woodland walk

10 Feb 2011

The ingredients of a good walk

I apologise for posting several recent blogs on a similar theme, but it just so happens to be what I’ve taken photographs of – and where we’ve spent time recently.

It was my husband’s birthday earlier in the week and as he has a few days of annual leave to take this financial year, he thought that he might as well take a few days around his birthday, so that we’d have a choice of days on which to try and get out for some fresh air, should the weather not co-operate on the actual day. As it happens, Tuesday proved to be the best day of the week and an ideal one for wrapping up warm and heading out to stretch our legs.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

The summit of Beacon Fell. the very grey and misty start had thankfully lifted to the most glorious day.

We were talking in the car on our way home about what a nice day we’d had and listed some of the highlights and decided that these were often the ingredients that went to comprise the more enjoyable days. So these are the bullet points that seemed significant and entertaining – to us:

  • It was quiet – although we went to a popular and favourite beauty spot, it always feels like a bonus to go mid-week when you often get the place pretty much to yourselves.
It had rained relentlessly for the previous 3 days and it was rather squelchy underfoot in places, but sunshine after rain of that nature does provide a rather special atmosphere.
  • We only really passed the occasional dog walker and other mature types like us taking advantage of a day off or enjoying their retirement. We passed grandparents with a cheerful small dog and equally cheerful young grandson, wearing the most fabulous fleece hat adorned with dinosaur spines. When admiring said headwear, he provided a suitably loud dinosaur roar, just in case we weren’t certain what type of beast he was. He advised us that he was looking out for real dinosaurs and bears, so we were more vigilant from that point forwards. Just in case he was lucky.
I must admit to looking a little more carefully into the dark corners once I knew there were dinosaurs and bears lurking. But thankfully the only wildlife we saw were some squirrels chasing each other along the branches, obviously thinking spring was in the air.
  • This encounter left us with a question – why do dogs always prefer disproportionately long sticks to carry? What primeval instinct drives them to drag one along, seemingly far too large for them, causing passers by to swiftly take evasive action to save their shins. You’d think that there would be an optimal size of something like 4 times the width of the dog’s skull – but not so, it would seem, dogs, even quite small ones, will valiantly persist in carrying a stick or branch several times their own length. And for some reason, equally unfathomable, Mr Boo obviously sports the look of a man who would be good at throwing said sticks and he often finds himself with a stick at his feet and a hopeful looking dog attached.
I have posted photographs of this fabulous carved snake before, but the light made the fabulous textured carving on his head rather more visible and we approached it from a different angle. It might just make you jump if you didn’t know it was there.
  • Talking of dogs, whilst we had our favourite car park almost to ourselves, there was one other very small car parked nearby and our lunchtime entertainment took the form of an extremely large (sans stick, presumably he never found one quite large enough) Irish wolfhound that had to be shoe-horned into the aforementioned very small vehicle before departure. I was so sorry that I’d put the camera away at this point. But I had to admire the fact that he’d clearly done it before and knew just what was required to cram himself into the inadequate space. Clearly his daily walk was worth that effort.
I’m not keen on snakes, I certainly wouldn’t have got this close to a real one, but he does have a rather lovely face which is beautifully carved from a massive hunk of timber, with lovely and very tactile textures.
  • I saw my first lamb of the season – very small and still wearing its protective plastic coat, presumably only born in the last few days.
  • We had a very brief and fleeting encounter with a barn owl. As we were driving back towards home, we must have disturbed it on a fencepost at the roadside. It took off and flew alongside the car for a few yards and by the time I’d tried to get my husband to take appropriate action to allow me a photograph, it had veered off to the side and was now behind us, but the close proximity of another rather impatient driver close to our tail meant that we were unable to stop quickly and by the time we’d extricated ourselves from the traffic, the barn owl had seemingly settled somewhere out of sight, despite returning and carefully scanning the area he’d last been seen. I was gutted not to have got a better look or an opportunity for a photograph.
You always know that it has been a good day when you drive home to a sky like this.
4 Oct 2010

It was a fungi sort of a day

As I posted about in my previous photograph-based blog, I love to walk in woodland and feel that trees are vitally important to my emotional and physical well-being.

