The Lumberjills at my local trail park

Intriguing title? Here’s an explanation.

One of my favourite places to ride my mountain bike is at the Dalby Forest Trail Park. It has short and long routes with varying technical sections, although it’s more ‘cross country’ than ‘enduro or freeride’. It’s also a great place to ride all year round as the trails are well managed and it’s not (too) muddy in Winter. There is the Dalby Forest Cycle Hub (bike shop) in the courtyard where there are rental bikes and lots of other shiny-new-stuff to tempt those of us that can be a bit of a spontaneous spendthrift at times. Crucially, the Courtyard Cafe does great post-ride coffees and food.

More relevant to this post is the fact that as you drive down into the valley where the car park, visitor centre and trails start, there is an amazing steel fabricated memorial made by Ray Lonsdale of two women dressed in work clothes, with one of them holding a large saw, which has cut halfway through the tree trunk, and the other balancing on the log. These women are Lumberjills. 

During the First and Second World Wars, women in the UK were recruited and assigned to the Land Army to support farmers and to work in agriculture. The Land army is well known across the country for its contribution. However, and equally importantly, there was another special service called initially the Women’s Timber Service in the First World War, which then became the Women’s Timber Corps in the Second World War. These were the Lumberjills. They wore a special green beret as part of their working clothes, and which distinguished them from the Women’s Land army. They worked in the woodlands and forests all across the UK, and approximately 9000 women worked as Lumberjills as timber was a crucial commodity during the war time. 

I was aware of the Lumberjills as I would pass the memorial every time I went for a ride. However, it wasn’t until last year when I came across a great book written by Joanna Foat, that I realised the importance of the Lumberjills and the contribution that they made. The amazing energy and facts in the book are brought about by Joanna interviewing the Lumberjills, who were all in well advanced ages. The stories of their time in the forests are amazing and this book is the first ever, fully documented, personal stories of the Lumberjills. It really is a great read and has to be THE definitive source of information regarding the Lumberjills. It isn’t just the personal stories that resonate, the photos included in the book really make it very real.

The Lumberjills worked in Dalby Forest, and they didn’t just cut trees down, they planted young trees as well. This makes it all the more personal to me, because I remember the photos and the interviews of the women who worked there and can recall them as I ride the forest trails, which weave their way in and out of ‘their trees’. These now, big trees, of which some are being currently felled, will very likely have been planted by the Lumberjills working at Dalby, so it provides a special spirit to the place.

If I told you anymore about the Lumberjills, I would be diluting the power and impact of Joanna’s book, so below is a link to her site where the book and other related things can be bought. If you’re more into listening rather than reading, you can hear the book on Audible and there is a separate photo book as well. Whilst there wasn’t such a thing in the 1930s and 40s like the International Women’s day that we have nowadays, we can still recognise the great contribution that these women made, and really enjoy their real life stories as captured by Joanna.  

Link to Joanna’s site: https://thelumberjills.uk

Link to the Dalby Forest Cycle Hub: https://www.dalbyforestcyclehub.co.uk

Dalby Forest site: https://www.forestryengland.uk/dalby-forest

All photos by the Author