Look no fences: A visit to Knepp wildland

At the weekend Frog and I (sans Dog) visit my brother D and his family in West Sussex only a couple of miles from Knepp, the site of the first (I think) large-scale rewilding project in the UK and the subject of that fabulous book Wilding which I’ve mentioned several times before in this blog.

On Saturday we head to the estate for a walk. Because visitors are exhorted – extremely nicely – to stick to designated routes so as not to disturb wildlife, my well-organised brother has acquired a leaflet and chosen ours: Castle Walk. It's the longest – 8.8km.

As soon as we drive up the track to the carpark I start crying. I think it’s as much that somebody is doing something so extraordinarily brave and positive for the environment as it is the sight of the scrub and scruffy woods on either side (which as you will know if you are a diligent reader of this blog are exactly my sort of thing and increasingly hard to find).

We take a quick look at the safari office . . .

In the safari office - a blackboard for listing species spotted

. . . before entering the estate through this arch of deer antlers. It’s like entering Jurassic Park.

The entrance to Knepp's wildland

We twirl round the glamping/camping site and the yurts where yoga and other courses are held (for some of which my dear niece M does the cooking). The yoga yurt is surprisingly warm and spacious, and flooded with light from the transparent centre to its dome.

The yoga yurt (left)

We study the adjacent wild-swimming pool. It’s a bit murky and I can see slimy leg-grabbing things growing up from the bottom, but I’m almost tempted.

The wild-swimming pool

Then we head out to the bush.

It’s not long before we emerge into this. 

Our first sight of Knepp wildland. (My picture does not do it justice.)

I start crying again. I’ve never seen anything like it in this country before. There are no fences, and all I can see is scrub and trees. I feel as if I’m in a dream or a long-lost memory.

As explained in Wilding, scrub – long considered worthless - is in fact the richest wildlife habitat. Ecologists are beginning to think that our land’s natural state is not woodland but a mixture of woods, scrub, wetland and grassland. Knepp is testing this idea by leaving the land and its inhabitants to do their own thing.

Then a flock of storks appear. I'm not expecting them. I didn’t know there were storks at Knepp. They wheel over us for many minutes and I imagine that they’re performing just for us. I cry some more.

Storks. (Again, apologies for the picture. Not only did the birds keep moving but it was one of those sunny days when all I could see on the camera-screen  was myself.) 

Now we understand better some tall posts near the entrance.

Tall posts topped with untidy piles of twigs. We think they must be stork nests (or attempts to encourage the storks to nest).

Later D points me towards an article Isabella Tree (the author of Wilding) has written recently for the Guardian. It relates how storks last nested successfully in England in 1416 and are now in decline everywhere because of loss of wetlands and meadows and fatalities from power-lines and roads. The Knepp birds come from Poland and were released at Knepp only this year.

For several hours we wander the paths, looking at birds and wildflowers and fungi and a slow-worm, and eating blackberries that taste better than any I’ve eaten this year.

As well as cooking, M does postgraduate studies into the interaction between humans and their environment. We talk about our nomadic ancestors and how as humans we're meant to walk most of the time.

We take a wrong turning and stumble across a lake. Wilding tells how they ‘untamed’ the river which runs through the estate, and I've read somewhere that they aim when they can to reintroduce beavers – the best agents of waterway wilding. But this lake according to D is the result of ironworkings. We think we see a great crested grebe on it.

Back on the path, one of us points out some deer in a distant clearing, but I can’t see them. Then however on an expanse of grass next a wood we encounter an unmissable herd of cattle . . .

Wild cattle (aurochs) are extinct but these - English longhorns - are a near equivalent

. . . which look fearsome and have young with them, but ignore us.

A safari group - the first people we have encountered - is also looking at the cattle. Frog is more interested in their strange vehicle than in the animals.

We see a platform in a tree . . .

Tree platform

. . . and climb up to it. To one side is another lake (or an untamed river) . . .

View from the tree platform

 . . . and to the other, tree canopy which makes me feel like a child again and climbing trees.

The view the other way

Further on, deep in the woods, we nearly collide with a pig the exact colour of the dead bracken . . .

A Tamworth pig, a substitute for the wild boar for which Knepp does not have a licence

The walks leaflet exhorts us not to get close to the animals but we have no choice. It takes no notice of us however.

Another pig lumbers in our direction snorting. We think she’s going to attack us but at the last minute she puts her nose down and starts rooting for food. Perhaps she was simply saying hello, we think, or excited at the thought of eating.

The pig which lumbered towards us

Some piglets squeal in the undergrowth but I only catch glimpses of them and it’s too dark to take a photograph. I worry that they’re frightened. ‘No,’ say the others. ‘They’re annoyed because their mother’s gone.’ I move off anyway.

We cross a road and enter another wood and, even though it doesn’t look that different from the one we’ve just been in, we all speed up.

    ‘This isn’t part of the estate,’ says my brother D. ‘It’s not rewilded.’

    ‘It’s as if we sensed that before we knew it,’ I say to Frog.

    ‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘There’s no “dawdle factor” here.’

We arrive at the deer park in front of Knepp Castle where Isabella Tree and her husband live. On the edge of a wood in dappled shade we see red deer.

Red deer

For the first time in my life I hear a red-deer stag make his autumn, rutting-season cry – a loud throaty moo designed I presume to scare off rivals. It’s impressive. He then scampers off after a couple of hinds who have run away. I feel sorry for them.

Red deer stag, pausing his mating behaviour briefly so as to stare at us (and pose for his picture)

In the distance, way out on the grassland, we spot wild (Exmoor) ponies.

We’ve now seen each of the four species of animal Knepp has introduced in order to ‘imitate the mix of herbivores that would have grazed this land thousands of years ago’ (as the wildland leaflet says). Each I realise favours a slightly different habitat, none of them anything like the uniform fields in which we plonk their domesticated versions. They all look healthy and none has fled from or attacked us as farm animals do. It’s as if they see us as equals. We’ve been happy wandering – as our nomadic ancestors did - and the animals seem happy about us being there.

We find a bird hide over a third lake and sit down to rest and chat about water-birds.

Four hours have gone and we’ve missed lunch but there’s one more thing to see – the remains of the original Knepp Castle which was destroyed by the Roundheads in 1648.

    They haven’t left much.

The remains of the first Knepp Castle

Around the ruin, fences have gone, the grass is rough and yellow not bright green and cultivated, and the river is crammed with reeds. I hope this is because the area is a new addition to the rewilding project.

We’ve been exploring the southern section of the estate, now 15 or so years into rewilding, but the northern section is not part of the project. I hope too that this will be one day be included.

For me there can never be enough wilderness. In a previous post I wrote about my vision of a future in which the current situation is reversed: in which wild countryside is the norm and reserves are where we grow our food. Now I wonder whether that goes far enough.

There are many good scientific reasons for rewilding (and Isabella Tree explains them with her usual aplomb in Wilding) but for me it’s a spiritual thing. It’s about releasing control. It’s about remembering that we are small and nature is big. It’s about relearning how to be simple.

I know that the visit to Knepp is one of the key events of my life.


If you want to know more about rewilding in general as well as other rewilding projects, have a look at the website of the four-year-old charity Rewilding Britain.