Discover Discover WILD SITESon your doorstep A visitor’s guide to wildlife sites in the Stour Valley WILD SITES on your doorstep on your About WILD SITES The Kentish Stour Explore the on your doorstep Countryside Partnership WILD SITES This booklet is designed to help you The Kentish Stour Countryside Partnership Get out there! explore and enjoy the fantastic (KSCP) organised the Wild Sites project. There are so many landscapes and special wildlife of the amazing places to The KSCP works to conserve, enhance and promote the enjoy nature and the outdoors in Stour Valley. countryside and urban green space of the Stour Valley. the Stour Valley! The Wild Sites are We work closely with landowners and communities to spread all over the KSCP Partnership To get the best out of your visit, go to our conserve and protect the landscapes, habitats and area (see map). They are very varied, website: www.wildsites.org and click wildlife of our Partnership area. We conserve and ranging in size from a few acres to ‘Explore Sites’ for full details of the sites. enhance all sorts of habitats, including the River Stour hundreds of hectares, from local and other watercourses, woodlands and wildlife rich parks to internationally important Much of the content in this guide book has been grasslands; we also create habitats for wildlife in urban nature reserves, owned and managed produced by participants in the Wild Sites on Your areas. Where we can, we develop opportunities for good by a range of bodies (see back cover). Doorstep project. Hundreds of people took part in access to the countryside and informal recreation. activities focused on wildlife photography, drawing, You can explore large, protected painting, illustration and creative writing. During the Wild Sites project we have worked with art woodlands in the Blean, valuable groups, camera clubs and other community groups, coastal habitats at Sandwich and schools, and a range of partner organisations. Pegwell Bay, precious chalk downland sites in the Kent Downs and extensive Contact KSCP: Forestry Commission woodlands like King’s Wood. And don’t forget urban www.kentishstour.org.uk green spaces like the Ashford Green 03000 410900 Corridor and Hambrook Marshes. There are great opportunities for riverside and coastal walking and cycling. Promoted cycle (and walking) The booklet is divided into themes - the river, wild routes include the Crab and Winkle flowers, trees and woodlands, and so on - with Way, Great Stour Way, Oyster Bay helpful maps that pinpoint where to see the wildlife Trail, and the Viking Trail. Walking illustrated and information on the activities we ran. routes include the Stour Valley Walk, Big Blean Walk and North Downs Wild Sites on Your Doorstep has been funded by the Post codes may be approximate. Some sites have no parking. Heritage Lottery Fund and Kent County Council. Way. For more on these trails and exploring the Kent countryside For full directions and maps, go to www.wildsites.org and click ‘Explore Sites’. 1 go to www.explorekent.gov.uk. 2 ACTIVITY FOCUS: A river at its heart Skillnet Photography Workshop July 2014 The River Great Stour and its tributaries lie at the this a particularly picturesque spot, but if you can STODMARSH heart of the Stour Valley. These rivers and their tear yourself away from it, it is also an ideal place to The Skillnet Group supports people with floodplains are important habitats for wildlife, and start a walk via some long distance trails. Head west learning difficulties to gain opportunities and there are lots of places where you can enjoy river- on the Stour Valley Walk and you will find yourself in become more independent in all areas of life. side walks, some of them in urban areas. the internationally important reedbeds, wet pastures They enjoyed an afternoon’s photography and lakes of Stodmarsh. You can also head east on the tuition in the wetlands of Stodmarsh. The UK’s first urban river Local Nature Reserve was Saxon Shore Way into the Ash Levels, or north on the declared in Ashford in 2002. The Ashford Green Wantsum Walk into Chislet Marshes. Corridor is made up of parks, recreation grounds and other green spaces alongside the rivers that flow The Great Stour meets the sea at Sandwich and through the town – the Great Stour, the East Stour Pegwell Bay, protected as one of Kent’s largest and and the Aylesford Stream. One of these sites, Buxford most important nature reserves (see page 17). Meadow, is a small but wildlife-rich wetland haven in the suburb of Singleton. Here the river and nearby Sandwich & ponds are superb habitats for damselflies and dragon- Pegwell Bay Joan Hobson flies, amphibians and aquatic insects. Grove Ferry Canterbury also has urban river green spaces within Colin McGinn easy reach of the city centre. Whitehall Meadow and Bingley Island Local Nature Reserve is made up of