The Appeal of Mrs Toogood

Forest bathing reached a national audience this week when Chris Packham recommended it on Autumnwatch. If Chris says it works, the chances are that it does but, in the absence of other potential content, I think I’ll do a bit more research before I start recommending it to my impressionable nieces.

It’s all very well forest bathing in the sunshine, letting the various lights and shades lift your mood and remind you how beautiful nature is. This is England though, and more particularly Lincolnshire. Wind and rain, that’s the thing here. What will forest bathing do for my mood when I’m hunching my shoulders against the sleet and wishing I knew how to stop the hood of my kagoule blowing about and exposing my head to the elements?

Fortunately for science, it didn’t take long for the local weather to present an opportunity to find out. Saturday was saturated in dismal grey clouds and soon the rain was falling, by which I mean launching itself sideways into my face. Serendipitously, it was at that moment that I noticed I’d run out of cat food and needed to head off to the supermarket. You can’t beat submitting your life and time to a furry parasite that never even says thank you.

After turning on the central heating in order to keep the aforementioned furry parasite happy, I trudged off into the wilderness. I was determined to remain as miserable as I possibly could in order to properly test the theory. Annoyingly, the road up to the forest was littered with a spray of fallen leaves and radiated a spirit-boosting display of gold and reddish-brown leaves that crunched pleasingly underfoot. It reminded me of a really well cooked biryani, not the common or garden ones you get from the local takeaway, but the ones that come in a little round pot in the posh curry houses that I can’t afford to visit.

I keep having to consciously slow down in order to give the leaves time to work on my mood but it’s counter-intuitive when I can feel myself developing trench foot with every step. My head says walk faster and get out of the rain. My heart says much the same but is trumped by my bloody-mindedness. I walk at a defiant snail’s pace.

Once I’m in the forest proper, I’m sheltered from most of the rain so I remove my hood in order to properly connect with nature and spend a few minutes taking in the view. Some local wag has painted his name on one of the trees along with an entirely unnecessary assertion that he was there. Obviously you were there, you goon, or you wouldn’t have been able to ruin the tree.

There’s literally no-one around apart from the people working in the businesses about a hundred yards away selling diy products to aspirational customers. I realise seconds later that I’ve forgotten to bring a mask so I can’t get in to Tesco. Never mind, the cat can wait and I’ll just take more time to enjoy the woods. He normally eats my tea anyway, only deigning to bother the Whiskas when it’s absolutely the last calorie available.

The forest is looking pretty stunning, even in its bleak approaching-winter with added howling wind and mud state. I’m starting to have a sense of familiarity with the forest, like it’s given up trying to impress me and just lets me wander round doing my thing. The trees look spindly and barren, but the occasional leaf still clings to a branch. The ground is soaked with rain and I slip about on the paths occasionally despite wearing what I was promised by the bloke in Millets were super grippy shoes. I entered with a pretty bad mood but I’m definitely feeling better already. There’s something to this nature business.

I like all the windy paths that cut across each other before sneaking off under a low hanging branch into the unknown. I try to imagine there’s a gingerbread house hidden deep within, ideally one without a homicidal witch in residence. I decide on Forest Bathing Rule 1: when faced with a junction of three or more paths always take the one less travelled (by you).

It’s a good rule. I apply it immediately and bathe my way down a barely visible trail that leads away from my normal route. Shortly after, I excitedly spy a small clearing ahead. Shortly after that I notice the huge pile of fly-tipped rubbish and a rusting motorcycle frame. That’s the end of that adventure.

Rule 1: Subsection A: when faced with a junction of three or more paths, always take the one less travelled (by you) unless you can see empty cans of Special Brew littering the sides of the path.

Making rules is a learning process. Undeterred by the fly-tipping, I take another muddy detour and happen upon a blooming bush festooned with intense red berries and offering a lovely view of the area. Winner.

I wonder briefly how many other people have shared the vista. I’m quite excited at the thought, however unlikely it may actually prove to be, that I could be the only person to walk every foot of every available trail around the wood. It reminds me of my old mate Geoff who used to plan his annual holidays from Louth Transformer Company to tick off every metre of railway track in the UK. Mind you, sympathetic as I now am, I’ll still never forgive him for the three hours of train spotting I had to endure on Donny station. Unforeseen engineering works, my arse.

Eventually, I emerge from the woods happy and mudsoaked. Happy is good. Mudsoaked is less so. I only have two pairs of trousers and the other pair is already in the wash, so it looks like I’ll be cooking tea in my shorts again. The exposed flesh means I need to make extra sure the cat is happy with his evening meal.

Lastly for this episode, and on an entirely unrelated note, the Environment Agency have been reinforcing Lincoln’s flood defences over the last few months. To afford them access, they were forced to lop off the top halves of a row of trees along the Witham leaving a series of denuded stumps in their place. I thought all hope was lost but it turns out I was wrong. Nature always fights back. Here’s a picture of one of the trees. They cheer me up on my early morning walks to work.