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This week we were lucky enough to be invited to take part in a Woodland Discovery Event organised by the Woodland Trust. Here we are walking across the fields towards Guestling Wood.

This pond was a crater made by a WWII bomb.

We were all asked to be detectives and look for clues to tell us whether the wood was ancient or new.

We thought the size of this oak tree must mean it was quite old. It also had moss and lichen growing on the trunk.

These flowers are a good clue that the wood is old. We found bluebells, yellow archangels and wood anemones.

The bluebells here were fantastic! We used finger cameras to take imaginary pictures on this side, with the taller, older trees in the background (can you see the badger sett?)...

…and on this side with the sweet chestnut coppice. Chestnut was once used on hop farms as the stems grow straight and make good supports for the hops.

This tree might have been cut like this as a marker. Look at the wood sorrel growing in it. This plant is sometimes called sleeping beauty, because the leaves curl up at night.

We tried to estimate how old this tree is by standing shoulder to shoulder right round the trunk – it took 17 of us! We guessed each one of us was about 30cm wide, so that made a circumference of 510cm, which we rounded to 500cm. A tree grows about 2.5 cm each year; we calculated 500 ÷ 2.5 = 200. So the tree is about 200 years old. Phew! Why does everything have to turn into a maths lesson??!!

Click here to see some more of our pictures.