Good to be away from the desk - even when it's raining.
Sydlings Copse and Otmoor are just over two miles apart but offer two different flavours of 'wildness' very close to Oxford.
Sydlings Copse is a small BBOWT nature reserve surrounded by farmland just outside the Oxford ring road - it has got elements of ancient woodland, open grassland, fenland and a stream. Bits of the reserve were once managed but others have been left to do their thing for many generations. In the spring there are huge numbers of wildflowers and in the summer the profusion of butterflies makes you think that you've stepped back in time. And best of all, it's really quite hidden away so you often get the place to yourself. Particularly in November. In the rain.
Just a couple of miles north of Sydlings Copse is a very different nature reserve. RSPB Otmoor didn't exist when we first moved to Oxford. Although Otmoor appears on old Oxfordshire maps it had over the years been 'improved' to become farmland, mostly by aggressive draining. In mid-90s the RSPB acquired the reserve (we helped!) and set about restoring the habit - a lot of the initial work involved reversing the draining, replanting reedbeds and generally attempting to turn the clock back by a few decades. It's worked - there are now breeding bittern and lapwing on the site, kingfishers regularly hunt in the channels and the noticeboard talks about the resident otters, stoat, weasels, badgers and fallow deer. Over the winter there are huge numbers of wintering wildfowl and waders, and the regular spectacle of starling murmurations. The site also has a wonderful sense of space - the open skies over the reed-beds offer space that is so often seems to be crowded out around Oxfordshire.
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