Plymouth: greener than you might think

Plymouth is my home city. It is where I grew up. And one of the constants of my childhood was Manadon Wood. It was an amazing place for a growing boy and his friends to mess around, have adventures, climb trees, and all the other stuff that children should do.

That said, I doubt Plymouth strikes most people as one of England’s greener places to live – but it is. Almost a third of the city’s residents live within 500 metres, about a third of a mile, of a wood of at least two hectares, which is about the size of three football pitches. That is according to new research by the Woodland Trust.

In Torbay, fewer than one in seven residents live so close to a similarly sized wood, while in the rest of Devon it is fewer than one in 11. In Cornwall, it climbs to fewer than one person in every 13 living so close to a wood.

At first this surprised me, but then I thought of Manadon Wood, a few minutes’ walk from my childhood home, and Ham Woods, literally a stone’s throw from where my parents now live. And I remembered too the General Election campaign, at which I was a Liberal Democrat candidate, when I embarrassed the city council into cleaning up Eggbuckland Vale Community Woodland.

Take a moment and suddenly you can think of lots of examples of woods right across Plymouth. Whitleigh Wood and its ancient woodland comes to mind, as does Forder Valley Local Nature Reserve, which follows the route of a dismantled tramway.

So, if you live in Plymouth, I urge you to get out there and enjoy your local wood. Take a stroll, walk the dog, or just enjoy a moment’s peace and quiet. You’re lucky – if you lived elsewhere in Devon or Cornwall, enjoying that little bit of greenery would be much harder.

(Image: Forder Valley Local Nature Reserve)

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