The presence of a new official-looking sign in a treasured place is always unnerving. At the top of Wyming Brook it was doubly so. I have a disproportionate affection for this wooded gorge, affection born from not just from my own exploration as a teenager, but also from bringing our kids here when they were little more than toddlers.
The path beside the brook is a jumble of often-slippery boulders and tree roots twisting steeply downhill towards the Rivelin Valley below. Towering conifers dominate both sides of the stream: red cedar, eastern hemlock, Douglas fir, red pine and sitka. The kids would teeter along, pausing every so often to crane their necks upwards, glorying in this small slice of the Rockies on the western fringes of Sheffield.
Reading the new sign, my heart sank a little. A new scourge, the sign announced, had arrived in Wyming Brook. The pathogen Phytophthora ramorum arrived in Britain 20 years ago, most likely from east Asia. It’s an oomycete, fungus-like but more accurately classified as a stramenopile, like many algae. Spores spread on wind-blown rain, infecting leaves and then blocking the tree’s ability to transport water. I have seen ramorum blight larch forests in Wales; now here it was in my backyard. Wyming Brook’s larches would have to come out, and Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust, which manages the site, was warning of a “drastic effect on the landscape”.
Picking my way down the familiar path, I stared up at the looming trees. A family passed the other way, a boy and girl looking wide-eyed at the mossy crags, just as mine had done. A sweet chestnut had fallen recently, the section of trunk blocking the path cut away. I ran my hand across a section where the bark had stripped away, revealing corrugations in the trunk. Chestnut is also vulnerable to ramorum, and they will have to go too. Looking around, I could see native species struggling for light: black alder, oak and rowan. Replacements are waiting in the wings. But this fracturing of memory is never easy.
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