Why This 150 Year Old Tree Will Get Whacked?

This tree is a marked man. I feel that it is going to get whacked sometime soon.

I can’t believe I’m making a video about a tree, but here we are. There’s a new development going up near my usual dog walk, and this huge, ancient tree stands right in the path of the access road. I don’t know if it has a preservation protection order or if anyone's fighting for it, but something tells me its days are numbered. So, I thought I'd capture it while it's still here. Ever lost a place like this? Let me know in the comments.

Why This 150 Year Old Tree Will Get Whacked?



TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

It says "Reptile Receptor Site. Take extra care while walking." What the hell is that?

I want to tell you a story about a tree and a development. The development is happening behind me. I don't know if you can see this road. It's been half built, and the road ends here. And then after the road, there's this tree over here. That's the tree that this story is about because I have a feeling that this tree might not be with us for much longer.

I'd love to tell you where this is, but I won't—partly to protect my privacy, but also because it's probably a story that could happen anywhere. We're in the middle of the story. It hasn't finished yet. Like the road—the road hasn't finished yet. It's an access road. It just runs from down there. It's not fully built yet. There's even a footpath or cycle path just to the side of it. I don't know if you can see that.

And it's a straight line. And the straight line, if you keep it going, goes through there. And I don't know if you can see a problem with that. I'm not a construction expert or a civil engineer, but even I can see that the straight line of that road is very likely not going to have enough room to get around this quite large tree.

I'm not an environmentalist. I'm not even a "nimby." This tree probably affects—I don't know—it’s probably only known to about 50 dog walkers. Maybe the number of local people that are aware of it runs into the hundreds—not that much. And I'm not that sentimental about it. It's a pretty nondescript tree in a nondescript field. This is going to be turned into an industrial estate. And this field here, just on the other side, is going to be turned into 85 houses.

And there's a footpath. This is a public footpath. I've just come off it. But the footpath did run through the field, and there was planning permission to divert the footpath. That's why the footpath kind of curves around this way. This road over here—it's going to plow straight through here, and I've got a feeling that this tree is a marked tree. I think this tree is going to die in the next 12 months.

I heard from someone, another walker, and she was really upset because the building work was in full swing. She said that this tree has a preservation order on it, but it's right in the path of this access road. So I don't know if that's true. I don't know if it does have a preservation order. Whether it does or doesn't, it's in the way of a road that needs to run through here—a little side access road.

I'll take you a bit closer to it. I've not actually got this close to the tree before. I've always walked past it, and I've wanted to make this video for a while, just to document this tree in case something bad happens to it. At least someone, somewhere, has recorded this. So you can come along on this little piece of history that I'm trying to capture.

It's massive. I don't know if it comes across on camera, but it's about a meter and a half—maybe more, maybe nearly two meters thick at the base in the trunk. I'm not a tree expert. I don't even know what kind of tree this is, but it's huge. Should I stand up against it? I'm standing right up against it, and it dwarfs me. I'm not the slimmest guy in town, but even so, this tree is bigger than even me.

I don't know. This has happened before, you know? I remember my parents-in-law had some trees, and there was some construction work and—oops—a digger accidentally crashed through it. And so, you know, that's it. It's a shame, isn't it? A tree went.

And look, this road is on a complete collision course. Let me drive it through with this. Are they going to knock it down? Should we even care if it does go? I don't think all trees should be saved. I think it's funny, isn't it, that we think it's heresy to remove trees? There's something particularly... I don't know. There's just something a bit off about this one. It just doesn't seem right that, for the sake of maybe a meter or two that way, that thing that's been there probably for a hundred years has to go.

I'll look it up. I'll look up what a 1.8-meter diameter tree—how long that is—and I'll put that on screen now. That's probably how long this tree has been here. If you're better at aging trees than I am, please leave a comment.

I just had to get it on video and just wanted to share it with you because, more and more, I'm videoing my walks with Casper, who's enjoying the field over there. I'm sharing them more and more, and I've got a feeling one day this might disappear. And it just—I don't know—it'd just be a shame not to record it.

I don't think it's a good idea, building here, as well. I mean, obviously, I've got skin in the game. I like walking on these fields. Let me show you footage. I think I took footage—I'll put it on now—of what this was like before the construction work. I knew it was going to happen. I knew there was planning permission. I knew that the footpath was going to be diverted. So I captured this idyllic image of me and Casper just walking into this heavenly, sunset-lit field. I knew time was up.

So it was a reminder to me. It's a good thing. It's a reminder to enjoy what you've got. And I should enjoy this field now while we've got it.

You can really see the profile here. There's the road. It goes there, and it's going to go over the footpath. There were markers that people have kicked down. That marker isn't in the right place, the one you could see earlier, but the road’s kind of got to go up and sort of through that tree.