unspoilt grassland and other habitats, home to RIVERSIDE AND wetland plants lost from many other areas. Walk on Sandwich and WETLAND SITES Grove Ferry out of the city and you will reach Hambrook Marshes; Pegwell Bay Whitehall Stodmarsh the wet pastures here flood in winter, attracting over- Meadow wintering birds, and have been enhanced with other Hambrook Marshes wetland features such as ponds, reedbeds and willow A TRULY KENTISH LADY: If any wild plant beds. can be said to be characteristic of Kent, Ashfordit’s the Green lady orchid, which occurs almost Corridor Wetland at Buxford A great place to explore not just the River Great Stour Hambrook Marshes and nowhere else in the country. The Stour Meadow Evegate Punting on the Stour, Hambrook Marshes but the extensive Lower Stour Marshes is Grove Ferry. the Great Stour Valley boasts someFarm of the best places to Jill Batchelor Lynette Coleman Sony Kodakkallil John (aged 13) The moored pleasure boats and riverside inn make For full seedetails this of stunning these sites, species, go to www.wildsites.orgincluding Denge 3 and Eggringe Woods and clickYockletts ‘Explore Bank. Sites’ 4 Clowes Wood Wild about flowers Janice Keeler The Stour Valley’s diverse habitats all boast their mowing and removal of cuttings helps to maintain own distinctive wild flower communities. this diversity, by keeping nutrient levels low so that no single species can take hold. Arguably the most spectacular floral shows occur in ancient woodlands in April and May, when swathes of Even greater floral diversity can be found in chalk wood anemones, then bluebells carpet the ground. downlands in early summer. Here, the numbers of They emerge at this time to enjoy the spring light plants species found in a given area can rival reaching the woodland floor before the trees come tropical rainforests – up to 40 different plants in a Fly orchid Peter Bott into leaf. square metre. They depend on grazing to keep a Meadow, Hambrook Marshes level playing field for competing species. Alan Britton Some very specialised plants have adapted to live in wet conditions. Species such as ragged robin and yellow flag iris like to keep their feet damp and live at the edges of ponds and in wet meadows. The water crowfoot goes a step further – right into the water, growing with leaves fully submerged but flowering in beautiful patches of white at the surface in late spring Field scabious and other chalk and summer. At Hothfield Heathlands, in Kent’s only grassland flowers, Wye Downs remaining valley bog, grows a plant that has found a Bluebells, Denge Wood very unusual solution to the nutrient LOCATIONS OF SITES Chris Rogers MENTIONED - WILD poor conditions: the round-leaved FLOWERS CAN BE sundew is carnivorous and uses its SEEN AT ALL THE Clowes Wood WILD SITES ACTIVITY FOCUS: Later in the year, an equally stunning display gets sticky leaves to trap small insects, very under way in heathlands, and in glades in the Blean much like a Venus fly-trap. Hambrook Marshes Wetland wild flowers A Blaze of Heather woodlands, with clouds of purple heather bringing a Chilston Wood anemone, Dering Wood Ponds Hothfield Denge Woods Top: Water crowfoot, Chilston August 2013 colourful conclusion to the summer. Clive Steward Heathlands Wye Downs Andrew Riddell CLOWES WOOD Dering Lower left: Sundew, Hothfield, An outdoor painting While these natural spectacles are created by the Wood Gabrielle Lindemann workshop in the proliferation of a single species, in meadows a whole Lower right: Ragged robin, heathy glades of this range of wild flowers play a part. Management by For full details of these sites, go to www.wildsites.org Hambrook Marshes lovely woodland. 5 and click ‘Explore Sites’ Mark Gaffney 6 Land of trees & woods One thing we have no shortage of in the Stour Valley Wood and Covert Wood - are all managed by the Wellingtonia, Chilston Pines is trees! The extensive ancient woodlands here are Forestry Commission and in places ancient woodland George Byles some of the largest in south-east England. This is a has been replanted with conifers. There are beautiful (aged 11) well-wooded landscape, with the exception of the stands of beech in these woods, some natural, many Lower Stour – the marshlands east of Canterbury. planted. The tree you will see the most here (and in many other woods) is sweet chestnut – hundreds of Early purple orchid Our most wooded area is the Blean – a unique and acres were planted all over Kent during the 19th Ivonna Karlikova distinctive landscape. At eleven square miles in extent century to supply hop poles and fencing. Some of the it is one of the largest areas of ancient woodland in oldest trees in these ancient woods are hornbeam England. It is also among the most valuable – a third ’stubs’ that mark boundaries dating back to medieval of it is of international importance for wildlife.