Back To The Woods

Coming back into England from the Continent, I'm struck by just how many trees there are. In Flanders, where we've been staying this past week, they plant them as windbreaks- to shield roads and canals, and as living palisades around isolated farmsteads, but here we grow them everywhere, for their own sakes- because we like them. Our towns and suburbs are full of them- and wherever there's an acre or two we don't happen to be using at the moment we plant a wood. Kent is a densely populated county- or so they say- but unless you're walking down Maidstone High Street or through the docks at Chatham, you don't notice that. What you mostly notice is the trees.