North Plymouth Urban-Rural Woodland Ramble.

Route: Crownhill (top end of Budshead Road), Woodland Wood, Budshead Creek, Tamerton Foliot, Warleigh Point, back through Tamerton Foliot, Cann Wood, Whitleigh Wood, finishing back at Crownhill.

The necessity of having to leave my car at a dealership in Crownhill meant I was stranded, without wheels, on the edge of Plymouth. This was clearly a walking opportunity. Since I have already done an urban walk around Crownhill, I decided on an urban-rural route through the suburbs, beyond the spill of the city, and out to Warleigh Point. I enjoy exploring the built environment as much as I do the countryside, but the point of this walk was to try and stay in green spaces for as much of the walk as possible; seeing what the suburbs had to offer in terms of ‘rural’ walking.

I set off along busy Budshead Road, which sweeps northwest away from Crownhill, on the ridge between Whitleigh and Southway. Garages and retail parks at its top end gave way to hillside housing estates; a tessellation of mini-roundabouts and cul-de-sacs. In my walking uniform of bobble hat, thermal jacket, Lycra leggings and cushioned walking boots I briefly felt incongruous on the pavement. But I was only on tarmac briefly. After only a couple of minutes I was able to veer sharply down a grassy slope to enter woodland, at the distal end of the Budshead stream.

Plymouth is a hilly city, with some slopes just too steep to bother building on. The northern edge of the city has valleys that trend north-west, striving towards Tamerton Lake and the Tamar estuary. This Plymouth periphery therefore retains and benefits from these veins of wooded valleys, and the nature-space they provide, running right through otherwise built-up areas. The architecture of the steep slopes assists in keeping the city, to an extent, out of the view, and behind the ridge-line.

I rarely feel uneasy walking on my own but then, I don’t tend to walk in urban green-spaces. As I set out down the tautologically named Woodland Wood, I have to admit, I was aware of feeling more on guard than usual. The secluded valley path was quiet, despite being in proximity to a big population; if it had been busier it would probably have felt safer. Woodland has always occupied a fearful place in the psyche. We worry about who or what we might meet in the woods – a robber or a rapist – and in the past, we might have had trepidation over wild animals in the wild wood. Woodland, doesn’t just conceal threats but conceals vistas, making woodlands easy places to get lost. For these reasons woodland has been a great monster of fairy tales, particularly in relation to the danger it presents to children.

The playground on open ground, tucked between Woodland Fort and the trees, invoked these fairy tale feelings; of children disappearing into the woods like Hansel and Gretel, or being spied upon by criminal or wolfish eyes. Ringed with a palisade-like metal fence, to keep toddlers from straying, there was something vaguely prehistoric in the geometry and context of this place – a fortification in a woodland clearing. Whilst woodland may provoke deep-seated fears, it is also a place of adventure; a place for exploring and a place to play.  My walk was on a school day, so no children were at play in the woods. Only dog walkers.

The valley woodlands of northern Plymouth may appear as scrappy remnants, but in terms of area of trees they occupy, there is not much difference between their extent now and that on the 1840s tithe map. What has disappeared is the farmland these pockets of woodland stood within; this is what has been largely built upon. These city woodlands – and I walked through Woodland Wood, Cann Wood and Whitleigh Wood – make a significant contribution to ecological connectivity here, as well as having clear leisure and well-being value to local people. They are not just woodlands but a mosaic of habitats, including some ancient woodland, coppice, hedgerows, species-rich grasslands, scrub and streams. All in all, about 218 different plants, 25 species of invertebrates, 10 types of bird, plus mammals and bats have been recorded in Woodland Wood alone.

The easterly end of Woodland Wood is thin, and it was here that the urban environment was most intrusive. As I walked west, the width of the reserve thickened, subduing the sights and sounds of the suburban to the edge of my attention. The shouts of children, the buzzing of tools, and the white noise of traffic were replaced by cheeping, whistling and cawing birds. Litter and fly-tipping is the other intruder here; recognised in the local nature reserve documentation as a problem. But it wasn’t only here. Station Road, out to Warleigh Point was also strewn with rubbish, the ‘No Fly-tipping’ signs nailed to the road-side trees futile in their demand.

Crossing Budshead Road I headed for Budshead Creek. For a while the view of Budshead stream is lost here, flanked as it is at this point by a straggling reclamation yard; a trove of unwanted, mostly metallic, machinery. I peered between slats of wooden fence to glimpse the poor treasure in the valley bottom, fascinated by organised muddle. Feeling intrusive, I moved on.

For a few hundred metres the route follows streets and pavement, but not for long. A footpath begins, and I was able to get back off the road and down to the estuary edge.  On this corner of Budshead Creek and Tamerton Lake you can get up close to the intertidal mudflats and small lawns of salt marsh. Here I was treated to a show of common scurvy grass which was flowering with its pleasing white petals. High in vitamin C, this plant gets the ‘scurvy’ part of its name for its use by sailors to combat scurvy, caused by the deficient diet on board ship. Goodness knows where it gets the ‘grass’ part of its name from, for it is not the least bit grass-like, and isn’t a grass but a perennial herb.

