Our ancient woodlands in Cambridgeshire annually become very wet and muddy in winter exacerbated by the profile of the rides - the central/main paths - getting eroded in the middle, so retaining water instead of it draining away, with many years of access heavily compacting the soil.
In recent years the Trust's reserves team have experimented with a trial re-profiling of a 200m stretch on the main ride at Waresley & Gransden Woods.
Sian Williams, Senior Monitoring & Research Officer explains: “While the work looked drastic at the time, involving moving soil with a digger and loss of ride vegetation, the re-profiled section is now higher in the middle, with new ditches cleared to either side helping water to drain away. Impacts were monitored by recording and mapping plant species before and after - plants re-colonised very quickly and by June 2022, the ride had mostly greened up. By 2023, the vegetation was long enough to need mowing, full of plants including lots of flowering nectar sources. This is good news for other potential re-profiling projects, and shows that it can be done without a major impact on the flora.”
An additional small-scale trial of sowing locally collected seed of some woodland species started in 2022 in a small 27m long x 1m wide strip. The re-profiled section was closed to visitors until August 2023 to help the vegetation to establish - not everyone respected the signs and there was still some regular foot traffic along the ride; the area will remain monitored for the next two years to gauge impacts.
