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Robin Hood’s Popularity Killing Sherwood ForestBy GREGORY JENSENEDW1NST0WE, England lt;UPI) — The trouble with Robin Hood, said lan Solly, is that he is so popular his fans were kilting off Sherwood Forest.It just got impossible,*' Solly said rear two 400-year-old oak trees. We were getting 20,000 people here on a Sunday. The trees just couldn't stand it.Solly is head ranger of a forest rescue project which is trying to rejuvenate the only patch of Sherwood Forest still surviving as Kobin Hood and his Merrie Men may have known it.He presides over the striking new Sherwood Forest Visitor Center, a series of half-buried huts blending into the surrounding woods, which opened earlier this year.Everyone who comes herecomes because he's heard of Robin Hood,” Solly said.So an exhibition dutifully tellsvisitors of this legendary outlawwho poached the king's deer and robbed the rich to help the poor.But then the exhibit cunningly leads visitors on through the history of Sherwood Forest itself. It makes social points about the the brutal “forest law” which made Robin an outlaw, makes ecological points about the still-continuing rape and nun of his great forest.A few hundred yards into the forest sprawls the most famous tree in England, the gnarled old giant called the Major Oak. It is a huge, much-doctored tree. Its burled trunk is some 32 feet around.The Major is supposed to have been Kobin Hood’s “headquarters tree, a rallying point for his outlaw band. This belief brings so many people to touch the Major that their feet were killing the old oak tree,compacting the ground so hard that food and water could not reach its roots.So this year a new path winds from the Visitor Center. The old path is closed. Now, a fence surrounds the patched-up old tree Its venerable branches rest on props and are tied together with cables. A sign on the fence pleads, Give it a rest.Unsuspecting visitors to the new’ center — built on concrete rafts to avoid harming tree roots — find a few romantic notions about Robin Hood and his golden age gently deflated.Sherwood Forest itself, for instance.There is a weird, grotesque look about this stretch of ancient oaks 142 miles north of London.Its green glades are punctured by massive oaks which seem blasted on top, their deadbranches bare and contorted like witches's arms, The forest looks virgin, untouched since the beginning of time.What we’re seeing is the relic of a commercial enterprise,”Solly said.Landowners once farmed oak trees commercially here. They simply abandoned it ISO years ago when they found coal underneath — i I major mines in the Sherwood Forest area now produce 9 million tons a year.“Trees of about 200 years old, approaching maturity then, were just left,” Solly said. “They're now, say, 400 years old and nearing the end of their life — dying of old age.“Oaks tend to die off from theat which it becomes bormg or sickening is quickly reached.That’s why the 93-foot sailing ship California only puts out in pleasant weather and why her excursions to sea arc kept short.Captain George Falkesgaard this year began running tour cruises by day, cocktail sails atnight out of San Diego aboard the barquentine — a replica ofWARSAW LIONS—Bob Katie’s Restaurant. 6:15 p.m. WEST LAFAYETTE LIONS— Dixie House Restaurant, 6:15p.Itl.WEST LAFAYETTE JANUSIAN CLUB—112 W. FifthSt., 6:15 p.m.TOASTMASTERS—Park Hotel,? p.m.OHIO DEFENSE CORPS— Armory, 7:30 p.m.SENIOR STEELWORKERS ASSOCIATION—Union Hall,7:30 p.m.COSHOCTON COUNTY PILOTS ASSOCIATION—First NationalBank, Chestnut St., 7:30 p m. COSH OCTON MOOS E—Lodge HaU, 8 p.m.FRIENDS INC, BOARD— Trinity Episcopal Church, 8:30 p.m.WEDNESDAYtop, which is why they look as they do.Another surprise is that Sherwood was never unbroken, inpenetrable forest. Even whenit covered a third of Nottinghamshire, it included farms and open land.The forest law” which ruled it was brutal