It was at this point on the walk that it felt like a threshold had been reached. Not only was I transitioning from freshwater to salt, but also from city to countryside, and from down-market to up-market. Suddenly houses became detached, plots more spacious, and gardens more salubrious. The rural premium felt like it happened suddenly here. I had reached the edge of the city, and the residential stopped. But not for long. Only a few fields separate Whitleigh from Tamerton Foliot, a village, very much on the edge. It is able to hide, mostly out of view, from the city, sheltered by the valley ridges, but these days, only a few hundred metres separate Tamerton from being incorporated.

I didn’t linger in Tamerton Foliot on my outward journey and pressed on, circumnavigating Tamerton Lake, where I spied a little egret perched on a large tree, fallen prostrate in the estuarine mud. Tamerton Lake is itself but a small part of the Tamar Estuaries Complex Special Protected Area (SPA), an important habitat for feeding and roosting for over wintering avocet and the little egret.

I found Station Road, heading to Warleigh Wood, in comparison with other bits of the walk, a little monotonous. For a time, up until the post war years, the fields here, like many in the Tamar Valley were orchards and market gardens, able to get their produce up to London in quick-smart time, with the coming of the railways. These have all gone, although I did see a field that seemed to have a crop of common reed in it. I have not seen this plant sown as a crop before, only in natural settings. A bit of googling showed me that it is increasingly being valued as a sustainable biomass source, is resilient in its ecological tolerances, whilst also providing useful habitat.

At the end of Station Road is – you guessed it – a station! An operational train line from Gunnislake through to Plymouth still runs through here (although the station is not in use any more). This originally opened in 1890 as the Lydford to Devonport line, traversing the Bere peninsula to cross the deep Tavy estuary. The bridge, according to Historic England, consists of eight spans of iron ‘bowstring braced’ girders on seven pairs of iron-clad circular piers spanning the water. At each end, over the tidal mud, the form of the bridge is different, with a stone viaduct of ‘segmental arches’.

Now that I had reached the furthest point, it was time for coffee and cake. I rested on a log bench at Warleigh Point, and breathed in the salt air and views to Cargreen.  Warleigh Woods, a Devon Wildlife site, is special for being a fine example of ancient and semi-natural coastal oak woodland. It is also home to a few wild service trees – not a species I had ever heard of. Apparently, the wild service tree is an hermaphrodite that likes the limestone soils found at Warleigh. It bears edible fruit, and is a good indicator of ancient woodland. Another reason why Warleigh is special is that it is the only place in Britain that supports a population of the triangular club-rush.

Fuelled on my cake I turned for my return leg, re-tracing my steps along station road, where some heavily guised limestone kilns, a long- abandoned quay, and the degraded hull of a wooden vessel protruding from the mud were the only hints of former riverine trade and industry. Back in Tamerton Foliot I made a bee-line for the church. I suspected the doors would be locked to the casual visitor, and I wasn’t disappointed. Unable to mooch about inside, and tiring now I headed up into Cann Woods from Milford Lane, a substantial and beautiful city woodland, home to birds like nightjar, goldfinch, blackbird, green woodpecker, song thrush, swallow and bullfinch.

I ambled for about five minutes until, at a junction, I was unsure which way to go. Not because I was lost but because I wanted to walk the more interesting path. Luckily there was a dog walker behind me so I asked him. Peter, an incredibly sprightly 81 year old, recommended the higher path. We walked together for a while, up the slope; Peter’s breathing unaffected by the steep climb; an octogenarian more than able to keep up with his keen spaniel.

Peter left me at the junction of Cann Wood and Whitleigh Wood. This pair of woods was my favourite part of the walk. They felt substantial and tranquil; big enough to keep the city and its litter at bay. My experience of this place was as an insider looking out, but the management plan offers a different perspective on its value -‘due to its topographical prominence it is also highly visible within the local low-lying landscape’. This statement reminded me of the importance on my walking to stop and try and place my perspective outside of myself.

At the end of Whitleigh Woods, where the plot narrowed, I chose a steep path to the road above. The marginal ground was another threshold moment, returning back to tarmac, litter and, rather overpoweringly, the pungent and unanticipated scatter of cack; some bagged, some not.

I had managed almost 19 km and my legs were tired now, on this last stretch up Tamerton Road. My circuit of some of the rural spaces of north Plymouth was over, but as with every walk, there is something new I have taken from the experience and given me other ideas of places to explore. I have been reminded of the fact that, within city limits, urban spaces are not devoid of valuable nature and walking places. And, whilst there may have been a little more litter than in fully rural places, but let’s not kid ourselves that the countryside is pristine. On this walk I only managed to see a few of them, but now I have Ham Woods, King’s Tamerton Woods and the city woods of the Forder Valley and Plym Valley on my list.