Frith Wood Nature Reserve, Gloucestershire

Frith Wood Nature Reserve contains 59 acres of ancient beech woodland on both sides of a ridge between the Slad and Painswick valleys, in the Cotswold Hills a few miles northeast of Stroud. The ridgetop is mostly treeless, occupied by a field; the woods cover the lower slopes, facing northwest - a generally moist and quite overgrown section - and southeast, where the land is drier and has less understory vegetation. The reserve falls within a larger Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Juniper Hill, The Frith and Bulls Cross, the hill being a westerly continuation of the north-facing side of the ridge, including a sizeable old quarry, while Bulls Cross is a patch of rough grassland to the east.

Like many arboreal nature reserves, Frith Wood is most attractive in autumn when the leaves are turning, and in spring, when large parts of the ground are covered with the flowers of bluebell and wild garlic. The majority of the other wildflowers are also common, though several rarer species are found here including wintergreen, white helleborine, broad-leaved helleborine, herb paris and bird's nest orchid.

The two halves of the woodland are crossed by various paths and old tracks, and the place is relatively popular, mostly with dog walkers. The land is steep, covering up to 150 feet of elevation, so the majority of the paths take diagonal courses across the slopes. Beech makes up about 80 percent of the woodland, and these trees are being selectively felled for timber, partly as many are approaching the end of their natural life; the woodland is semi-natural, with most of the original beech having been planted, from seed, in the early 1800s. Other species are ash, whitebeam, hazel, yew and holly.