Country diary: 'I've never needed a permit to go for a walk in England before'

Easton Hornstocks, Northamptonshire: A thousand years ago, mastiffs were allowed here if their front claws had been removed. Now it's a national nature reserve, all dogs are bannedThe dawn light astonishes but mostly it's the smell: sharp, delicate, wild garlic, the last of the bluebells, dewy grass. Dappled light is spilled up the trees and on the ground, and swirls, as the leaves casting it sway, like reflections off water. Silver birch limbs, knotted with birch polypore fungus, lie pale on beds of fat-bladed grass. I find an ornate snail on one. Falling leaf litter. Birdsong. This place quietly seethes with life.I've never needed a permit to go for a walk in England before. Easton Hornstocks is an old wood of lime and ash trees close to my home. It's a national nature reserve, and I had to ask for access. It was easy. Free. I had to carry the permit. No bikes; fine, I don't own one. No dogs; ditto. But I didn't know how I felt about the idea. Rankled by the restriction? Or thankful for its sense of privilege?Easton is a village, but Hornstocks is an unfamiliar word, certainly for a wood. There are other odd suffixes to woodland reserves in these parts: Everden Stubbs, Castor Hanglands, Bedford Purlieus. Archaic generics that had fallen obscure in the way that chase or heath hadn't, maybe. One, purlieu, is a relic of the Forest Law, meaning an agricultural area on the edge of the trees. Continue reading...