What’s new?
6 July 2009
New audio trail for Southwick Wood
The Wildlife Trust has launched its first audio trail of one of its nature reserves. Visitors to Southwick Wood in north Northamptonshire can now download an audio tour and map of the woodland area and listen to facts about the reserve on the leisurely tour.
The audio trail encompasses the birds, trees, rides, flowers and management work of the reserve. It also explains the Trust’s vision for the area.
Paul Evans, Senior Reserves Officer for the Trust, said: “This new audio trail is a brilliant way for people to enjoy the beauty of Southwick Wood and its wildlife. The guides are really informative and we hope visitors will learn a lot from them.”
Southwick Wood contains a mix of deciduous species such as oak, ash, field maple and hazel. The developing woodland provides food and cover for a range of visiting species including willow warbler, coal tit, woodcock and tawny owl.
The rides are rich in wildflowers including ragged-robin, cuckooflower, meadowsweet, soft rush and twayblade. Butterflies are abundant; look out for speckled wood, gatekeeper and comma fluttering up and down the grassy rides or in the sun-drenched glades.
Just 200 metres across the road from Southwick Wood is another woodland called Short Wood. These two woods and the field in between once formed part of a larger woodland area. The Wildlife Trust is joining these two reserves to recreate a larger woodland area running along the ridge to our reserve at Glapthorn Cow Pastures.
As a result the area will provide a place for the woodland of tomorrow to develop. This will provide the plants and animals within it the best chance of adapting and surviving predicted climate change.
This vision to create bigger, better joined up wildlife areas is part of the Wildlife Trusts UK-wide movement called Living Landscapes.
The audio trail was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and made by audiotrails.co.uk.
The Wildlife Trust hopes to introduce more audio trails at our other reserves across Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.
Download and save the zip file to listen to the Southwick Wood audio tour
This map of Southwick Wood shows the 10 points of the audio tour (pdf)