Last updated 19:35, Thursday, 20 March 2008

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Shades of the past: Once, royal forests covered vast areas of the country. They were the king’s domain, reserved for his hunting

Exploring Woodland: The North-West & The Lakes, edited by Graham Blight. Frances Lincoln and The Woodland Trust. £7.99

The name Giggle Alley Woods might conjure images of fragile maidens being gently amused by doting swains. Giggle Alley is down on the west coast at Eskdale.

What you will find there is a secret Japanese garden, a lily pond, arched bridges, and narrow, stone-faced paths.

However, this imaginative creation of Lakeland’s great gardener, Thomas Mawson, in 1914, is fighting for its life against the encroachments of rampant rhododendrons and willful bamboo. It is as though the artifice has risen up and rebelled against its creator.

Giggle Alley is just one of the areas of almost forgotten woodland to be found in Cumbria and the north west.

Borrowdale has riches of its own. Those tourists who scramble out of their cars to view that immense glacial erratic Bowder Stone should wander through the leafy shade in search of the hairy wood ant. Or explore the rich variety of Johnny’s Wood further up the valley “littered with moss-covered boulders and overhung by branches of mature oak”.

Borrowdale is rich in mosses, lichens and liverworts. Its unique climate makes it our very own Atlantic rain forest.

At the southernmost edge of the county and the northern edge of Lancaster, in Silverdale, is some very special woodland. Here is found, among the Scots pines, junipers and buckthorns the Sorbus lancastriensis – one of the country’s rarest whitebeams. The Silverdale trees struggle to maintain their existence on the limestone pavement and the arduous conditions have reduced them to semi-bonsai forms.

Our woods survive in various forms. Once, royal forests covered vast areas of the country. They were the king’s domain reserved for his hunting and were often areas of open rather than wooded land, like the King’s Forest of Geltsdale.

Later, woodlands disappeared before the spread of agriculture and later industrialism and urbanisation, but these very woods, especially in the South Lakes, were cultivated and coppiced to serve the needs of industry, from pit-props to bobbins and the Forestry Commission’s vast estates are farmed as commercial woodland.

Elsewhere, especially around the Lancashire conurbations woodlands are nurtured as green lungs for the grey cities.

The forces destroying the woods were often responsible for their salvation. Our much-depleted woodlands should be treasured. This attractive new guide demonstrates how varied and special they are.

At Findlandrigg out on the Solway Plain, the lucky walker might observe red squirrels among the Scots pines. If he walks past the warehouses at Kingmoor into the nature reserve he will be walking through one of the oldest nature reserves in the country. It will be 100 years old in five years’ time.

Bilberries are to be found on the acidic soils of High Stand, near Armathwaite, in the autumn and in the outstanding Miltonrigg Woods near Brampton you can find more than 200 species of flowering plant, including seven of sedge and five of rush. Bird life includes sparrowhawks, kestrels, tawny owls, great spotted woodpeckers, redstarts and coal tits.

In the nearby romantic chasm of Irthing Gorge the fortunate visitor may see badgers. There is a whole wealth of woodland to explore and this handy and attractive little guide is the ideal companion.

Exploring Woodland is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com