The padlocked gate tells its own story.
The main entrance to what was once a popular picnic and walking site in the heart of the Lake District is closed. Campaigners say the public have effectively been shut out.
Rigg Wood, a 40-acre (16 hectare) site by the banks of Coniston Water, was sold for £116,000 in October. Many local residents only learned of the sale when they noticed that the small car park at the site had been closed by its new owner.
Now campaigners are warning that Rigg Wood's fate will become a familiar tale if the Government presses ahead with plans to sell off forests throughout England.
Paul Townsend, the chairman of the Save Lakeland's Forests group, said: "What has happened here is a symbol of what could happen if forests are sold.
"We are very worried about all the woods in the Lakes. Rigg Wood illustrates what can happen without you even knowing about it."
The pretty wood is part of Grizedale Forest, a 6,050-acre (2,447 hectare) forest visited by 200,000 people each year.
When Rigg Wood was still owned by the Forestry Commission, fans of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series could use the car park and stroll 300 yards to the ruin of a circular bark-strippers' hut believed to have been the inspiration for the igloo built Dick and Dorothea Callum, characters in the books.
Other visitors would walk to the nearby jetty, and from there launch canoe trips on to Coniston Water.
Mr Townsend said residents had not been informed of the sale last year, but simply realised their wood was no longer public property when they saw the padlocked gate blocking access to the land at the start of winter.
Walkers can access the site on foot through an entrance in the Lakeland slate wall separating the wood and the road that runs alongside it, but there is no access for cars and the car park remains closed.
Mike Cavanagh, the businessman who bought the land, said: "Although the car parking area has now been closed to vehicular access, public access via the long established and used footpath entrance has not been restricted at all.
"The car park area has been restricted to vehicles due to abuse from people trying to drive their car up a grassy track beyond the car park creating deep mud ruts and doing doughnuts in the car park as well as leaving litter behind.
"This closure was done after checking that 90 per cent of users were not even going in the wood, but using it to go to the lake on the other side of the road – quite often just to take a photo, before moving on a couple of minutes later.
"I am hoping with good management the rest of the wood can be enhanced and regenerated to become closer to a more typical Lakeland woodland habitat along with some small scale timber production suitable to the site."
Mr Townsend, who lives in Satterthwaite, a village in the middle of Grizedale Forest, said: "The new owner is perfectly within his rights to have done what he has.
"Access to forests needs not only to be guaranteed but encouraged. The Forestry Commission did that by putting in car parks and public facilities. There is a big difference between technically allowing access and actually enabling it.
"The new owner can say you can come and walk, but if they don't provide car parks or signage then how do you do it?"
Colin Barr, the chairman of Colton Parish Council, which covers Rigg Wood, added: "He [the new owner] clearly has different objectives for the future of this wood.
"It is an example of what could happen. We don't know what the future could bring, these woods could be sold into private ownership and the owners have the right to do all sorts of things."
