They weren’t very big, provided a limited amount of riding, nothing like a jump or berm in sight, no gnarl, just sweet singletrack and a mile at most but something you could ride a couple of loops around having fun twisting and turning on narrow well worn deer tracks (they’ve also lost the woods they called home) in either direction for a bit of fun after work or before a ride out to get the hands, eyes and heart up to speed and coordinated.

Thousands of trees removed to make way for another lane on the A1.

Its fair to say I watched the wood grow from pretty much nothing 25+ years ago forming the area around the Angel of the North, I played football for a club on the field next to the Angel and many of the trees were saplings and shrubs back then. Over the last 20 years I’ve seen many deer inhabit the area (and in the last couple of years at least many anti social drinking spots appear during lock downs) but the woods had provided a great dog walk and bike area for me and a good few others, not a session area riders would just come through on their way out or back in from a ride. A nice twist and turn bit of fun.

The motorway is a good distance away and down a fairly steep bank, I’m struggling to see why so much (or any) had to be chopped down. The whole area around the Angel has been turned into large carparks recently, acres and acres of fields tarmacced for the parking of vehicles and storage of portacabins.

I’ve found it very painful recently walking the dog around here, theres just so much devastation. I’ll try and find some older pics of the woods and some current to show the changes the Highways people have made to the area.

The improvements to the A1 total 1 mile of fresh tarmac.

I share your pain.

Nothing I can say to help *but*: EMail your MP, county and district councillor.

Keep it short and make it clear you’re unhappy. If they’re the same party as the national or local government to you, make it clear it’s cost them your vote. (Even if it’s not true!) Encourage others to do the same.

You can’t save what’s lost but you can perhaps make them think twice next time.

But *do* keep it short and don’t invest too much time in it.

This is the local fields and woods where I used to take my dog. Think it’s been like this for about 2 years now. Sell off the land for industrial units, but no companies want one there. What a shit hole.

That’s a shame. I remember a few years ago they were considering cutting some trees down as they were losing the view of the Angel from the A1. It seemed to be a surprise that the trees grew.

I always find it funny driving up the A1, I get on at a roundabout and it goes right past the front door of some houses but ends up being a 4 lane motorway in places (which is never busy). It seems to me that the bit that really needs widening isn’t possible.

The whole area around the Angel has been turned into large carparks recently, acres and acres of fields tarmacced for the parking of vehicles and storage of portacabins.

Projects like the A1 and the A9 are huge undertakings. They generally have one major site office for the whole project (miles and miles of discreet operations) and multiple smaller welfare facilities along the route.

The offices will have multiple companies (I can’t remember the A1 contractor, Costain?) Permanently on site will be project management staff, surveying/setting out teams, ecologists, archeologists, payroll, stores (tools, consumables, PPE), logistics, structural engineering, civil engineering, catering and cleaners!. On site there will be labourers, hot workers, plant operators, lorry drivers, foremen, steel workers, line painters, electricians, traffic controllers someone going round emptying all the portaloos etc.

All these people need to eat, shit, wash be briefed, undergo drugs tests pass inductions.

It’s a huge operation doing roads and it’s unlikely to be as small as 1km of resurfacing.

I have absolute sympathy with your disappointment but the carpark and site offices will always be huge.

Well, living as I do right in the path of the monumentally destructive HS2, I can feel your pain. Only, we’ve lost not one, but countless beautiful natural wooded and non-wooded areas to HS2 forever.
Absolutely devastating.

Another by product of these works is that I no longer feel safe crossing the roundabout adjacent to commute to work. They have closed off the North bound cycle lanes for the works and made it pretty dicey getting to work. Bus it is.

EMail your MP

This guy?

Tweets by IanMearnsMP

Awful.
We need more green spaces and mature trees not fewer.
I wrote to my MP about chopping down ancient woodland, he replied that the developers (of the A555 near Manchester airport would plant plenty of saplings). Saplings will not provide all the wildlife habitats that one 100 year plus tree can, the clean air, the flooding reduction, recreation and beauty.

They also chopped down hundreds of trees around Manchester airport to make way for many more car parks. This was 2019, then of course fewer people are flying and these car parks are left barren. Its a crying shame.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot – Joni Mitchell. Big Yellow taxi.

I know its probably highly illegal, but on that plot of cleared and left land, I would be planting all the autumn nuts and apple pips I could find. If no one does any further work, then theyll grow, if someone does turn up with a JCB then youve lost nothing except the effort required to collect windfall acorns and poke a hole in the ground for each one.
Guerilla forestry is the future.

What @Johnnymarone says.

Also, until land is claimed back by the local citzen.

Development progress/ greed will always prevail.

We just lost 42 Acres of woodland, most likely for sheds. With dubious planning interprertations :(.

Everything is getting chopped down, with a token planting offset.

We as a species are **** 🙁

I’ve been in front of bulldozers trying to stop felling, its not nice:(

I feel we are losing at every turn 🙁

Feel your pain OP.

I also echo what Johnnymarone says. I love trees. And I know I’ll get pelters for this, but if I’m eating an apple whilst out and about, the core gets hoyed in the greenery. We were twelve years in our last house and ended up with so many baby fruit trees because of that! It always makes me smile seeing apple or cherry trees in the middle of spruce woods, or at the side of the road as well.

Not a good year for acorns in some places but you don’t even need to plant them. Scatter them and if they like the spot a single root will appear and pull the acorn down into the earth – bluebell seeds do some thing similar. Isn’t nature amazing!

Which bit of woods near the Angel? I’ll find out next time I’m down there! I normally ride from the Railway path to the Angel up to Smithy Lane then back down through Long Acre. It was a regular mtb night ride from a previous Job.

I know we’ve lost loads to new houses in the North of the city. No great trails but you can link up the little sections to make a half decent night ride. Now they’ve either been built on or made into wide flat gravel tracks.

Yeah an awful waste along there, not even sure it needed it.