I'll take you into the other field and show you what's going on there. And it's a tale as old as time, isn't it? It's progress. You know, it's paving paradise for a parking lot. We're paving a nice dog-walk route that has no economic value. It's not even our land, so I shouldn't even complain about it. And I'm not complaining about it because this doesn't belong to us. And yet, in a way, it does.

I'll show you why up there—why it does kind of sort of belong to us.

This is something that the builders have done. It's part of the building work. Let me show you this sign. I've never seen anything like this. It says, "Reptile Receptor Site. Please do not move the fence. Take extra care while walking." What the hell is that?

These fences—they go all the way around this field that's next door to the field that's going to have the building work. And I think it kind of goes under a little bit of the ground. I don't know what "reptile receptor site" means. Does that mean they're going to move the reptiles into here and drop them in here if they find them? Or is it just a place for them to escape into and be measured?

I don't think this is dumping. I don't think it's fly-tipping. But all around the field, the last couple of years, they've had these bits of roofing felt put down. I've got a feeling they're for measuring bugs underneath. Either that or someone has evenly dumped a load of roofing felt around this particular field. But I do think it's for some kind of scientific measurement.

Look, the fence is pretty well built, and it's to, I guess, keep things in the field rather than letting things come into the field. I don't know. Let me know in the comments if you know what a reptile receptor site is.

When the signs went up, I have been careful where I'm walking. And I'm a bit worried about Casper over there doing his digging. I don't know if you can see him, but I've not noticed any reptiles or any snakes or anything. I guess that's what they're for—grass snakes, maybe? I don't know.

So, this is the other field. We're now on the other side. We were over there. The tree that it's going to go through is just there. The road is going to carry on into here.

And the other day, there was some building work. Some builders were in here. I thought this was like the first day of digging the road into this section, but it seemed not. Maybe it was just exploratory work. I've got some footage here. Let's drop that in.

I suppose, on the upside, we'll have a nice road that'll bring us up to here. There is a problem for the builders, which I'm sure they'll overcome—it won't be a problem at all. But this is a bit of a floodplain. This field gets so waterlogged. But this is where the 85 houses are going to be built.

This feels like a bit of a shame because there are deer in here, gallivanting around, galloping, frolicking. It could not be more peaceful. We've had so much fun in this field. I'm so grateful for it. This is where Casper does his weird gamboling—his weird gazelle-like jumping—when the grass gets long.

But I'm very aware that it's someone's field, and they want to make money from it. I completely understand that. It's just a bit of green being taken away, though, isn't it? Although we don't own it, we can at least see it, and we've got public footpaths through it. It's just going to go.

So, who knows? Maybe in future videos, you'll see me walking among construction vehicles. This will all be a massive construction site. I probably won't be allowed in, so maybe I'll be walking here in a few years' time with the houses and the roads already built.

I'm really glad I get to capture this on video. No one's going to watch this video except me, but at least I've got a little piece of it on the internet, on YouTube.

That road is dead straight. It's dead ahead there. You can see the end of the construction site there. I cannot see how the road will not just bulldoze through that massive tree. It's a marked tree. Honestly, its days are numbered, whether it's got a protection order on it or not.

But I'll just show you this—just how much. See there? Lots of molehills. I think this was a former mole house. What do you call a mole home? All the big Labradors love diving into this. Oh no, is Casper going to go in? Please don't go in, Casper. It will stink.

Yeah, it's this. And it looks like a puddle, but that is about the depth of a very large Labrador. It's almost like the thing that Dawn French fell into on The Vicar of Dibley. I should jump into it, shouldn't I? That would get me some views—more than me whining about losing a bit of greenery.

Casper’s very wisely walking around the edge of it. That is so deep under there. And it's not still—actually, water's running out of it down to the stream down there. So the drainage from the whole field—that’s what the water table is like underneath.

I really appreciate you coming along with me on this journey, allowing me to document the final days, months, maybe year of the tree in the background. I'll have to remember to make an update video, but I think I'm going to shoot videos in here anyway, so you'll see this background changing over the next 10, 20, 100 videos.

I still don't know if I should be making videos like this. They're fun for me, and it's really nice to just share these random observations with you. I'm going to call this video a Dad Delivers Success, but obviously, I think I'm going to call a road being plowed through a super ancient tree a Dad Delivers Fail.

What do you think? Have you got a place that you've lost recently that you kind of miss? Feel free to drop it into the comments. It’d be lovely to hear from you.

Thank you for hitting the thumbs up or the subscribe button. I really appreciate you just coming along with these little stories. I shoot one every day, but I don't release all of them.

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