{"id":2417,"date":"2020-03-03T16:40:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T16:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/?p=2417"},"modified":"2020-03-03T16:40:10","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T16:40:10","slug":"giles-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/giles-wood\/","title":{"rendered":"Giles Wood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/embed?pb=!4v1583253224856!6m8!1m7!1sDbTb4nFCiPSHocsMTFL4AQ!2m2!1d51.34692907477406!2d-2.123442301643848!3f74.30753824919871!4f-5.9109536872936985!5f0.7820865974627469\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:0;\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>England was carpeted with forests before the Industrial Revolution, before oaks were felled to build sailing ships to fight the Spanish Armada, before the Norman invaders established forest laws, before the Romans cleared land for agriculture, before \u2026 Well, you get the idea\u2014England has had a long decline in forests over millennia, meaning the further back you go, the more trees there were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thankfully there are various efforts to preserve and expand existing forests, such as the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Woodland Trust (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.woodlandtrust.org.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Woodland Trust<\/a>, <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Trees for Life (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/treesforlife.org.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Trees for Life<\/a> (in Scotland), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heartofenglandforest.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"The Heart of England Forest (opens in a new tab)\">The Heart of England Forest<\/a> and <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Rewilding Britain (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rewildingbritain.org.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Rewilding Britain<\/a> to name just a few organizations. Some people, however, just do it themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Freddie Giles was an entrepreneur and race car driver who in 1993 planted five thousand trees on his property at Seend Park Farm and then allowed public access to his wood. You\u2019ll find access to Giles Wood at Bridge 156, a swingbridge, to the north of the canal on the towpath. It\u2019s just a little west of the Seend Lock Flight on the Kennet &amp; Avon Canal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m not sure what is the status of the wood after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wiltshiretimes.co.uk\/news\/14662389.celebrating-the-life-of-racing-supremo-freddie-giles\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Giles\u2019 death in 2016 (opens in a new tab)\">Giles\u2019 death in 2016<\/a>, but I hope access continues, which I\u2019ll be able to confirm when I visit this September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>BTW, Timothy West and Prunella Scales visited Giles on an episode of <em>Great Canal Journeys<\/em> (Series 1), which is available on YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>England was carpeted with forests before the Industrial Revolution, before oaks were felled to build sailing ships to fight the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Re foresting England Giles Wood on the Kennet & Avon Canal","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p74kO9-CZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2417"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2419,"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions\/2419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/narrowboatingforbeginners.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}