We bought 26 acres of scrag-end land in Shropshire 18 months ago with our pension for ~ £3k per acre. It's marginal, quite wet, surrounded by monoculture deserts a few meters higher but it included 8 acres of very derelict hazel coppice also at a slightly higher elevation.
I think the person we've bought off felt sorry for us - he made a 30K profit in just 2 years - and for sure commercially it's not worth as much - there's possibly 5 acres pasture in there - but given that we had spent 5 years searching for woodland AND we wanted the option for establishing a small commercial willow operation (for firewood and baskets) then our land is worth a lot more to us than the the average farmer.
It's worth noting that we spent far too long looking for land that we could also live on. In the end we gave up and decided to buy the land, then move near it. We now live 10 miles away. It's a compromise but one I can live with.
