Badger Bushcraft Secures A New Woodland Site
Written by Phil Brown, Badger Bushcraft Blog Monday, 25 April 2011 10:18
We are delighted to announce we have recently secured a new private woodland site to run both bushcraft day courses, overnight and potentially longer courses near our base in Kent.
A recent lead and inquiry from our website site initiated an interesting series of telephone calls and meetings with an exceptionally progressive and proactive land owner who has fully embraced what we are trying to achieve with our educational programmes, qualifications, family bushcraft, nature based education and primitive technology courses here at Badger Bushcraft. 
The land we now have access to is stunning! There is some 100 acres of woodland for various bushcraft activities with 20 acres of pasture for camping. The woodland, although I have not explored all of it, features sweet chestnut coppice with oak standards that is being bought back into rotation with areas of beech, Norway maple, yew, ash and some small interspersed areas of softwoods. There are also areas of hazel understory that, with careful management and harvesting, will provide sufficient materials for many bushcraft and primitive technology projects whilst improving biodiversity within the woodland area.
Set on free draining chalk the site should provide easy access for our Land Rover Defender to get kit in and out of the wood all year round. The pasture area will make an exceptionally dry and comfortable place for camping over. The woodland is easily accessible from many Kent locations – Canterbury is an 18 minute drive, Ashford is a 12 minute drive and Maidstone 34 minutes by car. The travel is very simple and straight forward from either junctions 8 or 9 of the M20 or junction 6 of the M2.
There are an abundance of bluebells, wood anemone and the odd early purple orchid. Signs of animal activity included foxes, badgers, roe and fallow deer – not to mention all the other usual woodland creatures one would expect.
Once the felled timber from the sweet chestnut cants is cleared we will have a better idea of the lay of the land especially in the area we are proposing to use for our bushcraft courses. We look forward with great interest to see the felled chestnut cants spring to live as the dormant seed bank, held in stasis within the soil, can now burst forward with new life – I suspect that next spring will be beautiful and the potential benefit to both a host of flora and fauna can not be understated.
We will keep you posted on how this site and our plans develop through the Badger Bushcraft Blog which can be found here
