills, heritage crafts on to the next sort of generation. 

Jules: That that's brilliant. And do you do you train sort of volunteers or or is it staff members in in this kind of thing? 

Matt: I've trained up to Level 2 in walling. That's something I I went up to Derbyshire to do. We've actually got another chap on site now, Leon. He's, he was in the armed forces and and and Leon is doing his levels in walling as well. I believe he's already got Level 1 and 2. He's working towards his 3, we might be able to pop and see him in a