THE BRECKLANDS

I still recall the day I fell in love with the Brecklands. It was in 1973/74, and some months after I had changed jobs and become a newspaper columnist instead of a soccer scribe, and had arranged to meet someone who lived in a village on the edge of the forest. I drove into the Brecks, an area I did not know at all, and finding there was time to spare, stopped the car in a layby to consult a map.
When I glanced up again it was as though I was surrounded by light. An early light snowfall had dusted the ranks of conifer belts which lined the verges on both sides, and shafts of sunlight speared through gaps in the trees, adding a crystalline sheen to the snow on the ground, and on the trees, all of it emanating from a brilliant pale blue and Spring-like sky.
From that very first moment, that first connection, I was hooked and constantly lured back. The very thought of an excursion into the racks and rides of the plantations would set my pulse racing, and probably still does even though I now live much further away from the area than I did then.
And so over the years we have walked and camped and picknicked and holidayed in the Brecks, and the thrill has always been the same. Grassy, sunlit paths, the quietness and resinous smell of the plantations, and distant perspectives of dusty-dry fields surrounded by silhouetted lines of gnarled Scots pines, twisted and leaning like queues of tottering ancient folk.
Even its modern history is fascinating. In 1677 the diarist John Evelyn, visiting Euston Hall, wrote of the soil that it was dry, barren and 'miserably' sandy. And almost a century later, William Gilpin, travelling the area in 1769, commented that 'nothing was to be seen on either side but sand and scattered gravel without the least vegetation: a mere African desert.' Sand there certainly was. For a time, Santon Downham was known as Sandy Downham, and for good reason.
Then in the 18th and 19th centuries tracts of heathland were brought into cultivation, and following a report by the agricultural writer Arthur Young, for the Board of Agriculture, woods and shelter belts and lines of trees began to be planted to divide the fields, stabilise the soils, and provide cover for game birds. Later still, large areas were enclosed, the tree of choice being the Scots pine. Then, shortly after the First World War, the Forestry Commission acquired lots of cheap land hereabouts and began tree planting with such success that by 1935 about 55,000 acres had been covered.
It should be said, of course, that many people still do not like these sombre plantations, and it is true they can be interpreted as regimented and sterile. But things have changed much over the past few decades, and the nature of the forests has evolved.There is much more deciduous planting than there used to be, bringing a softening to the hitherto hard lines of the blocks of conifers, and a greater public freedom now that most of the No Entry signs are part of its historical past.
Frankly, I love the plantations, the smell of pine, the dusty paths and tracks, the wild strawberries, rosebay willow-herb and brilliant yellow gorse, the darting passage and fleeting glimpses of deer, patches of sunlight, birds, and sometimes, on hot days, a profound cathedral-like stillness. 
The Brecklands are riddled with history, social, military, and archaeological, layers of human activity which have added to, rather than detracted from, this marvellous and often under-appreciated area.