| Dec 6, 2009

Clubhouse rooms with a view

Over the last 22 years we have had many guests visiting our woods up here in the Kurohime hills of Nagano Prefecture. However, their numbers have shot up since we converted our holdings into being The C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust in 2002. Up ...

| Nov 1, 2009

Wildlife returns to our well-kept woods

Our Afan Woodland Trust here in the Kurohime hills of Nagano Prefecture has entered into a joint project with the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Management at Azabu University to study woodland biodiversity and the results of our methods of woodland management. The research ...

| Oct 4, 2009

A pig of a weed — I kudzu you not

Looking out through the large picture window at the back of my house, I had a view through a little wood of Japanese oaks, mountain cherries and chestnuts of our small vegetable plot, a lovely wide hay meadow and more woods clothing the foothills ...

| Sep 6, 2009

My key connection

It was 1954 and the summer holidays were over. The family had moved a few miles south from Tewkesbury to Cheltenham in the beautiful county of Gloucestershire in the west of England, and I had been transferred from the one town’s boys grammar school ...

| Aug 2, 2009

My ‘honey trap’ sauna

In the little woods just behind my house I have a big wooden outdoor bath and a sauna, with lockers beside the sauna door for people to put their towels and clothes in. That may sound great — but since the spring of 2008 ...

| Jul 5, 2009

Mud, mud, marvelous mud

About 20 years ago I had a large pond dug in our Afan woods up here in the Nagano Prefecture hills. It was in a place that was always waterlogged when the snow melted, and in spring there were lots of puddles that became ...

| Jun 7, 2009

Anybody for chips?

In national parks, gardens, woodlands and any other places where people frequently walk in natural settings, the pathways and places where they gather pose many problems to owners, managers and anybody who is concerned with the comfort and safety of the visitors and also ...

| Apr 5, 2009

Swapping snow for a rain forest

Although there was very little snow this winter here where I live in the Nagano Prefecture hills, it was still good to have an excuse to get away from the cold, and the excuse this time was to present a prize for the writer ...

| Feb 1, 2009

Mucking about with horses

In Britain when I was a lad in the 1940s and ’50s, horses were still a common sight in the streets. Although horse-drawn carriages had pretty well vanished except for those used for ceremonial purposes, delivery wagons ladened with milk, coal and beer were ...