Woodchester Park

Monday 1st November 2021

We took the minibus over to Woodchester Park near Nailsworth today. The grounds belong to the National Trust and we met the ranger there, who showed us around. It is a wooded valley, with some meadows, a boat house and an old Gothic mansion that wasn't completed in 1860 and still isn't now!

The picture is the boat house which is lovely and also the summer home of a colony of lesser horseshoe bats - we went inside and could see the evidence - apparently they have a poo before going into the rafters! When it gets cold they go over to some caves nearby and overwinter there where there is less fluctuation in the temperature.

The main house has a maternity roost and summer colony of greater horseshoe bats (which are much rarer). When the National Trust bought the land in 1994 they returned the arable land to meadows. They are looking really good now, nearly 30 years later. Typical management of these sort of meadows would have you using cow for grazing in the autumn/winter but not in spring/summer when the flowers grow and seed. In fact because of the bats they are doing things differently. They graze cows all year long on the meadow as the dung encourages beetles and flies which are the food source for the bats. A great deal of thought and care goes into the conservation of endangered species - and this also has a positive effect on other wildlife - it wont just be bats that are feeding on those insects. A great visit and good to see some of the theoretical work that we are studying in practice.