It was long! I snapped this picture after 20 minutes in the queue, looking back on the Bridgewater Monument cool surround view at the top, a must for older kids. After lunch, we got on with the real goal of the day.
The visitor center was nice, but we were in for a longer type of adventure to a year-old tree. The small map proved to be very useful in navigating Ashridge Estate, as the forest was criss-crossed with 30 miles of trails and it was sometimes hard to tell big path from forest road from really important trail. Also, whatever signposts existed were designed with confusion in mind.
Check out this sign, at one of the junctions. It was hilarious and very British a Christmas pudding? How was that helping unless I had a horse? Because in the UK, public bridleways are multi-use trails for horses, cyclists and hikers. The forest in that area was much older than around the visitor center and with the low winter sun barely illuminating the trees, the forest was indeed magical. The best was yet to come, as our final destination was Frithsden Beeches, an ancient part of Ashridge Estate where trees have been left to grow without pollarding for the past years.
Branches would be cut from the trunk to around a metre or so off the ground and this would then allow new branches to grow unchecked by browsing animals such as deer, before the process was repeated. After years without pollarding, many of these old beeches took on fantastic shapes, such as the gigantic beech used for the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Yes, sorry to break to you, but that willow was a beech. We would probably never have found the Whomping Without without the geocaching. Past Berkhamstead Common and Coldharbour Farm, we sort of lost our way in the myriad of alternative paths and almost gave up. It was only available to Premium members so the night before, I had splurged and upgraded to being a Geocaching premium member.
As soon as I found a 3G connection, we uploaded the geocache on my phone and got started. As the crow flies, we were only m away from the tree which meant roughly 20 minutes. My year-old took the iphone in her hands and followed the directional arrow, giving us regular updates as to the distance. As geocaching directions use the shortest distance as opposed to the shortest trail distance, this geocaching quest sent us through some pretty thick undergrowth and fallen trees.
Particularly fun was an old fallen beech tree covered in ice and moss that we had to climb in order to continue our quest on the other side. It was a bit of a balancing act on the branches, but we did it. Finally, we were only 25m from the tree and found it. The majestic old beech tree was lying all over the forest floor, split in half and spread out in three different directions, slowly rotting away for the benefit of forest bugs.
Poor Whomping Willow, victim of old age, decaying funghi and wind. Two of our girls climbed the highest part of the stump to prepare cups of hot chocolate while the youngest one looked for the geocache with us. That is just brilliant, what an incredible tree. Such fabulous surprise too, GG and Bug must have been super excited! Geocaching sounds excellent, we must check it out.
Everything I read about geocaching sounds good, right down to halving the number of sweeties needed! Thanks for joining me on Country Kids. What a brilliant day! And wow, the actual Whomping Willow! What a wonderful tree — keep meaning to try geocaching, but never seem to have a spare day in the hols to do it. My oldest recognised it straight away. Oh how cool! Geocaching looks and sounds fab. I keep reading about it and I really need to get organised and give it a try. My eldest would absolutely love it.
During the Battle of Hogwarts , Ron simply used a Levitation Charm to levitate a fallen twig into the knot which worked as well. The Whomping Willow was a very valuable, very violent tree planted alone in the middle of the school grounds. It was planted the same year that Remus Lupin arrived at Hogwarts c.
The Willow was so dangerous that it kept other people from entering the passage and encountering the werewolf. Sirius Black told Slytherin classmate Severus Snape how to stop the tree from whomping him, and somehow convinced him to do it on the night of a full moon. Snape was curious and it almost got him killed by Lupin transformed into a "fully-grown werewolf" at the end of the tunnel.
James Potter managed to pull him out in time to save his life. Students used to play a game, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk of the tree. A boy called Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye, and they were forbidden to go near it. In , Harry Potter's Nimbus broomstick was destroyed when it fell from the air into the Whomping Willow's branches. Sirius Black captures Ron. In , Sirius Black, in his animagus form of a large black dog , dragged Ron Weasley into the secret passage beneath the Willow leading to Hogsmeade's Shrieking Shack.
They were quickly followed by Harry and Hermione, then later by Lupin and Snape.
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