Autumn walk
Lifting the mustelid
In with the pine martens, out with the pines. The Trust’s widest Welsh wood is making a comeback
WHEN I SAW the photo, I couldn’t believe it – a pine marten, right there on our new pine marten trail. It’s exactly the kind of incredible encounter we were hoping our visitors might get. You couldn’t make it up!”
No wonder Stephanie Johnstone is thrilled. She leads Martens on the Move, a project set up to trace and support the 120 pine martens reintroduced to England and Wales since 2015. For a century these shy tree-dwellers were virtually extinct outside Scotland – but in places like Wentwood, the Trust’s vast forest in Monmouthshire, they are literally on the comeback trail.
Wentwood gallops across 1,000 hilltop hectares north of Newport: it’s the largest ancient wood left in Wales. But when the Trust bought a third of the forest in 2006, fuelled by our first ever £1 million appeal, it was largely lifeless – decimated to supply timber for two world wars, and restocked with silent, samey conifer plantations.
Twenty years of painstaking restoration later, our custodian Rob Davies is marking a major milestone. More than half of the wood is back to broadleaf, and alive with 70 bird species, 23 different butterflies, adders and dormice – which Rob sometimes hears snoring in their brambly nests.
"Being chosen as the location for this new pine marten trail is a testament to the richness of the ecosystem we are re-establishing here."
Rob Davies, custodian
“It demonstrates how swiftly nature can recover,” Rob says, “and being chosen as the location for this new pine marten trail is a testament to the richness of the ecosystem we are re-establishing here.”
Martens on the Move is run by Vincent Wildlife Trust, which since 2015 has helped translocate three cohorts of the cat-sized mustelids from Scotland – first to Mid Wales, then the Forest of Dean and Devon.
“Martens found their way to Wentwood within months,” explains Stephanie, “but once their radio-collars fell off, we lost track of them. This project is the next phase – we want to find out how they’re faring and help support a viable breeding population.”
Volunteers will monitor 250 new den boxes at seven hotspots across the UK, including Wentwood. The wood’s new mile-long visitor loop forms part of our walk on these pages – and it was the scene of Stephanie’s star sighting to date, when walker Michael Fullagar snapped a marten there this June (above).
WALK IT!
Wentwood
This 9.5km (6-mile) circuit begins at Wentwood’s Cadira Beeches car park (grid ref ST422948; ///skirt.president.animated). From the A48 near Caerwent, take the turn for Llanvair-Discoed and continue for 4km beyond the village. Newport to Chepstow buses (traveline.cymru) stop in Parc Seymour, two miles south of Point 3 on our map. The walk includes uphill and bramble-snagged stretches.
Click on the numbers on the map for route directions.
WALK IT!
Wentwood
This 9.5km (6-mile) circuit begins at Wentwood’s Cadira Beeches car park (grid ref ST422948; ///skirt.president.animated). From the A48 near Caerwent, take the turn for Llanvair-Discoed and continue for 4km beyond the village. Newport to Chepstow buses (traveline.cymru) stop in Parc Seymour, two miles south of Point 3 on our map. The walk includes uphill and bramble-snagged stretches.
Click on the numbers on the map for route directions.
Bronze stage
In the car park, an info-board introduces you to the history of Wentwood and its special wildlife – goshawks, dormice, turtle doves and more. Cross the road and take a wide forest ride westward, winding uphill among mature beeches. After about 600m, a kissing gate (right) leads to a glade humped with a brace of Bronze Age barrows. These grassy knolls bear the bones of chieftains who lived at Wentwood three millennia ago. Other tumuli survive elsewhere in the forest.
lizard lounge
Back on the main track, continue west to meet a road and parking area. Cross it and fork left of waymarker post 66. You’re now on Trust turf, winding among recovering birchwoods. Lately our Wentwood volunteers have cut scallops into the path margins here, so the wood’s common lizards have places to bask. The unearthly churring of nightjars can be heard hereabouts, too. After 500m, at a cross-tracks with log-hewn bench, turn left, downhill on a jungly path to emerge on a surfaced ride (waypost 99). Go right, crest a rise, and (as you descend) look out for a much skinnier path left. Rocky underfoot, it scrambles down for 400m – keep alert for the first right- hand turn, which cuts back uphill.
curley here
Ignore a left turn (post 97) and prepare to meet Wentwood’s celebrity, the charismatic Curley Oak – six metres around, at least 500 years old, and a rare survivor of the wood’s wide-scale clearance for timber growing. Today the tree is wholly hollow, but its sprig of branches still leaf. The Trust has diverted the footpath away from its root network, felled the conifers that overshadowed it, and guarded it with a fence – built by volunteers in the shape of a loveheart. Commune with Curley for a bit, then keep ahead, taking the next right turn. This path narrows to meet a wider track at waypost 85. On the right, a coppiced oak – eight trunks! – speaks of centuries past, when charcoal burners worked these woods. Evidence of their scorched hearths still lurks in the undergrowth.
wing walk
Cross and climb the slender path opposite, a medieval holloway. At the next junction, turn right to retrace your steps all the way back to Point 2. Around 150m beyond the Bronze Age clearing, where a track joins from the left, turn right beside waypost 64. You’re now leaving Trust territory for a while, into an area looked after by Natural Resources Wales, and the shady conifer canopy is a throwback to pre-restoration Wentwood. At a path junction (post 60), turn left, then go right at a cross-tracks (post 61) to meet a ride (57). Go left, with views across the Severn Estuary opening to the south. In summer this track romps with butterflies – look for the big orange splash of a silver-washed fritillary. Meeting the road, cross and turn right, sticking to roadside paths till you reach Wentwood Timber Centre, where the Trust’s volunteers have a base.
hide and seek
Next on the left, the new Goshawk Coffee shack offers refuelling, set in a vintage rail carriage from the Royal Ordnance Factory near Usk. Just beyond it, take the second of two paths left (‘Nature Trail’) and you’re on Wentwood’s new pine marten visitor loop. Soon you’ll spy its terrific wildlife hide (off to the left), which recounts the story of the creature’s return to Wales. Not long after, at an info-board about wolves and aurochs, fork right and gather more marten knowhow on route to the road at Foresters’ Oaks. Briefly go left, and take a paved lane opposite the car park entrance. It climbs steeply – after 300m, turn left onto a sunny forest ride with metal swing gate.
ant kingdom
Continue on this lovely open stretch for almost 500m, ignoring the first left turn and taking a more intimate path second-left, opposite a wider gravel track joining from the right. Your route heads downhill then up, crossing a little valley where the surrounding woodland was planted in 2021 to replace diseased larch. Keep ahead until waypost 28, turning left there and continuing to the next cross-tracks. Here take the middle of three options, ascending to a wider ride at post 30. You’re now in the realm of Wentwood’s southern wood ants: red-listed globally, these are big, hairy insect-eaters that spray formic acid when threatened. They especially savour honeydew, however, which they milk from aphids by stroking their abdomens. Look for their 4ft high nests as you cross this ride and climb on to the next, turning left for 500m to return to Cadira Beeches
