Goodbye Pennywort Wood

After ten years, we leave our woodland home.

Pennywort Wood

After 10 years of work, guardianship, stewardship, connection and relationship with this magical piece of land, we have had to leave.

When I first walked into this woodland in 2015 I felt an instant call. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before. I knew I had to work there. It felt like the land was calling me in, waiting for me to arrive. It was overwhelming. When I left, I phoned my best friend and told him I had just found home.

The owners of the woodland wanted someone skilled and experienced to work on the land. They wanted it to be used in a positive way, to be protected and looked after, as they could not spend much time there now.
Elizabeth, the owner, told me she had had a dream, a vision that a young man with long blonde hair would one day come to be with the land.

We all knew straight away this was meant to be.

Pennywort Wood is huge, 27 acres of stunning ancient woodland. Much of it had been planted with pine and fir trees about 100 years ago. It still held its ancient wisdom and energy, but it was light and open, with towering red Scots Pines carpeting the hill.

The woodland has many different sections, a chestnut coppice, a dark fir tree grove, and the more ancient area with oaks, rowans, cherries and birches. There is a stream and a small pond at the bottom of the woods. Badgers, foxes and deer roam freely, buzzards nest in the tall pines, and tree hoppers bounce up and down the tree trunks. In the summer the lime green bracken can be five feet tall. It pops against the red bark of the pine trees. It has an untamed, wild beauty, while still feeling welcoming and open.

I quickly got to work improving and creating camps all over the woodland. Five camp areas were eventually created, each with a totally different feel and energy, spaces to use in different seasons for different work.

The first group I created was a funded teenage programme for children in local secondary schools, young people on the edge of exclusion for not fitting into rigid systems. We worked in Pennywort Wood for a full day every Wednesday. Over 10 weeks I watched these young people change beyond measure. From a group of awkward, unsociable, disengaged kids who clearly did not trust anyone, they came alive. They played, learned, joked, told stories, made friends. They were free to be children again, given permission and space to let go.

It was such a joyful experience. It was confirmation of what I knew this woodland could do. It would change lives.

From then on, I worked relentlessly. We went on to hold more alternative provision groups. We even ran a week-long Boys Rites of Passage group in the woodland.
I was able to learn, grow and play with ideas, to explore and expand what I was capable of, and how I could work with people in the safety of the woodland.

As my relationship with the woodland grew, so too did my confidence. I set up Project Rewild, my vision and dream to make deep nature connection experiences available to everyone

In 2018 I started Free to Learn in the woods, which would later become Rewild Woodland School.

I had total belief in what could be achieved. I had a single vision. I put complete faith in the woodland and in myself.

When I first advertised the group, it filled almost instantly. The group would be an alternative education space. A totally different place to school. A place where children could be children, in their most natural wild states. Space to roam, to choose, to play. A place which would teach and guide children to feel closer to nature, to work with nature and be part of it. To live in community and connection in the most truthful and human way.

The group was an instant success. It worked, but I always knew it would. It always felt so clear to me. Within weeks we had a massive waiting list. It has been this way ever since.

I do not take credit for this. I have a part in it, of course, but the woodland has been with me. It has held us, supported us. I know it is hard to accept someone saying this, but it has literally guided everything I do.

Over the years children have grown up on the land. Many started at six or seven and are now teenagers, mentoring and guiding the younger ones.

This is not just a woodland to them. It is not just a group. It is part of who they are. That is the point. We are all part of nature and not separate from it. Modern life forces us to feel disconnected from nature, from others and from ourselves. But it is always here. You do not need life coaches or online gurus. You do not need ego driven healers who say they can heal you. All you need to do is go back, go back home to nature. Slow down. Get back into natures rhythm. Feel everything, good and bad, light and dark. Rediscover your wild nature. Its not always comfortable, its not meant to be.

Children find it easier because they are closer to it. They have not been broken yet. They find it in their play and freedom. I see it every day.

In Pennywort Wood, we created something very special. We truly allowed children to connect with nature, and we allowed nature to connect with us. It has always been symbiotic.

Over 10 years we have protected, managed and cared for the woodland. The children’s laughter has echoed across the land. Their tears have fed the soil. The land feels alive. It feels happy when we are there.

We have also been able to hold, adults’ workshops, men’s groups, overnight camps, gatherings to share stories, songs, poems. To share our tears, our pain, and our joy.

The land has changed and impacted the lives of dozens of staff and volunteers who adore the place. It has etched itself onto the lives of hundreds of children.

Personally, it has been one of the most important relationships I have ever had. Human relationships are easier to understand, but the woodland has taught me how to be in relationship with the land, to feel true nature connection.

Two years ago, my partner Polly and I had our handfasting in the woodland, a traditional nature-based wedding ceremony. It had to be here, our love story is woven together with the trees.
My children have grown up here. I carried them both through the woodland as babies and toddlers. We slept under the stars. I have gone to the woods when I am joyful, and I have needed it when I am broken and in pain. It has held me, healed me and helped me grow through the hardest moments of my life.
My work, my life and all that I am has been entwined with Pennywort Wood for a decade. I cannot feel any separation.

And then, in 2024 the woodland had to be sold.

Elizabeth and Rob reluctantly needed to sell for personal reasons.
In fear, I worked hard with the children in a desperate attempt to raise the money to buy the woodland. It was three hundred and twenty thousand pounds, far beyond us, but the children still baked and sold cakes, made postcards and began raising funds. I created a huge online campaign. We had to try.
Just days before we launched the campaign, we got a call from Elizabeth to say the woodland had been sold.

The new owner was ambitious. He loved the woodland, of course he did. We had created a readymade woodland sanctuary. We built by hand, beautiful camps, archways, compost toilets, wood stores, sheds and working spaces. But we were unfortunately no longer part of his plans.

The beautiful wild land became humanised. Clean buildings replaced woodland shacks. Camp chairs replaced logs. More building, more comfort, more straight lines and intervention. No longer wild. No space for the howls of children. Comfort, control and profit replaced freedom, joy and play. Now a venue instead of a home

Leaving Pennywort Wood has been one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

There is though, value in this experience. We have to learn that every season, every place and every person we love has its time. Endings are not really endings. They are part of the great turning of life.

Pennywort Wood will live on in our memories, in the stories we tell around the fire, and in our hearts.

Thank you Pennywort Wood for everything you have given me, for everything you have given us. You have changed our lives forever. We will move on. We will search for a new home, and we will always remember our time together.