SANG-ing the praises of nature reserve

A new public nature reserve has opened between Crossways and Warmwell May to provide a space for dog walkers, bird watchers, anglers, horse riders, cyclists and ramblers, along with multiple natural habitats for local wildlife. Knighton Reserve forms part of the Silverlake estate, a private ecological luxury holiday home estate built around an expanse of lakes, woodlands and heathlands.

The 15.5 Hectare Suitable Alternative Natural Green Space (SANG) will open to the public for the first time since the site was a sand quarry and Second World War air base. The SANG has been carefully designed to meet the needs of a wide range of wildlife species, including dormice, smooth snake, great crested newts and the silver-studded blue butterfly.

It is made up of acid grassland, broadleaved woodland, wet woodlands, scrubs, waterbodies, lakeside beeches and reed beds. Integrated into the natural habitats will be walking routes, dog friendly zones, bridal paths and birdwatching lookouts. There are four dogfriendly circular walking routes, from 1km to 4km, including one where dogs are allowed off-lead, and there’s a dog splash pond and dog swimming area in an enclosed area of one of the three lakes. Bird watchers can take their places at various viewing posts, from where an array of species can be seen. The Silverlake Estate becomes home to dozens of local and migrating species throughout the year, including a number of red and amber listed species, such as woodlarks, warblers, nightjars and scaup.

There are also many gulls, geese, ducks, waders, bird of prey and other species. Running around the edge of the SANG is a bridleway which joins with local riding routes, and in the centre of the SANG are two fishing lakes exclusively for the use of members of the onsite Angler’s Club, featuring carp, perch, bream, roach, hybrids and rudd.

Will Vicary, director of land and planning for Habitat First Group which owns and manages the Silverlake Estate and Knighton Reserve, said: “Open space is incredibly important for mental health and we hope that people will come and enjoy the space, but ask everyone to understand that we all have a responsibility to protect the animals, insects and plant life that have made the SANG their home.”

Down to earth

JOHN WRIGHT is a naturalist and forager who lives in rural West Dorset. He has written eight books, four of which were for River Cottage. He wrote the award-winning Forager’s Calendar and in 2021 his Spotter’s Guide to Countryside Mysteries was published.

The road was high above the surrounding countryside, its banks running down either side. I stopped to look at the vegetation at the boggy bottom of the eastern bank and saw five tiny plants, the names and nature of which I could not even hazard a guess. This blissfully annoying discovery was made on the last walk in a series of eight I took across Britain with my wife, ‘D’. We walked around Hayling Island and our own Dorset village, across London, the tamed agricultural landscape of north Hampshire, the New Forest (where the boggy plants were found), Snowdonia, the Cheviot hills and the Scottish island of Seil.

The idea of these adventures was to look closely at every living thing we saw and tell their stories in a book. Inevitably, I also wander off on discussions about such things as the old Maiden Newton Market, the ecological importance of sheep, the pestilence of bracken, the difficulties of identifying what one finds and the problems that ensue from telling one’s wife that we should definitely turn right when we should have turned left. The book, The Observant Walker, discusses over four hundred species, from grey squirrels to an orange alga, though we recorded three times that number, and even then, there was vastly more that we missed.

My fungus-identifying skills are good, and I am not too bad at naming plants, but for everything else – lichens, invertebrates, mosses and so on – I am often in serious