and savage — its penalty for poaching the king’s deer was blindness or emasculation. Fences were banned. Cutting a tree brought fearsome retribution. Even carrying a bow and arrows was a major crime.The law was conservation of a sort. But its severity made outlaws of many bands of men. Were any of these men namedSo far as the passengers are concerned, Falkesgaard concedes there is blessed little to do aboard a boat.About Its or 2 hours into it, they begin to get turned off,” said Falkesgaard, who comes from a Danish family which has been involved with the sea since 1376.COSHOCTON COUNCIL FOR COMMUNITY NEEDS—YWCA, 11:30 a.m.COSHOCTON KIWANIS—OldWarehouse Restaurant, noon WEST LAFAYETTE ROTARY—Chase's Restaurant, 6:15 p.m.COSHOCTON LIONS—Andy’S On The Hill,'6:30 p.m. COSHOCTON EMERGENCYSQUAD—Squad House, 7 p.m. COSHOCTON COUNTY DRUG COUNCIL—The stone, 224 N. Fourth, 7:30 p.m.COSHOCTON JAYCEES—Park Hotel, 8 p.m.VFW POST 1330—Post Home, 8 p.m.WEST LAFAYETTE AMERICAN LEGION—Post Home, 8 p.m.RIDGEWOOD ATHLETIC BOOSTERS—Ridgewood HighSchool, 8 p.m.Robin Hood? lt;“Nobody knows for sure if Robin ever really lived, the exhibit confesses.He I* first mentioned m literature written about 1377. Ballads about him were the underground literature of me- ■$ dievai England.If he didn’t exist, then He had to be invented as a figure to express what ordinary people felt about the times they lived in,” the exhibit says. Robin Hood was a symbol of successful opposition to tyranny and ] oppression,Even if Robin Hood was real, his connection with the Major Oak is a flight of fancy. Solly said die Major probably is no more than 850 years old, making it a mere sapling in Robin’s day.Yet people still make thepilgrimage to it, and will formany years more. Rejuvenating this stretch of Sherwood Forest really has worked for the Major Oak.It’s healthier now than it has been for vears.” Solly said.adjoining San Diego Ray and tie up at a restaurant for dinner.He will take them only if j conditions are ideal because, as f he puts it, The ladies don’t iwant to get wet sea water on jthem or windblown hair. “They iwant to look as good when they «arrive as they did when they left j the hotel.”The California has a colorful history. She was used by the Navy in World War II to move-Australian spotters behind Japanese line.Falkesgaard operated in the red oniy two months after purchasing her in Marina Del . Rpy near Los Angeles and ' bringing her here. He broke 1 even grossing 19,000 in the third ! month. Now he is thinking about , expanding his one-ship fleet. ^The California is manned by six community college students and skippered by Murl Smith, a veteran of 36 years at sea, has three masts. The forward one has square-rigged sails. Crew--men scamper nigh in the rigging to unfurl them.This is the main attraction. Said Falkesgaard of his passengers. It’s the seamanship that excites them.“There is in the public mind something good and clean and beautiful about sailing ships.“You get to see the crew doing their thing — there are no winches, no mechanical rigging of any kind.Sailing Ship Promises Passengers Smooth RideBv CLARENCE ZA1TZ refunds his customers’ mooey Mission Bay into the Pacific. ' SAN DIEGO (UPI) — A little' and returns them to the dock. Groups can charter the boat and bit of sailing for landlubbers can Better no customers at all, than board in Mission Bay, then sail be a lot of fun but the threshold sick landlubbers bad-mouthing out into the Pacific and back intothe California.sailing ships of the 1800s. So his cruises are short andIf the ocean appears to be smooth — usually including a getting too choppy, he quickly quarter-mile excursion out of*XW\VAV^V/.V//^.^\V.V^\V/.V«V/AW.V/AW.%V*%Y.N mBulletin BoardTUESDAY
Newspaper Details
Coshocton Tribune
Coshocton, Ohio, US
Tue, Sep 21, 1976
Page 10
Full Page
Clipped by
Rutherford B.
OH, USA 15 Feb 2022
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