We spend a lot of time in the English Lake District and have just spent some assorted days there over 2 weekends. This particular walk, Revelin Moss at Whinlatter, north west of Keswick, is another favourite and a more gentle walk than some we do and is consequently one we often do when we’ve either done something else earlier in the day, so have limited time, as was the case this last Saturday, or by its location, we often do late in the day, also the case this last weekend – so light levels were an issue for the photographs.

Please click on the photographs to see a larger copy, they’re rather dark here on the page.

The previous woodland blogged was well established and largely deciduous and in places mixed, where this one is more plantation style coniferous woodland and is owned and managed by the Forestry Commission. I have always felt that it has a slightly Alpine feel to it, it’s a little higher than other walks and the smells and atmosphere often transport me across Europe. It’s a looped walk designed for disabled access and pushchairs, so the paths are wide and well-maintained, so easy walking, albeit quite undulating. It also has a newly installed mountain bike route which crosses the path in places.

When you stop to look closely at the steep banks of moss and heather adjacent to the path in places where it carves through the hillside, you can see a massive variety of species growing shoulder to shoulder.

The last week has been both much cooler and some days have been incredibly wet – autumn arrived in no uncertain terms. Walks often have a theme to them – particular things are in season, or the weather highlights particular features. On Saturday the stand-out theme was fungi. The damp weather and changing season had caused all manner of woodland fungi to fruit and there were some fabulous specimens.

I had to take this from some distance and through foliage, and with a long focal length, as they were the other side of a stream from me and growing from the top of a dead tree stump.

I love to see them growing and think they’re fascinating things of great and diverse beauty, but I can’t claim to know much about them – I just like to see them, take photos and largely keep my distance. I would never know what might make good eating – it seems to me that the difference between and good meal and certain death (or at least an extremely unpleasant experience) is often a very subtle one, requiring serious expertise.

This was the largest patch of fly agarics I think I’ve ever seen, just nestled at the roots of some well established conifers. But the larger specimens of the group, off to the left and the size of dinner plates, were all kicked over and broken.

These large brown specimens seem to start very small and button shape, growing and opening until they curl upwards with undulated edges.

One thing that always saddens though is that I see so many kicked over and damaged. I’ve never known if this is people who are concerned by them for some reason, or just for sport, dogs routing around near them, or even wild animals like deer or badgers kicking at them to see if they’re edible. But it seems a common sight when walking in woodland, that whilst there are many lovely specimens – and some walks are especially good for the variety of species seen growing – there are always many that are broken up and damaged – and clearly not in a manner that suggests natural wear and tear or weather damage.

The dramatic looking red and white spotted fly agaric mushrooms shown earlier and above are perhaps one of the most recognised species and that is as many as I’ve ever seen on one day. Further along the walk I spotted three very new mushrooms just emerging from the ground at the base of a tree. One was barely breaking the ground and the other two were still tightly closed and only just above ground.

I had always thought that their redness was an indicator of their toxicity, but apparently they’re unpleasant, rather than deadly – you’d need to consume quite a lot of whole fresh mushrooms to actually be in real danger. But they are thought to have hallucinogenic properties when the flesh is properly prepared (and some of the techniques to do so are quite unsavoury) and the ‘fly’ of the name is less to do with insects and more to do with the likely resulting hallucination involving yourself flying.

There is even some speculation that their red and white livery is responsible for the traditional red and white attire of our modern Father Christmas / Santa Claus – thought to have arisen from the combination of many factors over time, from the fondness of reindeer to eat fly agarics (I wonder if they hallucinate about flying?), old stories of Siberian shamen spirits who visited yurts down the smoke hole bearing little leather bags of dried agaric pieces to tempt those below and their traditional appearance in fairy tales and folklore as a token visual and easily recognised mushroom – and often used as a decorative element around the festive period.

I think I prefer to see them nestled at the foot of a tree, just doing what nature intended.