‘An Enid Blyton adventure story for grown-ups’ – James Aldred has built his own patch of

A ward-winning wildlife cameraman James Aldred has seen some of the natural world’s most awe-inspiring sights, from birds of paradise taking flight in Papua New Guinea to the mass migration of ten million fruit bats in Zambia.

Yet the more he travels the world, the more he comes to appreciate a place closer to home.

James Aldred in his happy place 

Aldred grew up on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire and has always loved the area; by his mid-teens he was, with his parents’ approval, building forest shelters and sleeping in the woods. The fact that this 71,000-acre tract of wilderness still exists in overcrowded southern England is, he believes, ‘nothing short of a miracle’.

Even as he was getting up at dawn to film condors in Patagonia or track elephants in the Congo, Aldred was dreaming of acquiring his own little bit of the New Forest.

Land there rarely comes up for sale, and he had no thoughts of building a house, which is just as well as planning permission is almost impossible to obtain. What he longed for was a sliver of land where his three sons could climb trees and camp outdoors, just as he had.

To make his search even more urgent, Aldred needed somewhere to put a Romany wagon – a gift from a family friend. Built in around 1910, the horse-drawn wagon was once a thing of beauty with wooden shutters, an elegantly curved porch and a gleaming chassis. By the time Aldred took it on, it was at the point of rotting away completely.

This charming book, which reads a bit like an Enid Blyton adventure story for grown-ups, charts Aldred’s progress as he spends more than a decade rebuilding the wagon.

He realises he doesn’t have to copy old Romany designs: ‘The important thing is to keep the spirit of tradition alive. Reinvent it, make it up, put your own stamp on the wagon and enjoy it.’

When he feels the task will never be completed, he keeps himself going by imagining the wagon sitting in the New Forest. And, miraculously, a pristine field does come up for sale. It even has a stream running through it where, to his great joy, Aldred will eventually capture images of visiting otters.

Finally, in the summer of 2025, his boys can sleep in the wagon (Aldred, his wife and the dog have to make do with a tent). The wagon looks at home in their field, its green and yellow paintwork blending with the bracken. Watching his sons run, climb and explore the forest, as he did at their age, he feels life has come full circle.

This is a delightful evocation of the New Forest and its special atmosphere. Who needs jungles, rainforests or deserts when ‘life and history lie thick here . . . entwined just below the surface, like ancient roots’.