Savernake Forest

Location: Marlborough, Wiltshire

Liminal places, by definition, are edges. It therefore follows that Savernake Forest should be disallowed as here, in the grandest of English woodlands, you don't just stand at a threshold, you plunge yourself into a different world.

It is said, quite correctly no doubt, that there was a time when a squirrel could travel the length and breadth of the country without touching the ground. in Savernake Forest you can imagine what that world would have been like.

Or you almost can, as walking in Savernake you realise how limited we humans are being unable to fly, or even climb particularly well. In a great forest like this there seems to be at least two worlds; one of the ground and the undergrowth which we experience, and another in the canopy overhead that we don't. We are like creature who live on the bottom of the ocean, and who never get to see the waves.

But whilst you may imagine that being in a big forest, like being at the bottom of the ocean, is to be lost in a place with no landmarks, in Savernake that is not the case. With a simple map it is easy to find your way about. Even without a map it is always possible to at least know where you're been, as the paths, the clearing, the density of the trees, the undergrowth, or lack of it, and above all the mighty individual trees, all provide a memorable landmarks.

And of course it is the trees that make the forest. There are mighty oaks a-plenty. Seven are names in on the OS map, which is a fairly mythic number of oaks, but there are far more with personal monikers: Big Belly Oak, Saddle Oak (One and Two), Cathedral Oak, Bumble Oak, Queen Oak, New Queen Oak, Spider Oak, Amity Oak and King of Limbs. The latter is worth finding, not only because Radiohead named an album out of it, for also because it sits in a quieter part of the forest and so, with it's huge, but lazily reclined limbs, it stands out as a destination in its own right. At least two of those trees are over a thousand years old. There is nowhere else in Europe with this many great trees.

But it's not just about oaks. There are the avenues of magnificent beech trees, as well as the weird and wonderful specimens in the arboretum, which range from a monkey puzzle tree to a mighty redwood.

As you might imagine, a place like this has acquired a fair amount of myth and legend. The nearby town of Marlborough supposedly gets it's name because Merlin was buried there, but that is surely just a medieval mistake. Ghostly horses are supposedly heard on the Grand Avenue, some with headless riders, and a large black dog is claimed to stalk the grounds of the nearby hotel.

But the truth is Savernake Forest does not need these embellishments. If you want to make the forest a true liminal area all you need to do is visit, not on a summer's day, but on a winter night, preferably when the moon is full, and the stars illuminate the forest floor through the bare branches of the trees. Add the barking of the red deer and the mating cry of a vixen, and you have as wonderful a place of mystery and terror as you could ever wish for.