including orchids can be found around the reserve. History Prehistory Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) hunter-gatherers are known to have occupied caves at Creswell Crags on the Notts/Derbys border near Worksop for thousands of years down to 10,000 BC. By this time they used a distinctive range of flint and stone tools examples of which have been found at Farndon – possibly a temporary summer hunting camp. During the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) the Trent Valley became a multi-channelled river system with extensive wetlands and developed a heavily forested landscape. A detailed pollen sequence taken from a peat-filled former river channel at Girton has revealed changes in the floral environment between 7000 BC and 1000 BC. Fieldwalking at Collingham prior to quarrying produced a high density of flintwork from c 5000 BC along the edge of what was then a gravel island and this would be associated with the activities of hunter-gatherers living off the natural food resources of the Valley. The Neolithic (New Stone Age) is linked with the introduction of farming as the major source of food and a degree of more settled existence. Traces of settlement are notoriously difficult to find and indeed no evidence has been found in our area. However at Langford Lowfields in Collingham archaeologists excavated what they described as a ‘log jam’ in a former channel of the Trent where flooding in c 2000BC had swept away material from a site upstream only for it to be held up by fallen trees. Animal bones revealed evidence for cattle, pig, wild boar, red and roe deer, horse, dog and sheep and human remains including skulls lodged in the debris were interpreted as coming from a funerary or ritual site disturbed by the floods. The population was increasing with a complex network of social relationships uniting widely dispersed mobile or sedentary groups some of whom must have passed by or even temporarily set up home in Besthorpe even if we don't have firm evidence of their presence. The Bronze Age produced evidence at Girton of a burnt mound. This oval pile of burnt stones some 10–12 metres in diameter and 0.4 metres high can be linked to heating water and probably cooking. Other archaeological evidence is in the form of a ‘pit alignment’ examined in Besthorpe Quarry in the 1990s; this consisted of a line of deep pits dug presumably to support large posts and usually