Summary
The group Clare walks with see Ashdown Forest as a national treasure in its own right – and largely an unsung one. They think it’s remarkable that this ten square miles of open access land has survived, only thirty miles south of London. Estate agents in the past even described it as ‘Scotland in Sussex’. A local resident and podcaster Eka Morgan is keen to reconnect visitors from far and wide back to the natural world of Ashdown Forest. Many of the 1.5 million annual visitors don’t understand that it’s actually not a forest at all, but a heath – one of the rarest habitats in the world, rarer than tropical rainforest. So, she is using audio to tell stories of the Forest with a podcast. Joining Eka on the walk are Tom Forward a wildlife guide and bird mimic, James Adler of the Conservators of Ashdown Forest and Kari Dunbar, whose new job focuses on raising dog owners’ awareness of the impact of dogs in wildlife habitats.
In memory of James Adler Chief Executive Officer Ashdown Forest
Producer: Maggie Ayre
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Eleven climbers appeared to have died on the world's second highest mountain K2. |
| 0:06.0 | It was one of the deadliest days in mountaineering history. |
| 0:10.0 | Rock falls, avalanches. |
| 0:11.0 | Huge pieces of ice. All are big enough to kill you. |
| 0:14.0 | He just flew out into Devoid and he was gone. |
| 0:17.0 | How did it all go so wrong? |
| 0:19.0 | And is it really worth risking death to feel alive? Why would |
| 0:23.2 | somebody pay to go to a place called the death cell on a vacation? Extreme, peak danger. With me, |
| 0:29.9 | Natalia Melman Petrazella. Listen to the full series now. First on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:45.6 | The natural music of a spring day in the Ashdowne forest. |
| 0:50.7 | Tom, can you identify the various voices we heard there? Yeah, we've got |
| 0:55.3 | Linitz in the gorse behind us and they've got this lovely kind of syncopated, jazzy, jaunty, |
| 1:01.5 | jaunty song which on a hot sunny day from the crackling gorse pods sounds, oh, makes me feel summary. |
| 1:09.0 | And then there was a skylock here here a minute ago, but it's slightly |
| 1:11.8 | distant. Those are the two main ones that we can hear at the moment. We've paused and open, |
| 1:16.6 | looks like a sort of chalky path, but it's sandy, actually, isn't it? White sandy path, really |
| 1:21.7 | wide with furrows through it from the feet that have come by. Gorse and Heather are around us and miles |
| 1:29.3 | and miles and miles of open sky, open space, woodland. Ashdown Forest isn't technically a forest, is it? |
| 1:37.3 | No, not in the sense of us all thinking of forest being woodland. Most of it, 60% of it, is open heathland and that's what we're kind |
| 1:45.5 | of looking out over at the moment. So heather, gorse, bracken, moor grass, and then out into the |
| 1:51.5 | distance we've got the lovely rolling south downs and on a clear day you can sometimes see |
| 1:55.2 | all the way to the sea. So that's what a lot of people come here for us, that sense of openness |
... |
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