A Woodland Walk

Last week Puddle and I decided to go for a walk. It was a lovely evening and the weather had been glorious for several weeks before. The various weather forecasts, however, were indicating  an imminent fresher spell with eagerly anticipated rain. With this rain would come the sensational and, I imagine, award winning nettles which invariably make this particular walk impossible by mid June. The walk follows the stream from our garden along a winding gully between 2 fields and 2 farms. Its a long strip that runs for about 2 miles that would be of no use to either farm. I would love to buy it from whoever owns it but until then I shall just have to exercise my roamers rights! Its a fantastic wild life walk with all sorts of species of plant life and birds alike, not to mention foxes, badgers and deer of which there are plenty.

I came across an interesting plant just outside our garden area. It consisted of lots of bamboo like stems with what appeared to be buds on top. It was rather striking and excitedly I took pictures for identification purposes on return to my computer. Later I discovered this was horsetail, aka public enemy number 1. An invasive weed that is immune to most weed killers, and is in actual fact a living fossil!

I was kind of glad I didn’t attempt to dig some up there and then what with all that negative press.

We had a lovely walk jumping back and forth across the stream (and often in the stream) avoiding the large trees, branches and particularly steep slopes. Eventually we spotted a nice patch of bluebells so decided to scale the hill up to the field and try to take some pictures. We did so but my photography skills do leave something to be desired. I’m just not able to capture the lovely bluebell effect… ah well. We walked across the field spotting some deer (the things you see when you don’t have a gun… hehe). We then joined the path to bring us home.

The next day came the rain as predicted and massive nettle growth spurt. Goodbye woodland walk. See you in the autumn xxx