Hazel Wood, a delightful woodland in Nailsworth is under the butchers knife. A little strong perhaps, but it does seem to be at the mercy of the chainsaw butcher from Svalbard with swathes of trees being cut down. In the fairness of accurate reporting (this site has a reputation to keep after all) if you own a * woodland you can generally cut down without permission five cubic metres of timber in any one calendar quarter which works out at about a skip full every three months. A tree is classified as something that is 8cm at breast height. Whatever that means. Ok fine, I'm not gonna go out and measure everything that has been cut down because frankly I dont know exactly how big a skip is so there is no point. But what I do object to is the way that the public footpaths through the wood get wrecked. They even go to great lengths to block the paths with piles of timber. Maybe this is in the interest of public safety but will they move it all afterwards? No. I speak on this after seeing the other half of the woodland dismantled a few years ago. (see bottom photograph taken in December 01) The footpaths were basically totally destroyed and lots of timber was just left lying all over them. This frankly is a disgrace as it's now just about impossible to ride through the wood on my mountain bike. * Source: woodlands.co.uk web site

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