The Witch Trees

[yen_powell]

An online reference to a local legend of dancing witches being turned into stone trees got me searching out more information. Sure enough the place existed and only about 18 miles away from where I live.

A bit of a search on GSV showed that you could drive as far as a small medieval church and then walk through the grave yard and around a small moat to see the trees. Also mentioned online was that the trees were on private property and you had to walk around them on public footpaths.

I found the road leading into a farm and the church. Straight away I saw signs forbidding vehicles to pass a certain point on the road, not to turn around there, not to park on the verge, not to park on the road, keep all dogs on leads, walk only on the footpath, keep out of the fenced areas etc, I have never seen so many signs in one place. I suspect the ruined trees are all that survived from a once lush wood, all the trees being turned into wooden and paper signs.

I parked a metre off the road in an area that was once grassed verge but had been scrubbed out by vehicles leaving the farm yard and cutting the corner, just next to a sign saying No Parking. I figured if the verge was private they would have put their  fence around it so it was part of the road and there were no properly legal No Parking signs, they were just bluff and bluster. 

Leaving my bike I walked through the church path gates. This was heavily signed, forbidding everything you could think of, plus a few things I hadn't. I made a note to try these things later on. The path turned a sharp corner and there was the abandoned church, fencing surrounded it with, you've guessed it, plenty of signs warning me to be good. The church looked fantastic, I will be returning when it is open again, the sign people look to be doing a good job fixing it up so I shouldn't really have a dig about the signs.

I walked through one of the smallest graveyards I have ever seen and in front of me was a gate (multi-signed of course) and a short path to a second gate, also signed. I could see the tops of a few creepy looking trees the other side of a hedge. A quick loop around the moat and I was on a grass path next to the trees. I took a few pictures and carried on to a ploughed areal with a cross field path and took a few pictures from the side. It is a bizarre site, the trees are obviously dead but haven't rotted away like I'd expect. There are lots of new trees which looked recently planted.

When I returned to my bike I was just getting ready to leave when an old man came cycling up and we had a chat. 45 minutes later he was still chatting. He had the uncanny knack of never finishing any sentence before starting the next one which made him quite hard to follow. Subjects he covered included, the Battle of Maldon, Viking raids, the manufacture of pressed house doors in the 1970s, shift and night working, Anglo Saxon coinage and the cost of cycle inner tubes. In the end I told him I had to leave for an urgent appointment and he rode off to look at the church I had just left.

 

 

 

[yen_powell]

[yen_powell]

[boboneleg]

Lol, you’re not wrong about the signs

Were there any signs forbidding discarding soiled kecks 

 

[XTreme]

Yen skulking round graveyards again? 

Great report Yen.....and I've never seen trees anything like that before! Really strange!

[yen_powell]

13 hours ago, XTreme said:

Yen skulking round graveyards again? 

Great report Yen.....and I've never seen trees anything like that before! Really strange!

Some dirty bastard hung his underwear up to dry on them I suppose, done for them all.

[Pedro]

Someone got a discount at the health and safety shop when buying signs!

 

[MooN]

I'm clearly in the wrong business, I should move to the uk and set up sign printing. that's firkin ridiculous!

 great story Yen.

[XTreme]

50 minutes ago, MooN said:

I should move to the uk

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

I've got a bit of sympathy with the excessive signage. Thats grown up out of bad experiences.

People come for a walk down where I live but don't stick to the path because they want a gander at other parts of the farm and it's feckin dangerous. You'd be driving a tractor at full pelt and some gormless twat thats not supposed to be there would suddenly appear in front of you. Tractors do not stop easily.

Or annoyingly some arsehole would decide that the lane was quiet so it was ok to park their car up and go off for a walk blocking access. 

One woman asked if it was ok to take some pictures, we said yes. She stepped backwards off a bank fell and broke her ankle and then tried to sue us. 

I have many more stories about the public being thick as shit on the farm doing stuff that makes you wonder how they're still alive or why they want to cause so much damage so I get their pain!