The Bulby oak

The Bulby oak, silhouetted against a darkening sky on a January morning in 1999

The wayside trees that can be found around Bourne tell a story of the changing face of our countryside and a perfect example of this can be seen on a country road near Bulby, five miles north west of Bourne. Here you will find an old oak tree growing in the hedgerow, and as every picture tells a story, so does every tree and this was told by the Woodland Trust who interpreted the photograph: 

It is quite amazing that such a mine of information should be available from one picture and prompts us to think that perhaps we should all start taking a much closer interest in the trees around us. Britain's ancient forests once stretched from coast to coast but today woodland cover in the United Kingdom is only 10% of the total land area, compared to France which has 27% and Morocco which has 19%. In the last fifty years, more than half of Britain's ancient woodland has been lost because of storms, disease, development and neglect and so the planting of new trees is of increasing importance. 

The Bulby oak photographed the following summer

Wayside trees can also be found in many other places around Bourne where land has been cleared over the centuries for intensive farming, leaving them at the field's edge and alongside drainage ditches. There are several fine examples on the A151 on the way to Edenham village, north west of Bourne, where the road is lined with oaks whose ancient trunks are covered with ivy and whose canopy envelops the road in shade as summer progresses.