Continuing their theme of appreciating the outdoors, this month's column from Kenilworth's Most Famous Couple, Neil and Gayle Bradley, sees them delve into the mystery of a local monkey puzzle tree

I've always been fascinated with monkey puzzle trees. And the superstition and folklore that surrounds them. This prehistoric alien-like tree with its fierce prickles and spiky leaves, which evolved not to deter monkeys, but the grazing dinosaurs of the Mesozoic era, 250 million years ago.

Yes they're even older than Mr Bradley!

We first caught a glimpse of this majestic tree far, far away in the distance last summer way out to the west. We were out on our daily walk up Chase Lane, doing half of the Millennium Way when I first spied it out of the corner of my eye.

As soon as we caught sight of it, we lost sight of it. We kept losing it. This gave it a more magical quality. We had to find out more.

We decided to make the search for the home of the mystical tree into a quest; a pilgrimage if you like.

New Year's Day seemed an auspicious day. So off we set, discovering the Faerietale Alpaca farm half way through our journey. And there she was. Overlooking a caravan storage park on Cllr Cockburn's family farm.

A splendid creature indeed and well worth the expedition in the drizzle, frost and mud up the public pathway.

Monkey Puzzle trees first turned up in 1795, brought to Britain by the plant collector Archibald Menzies. Originally found on the exotic and far flung cordillera of the Andes in Chile. One of them had made it here over a hundred years ago to rest on top of Fern Hill Farm.

Us Warwickshire folk do love a good tree superstition, so it is no surprise that the bizarre looking Monkey Puzzle attracted so many folk stories and far-fetched tales.

Superstitions about the Monkey Puzzle tree abound in old England. The Devil himself sits in the monkey puzzle tree and if you're not silent whilst walking past, you'll attract the Devil's attention and get bad luck. In Cambridgeshire folklore, the Monkey Puzzle trees are planted on the edge of graveyards to stop the Devil from climbing up their jagged branches and then watching fresh burials from his spiky perch.

As we all know, the Devil has shape-shifting abilities. Muriel Spark explained this in her 1960 novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye. In one scene, the devil himself adopted the form of a Monkey Puzzle tree to hide his form.

So of course we had to ask the current owner of the tree Cllr Cockburn of Fernhill Farm about the tree. He bought the derelict farm in the 1970s and was told it was over a hundred years old then. They can live to 1,000 years old!

He knows nothing about it. Who planted it, when and why. He demolished the old farming ruins but kept the majestic tree.

We do know the Victorians had a penchant for the exotic and left arboretums all over Warwickshire. But the Kenilworth Monkey Puzzle stands alone at its sentinel hilltop. The all-seeing eye. I'd like to think she watches over us and keeps us safe whilst we sleep in Kenilworth. Our very own mother nature atop the hill. She knows everything.

We are lucky to live in Kenilworth, where we can get out in nature so very easily. No matter how frosty and cold it is. How bare the trees are, we can get out muddy old boots on, a wooly hat, scarf and gloves and go explore the natural history all around us.

Can anyone help us with the history of our Kenilworth Monkey Puzzle tree? Are there any other trees hereabouts that deserve their story to be told?