No rain today! We had a circular walk through Darwin Forest, which is quite local to me. There is a campsite right next to it so you usually get chatting to people from other parts of the country on holiday.
The walk is just under 3 miles and all flat. It can get muddy in parts when it has been raining, and I have gone on my arse more than once, but I've lived to tell the tale. It is very easy and is fairly quiet at certain times of the day. Other times, people from the campsite are out walking their dogs.
I can remember eating green hazelnuts straight off the tree when I was a child. We didn't even wait until they'd ripened and gone brown. Green ones are quite pithy inside so best to wait until they've ripened!
It's quite a good area for foraging as there's also some raspberries that tend to come out from late June to early September.
I love seeing these old stone walls that you see randomly in the forests. I'm not sure whether this one is from an old farm or a boundary marker. They are good eco systems for wildlife. Just across the lane, there is a little field mouse living in a stoned wall. I've seen it, but I've never been lucky enough to photograph it.
Yellow goldenrod and the pink stuff is rose bay willow herb.
We could have cut our walk shorter by going through the opening in the trees, but it's always boggy in the middle, so we carried on. It's always good here when it's misty or with a bit of snow on the ground. Later on in the year, there will be lots of fly agaric fungi to see, so it is worth coming back up for.
