It doesn't look like much today.

Rolling green fields intersected by sleepy villages and idyllic hamlets, farmsteads, highways and fast cars.

Yet, long ago, this entire region was covered by a thick layer of forest.

Not the managed woodland and tree farms that we see today, most of those are the result

of Victorian era plantations.

This forest was older.

A native primordial sea of trees, the likes of which can only be found now in a few select places in Europe.

In those places such as the great expanse of forest on the Polish-Belarusian borders,

home to the last European bison, we can still see glimpses of what this English woodland might have looked

like in its prime.

Long before the stranglehold of agriculture and steady march of modernity completed its demise.

Many of the trees we see today in England aren't native trees.

These are Scots pines.

But there are places where the original inhabitants of our forests remain.

The mighty English oak.

Few remain now, disease and felling having taken the rest. But there are places where you can still

see these trees in their prime. Sherwood Forest is one of them.

Wild carnivorous beasts once stalked these woodlands

Keeping the people of the forest well aware of their connection with nature

Great bears and packs of wolves. Orrocks, the ancestor of the cow, perhaps even bison.

In its prime, the forest stretched all the way to the Lincolnshire coastline, encompassing much of the land within.

This was the home of Druids, and the legendary hiding place of Robin Hood and his merry

...