Autumn Woodland Walk

A few photographs from this weekends walk. Lovely and sunny but bitterly cold with the wind. The woods provided a lot of shelter and gave us a chance to explore and forage for the last of the autumn berries.

I think this is a Birch polypore. This one was as big as my hand.

Sweet chestnuts still ripening.

Fighting the squirrels for the tiny number of sweet chestnuts this year. Just like the apples the sweet chestnut trees were laden with nuts last year, this year we've struggled to find them and those we have found the squirrels had first.

My favourite tree. Its trunk roughly a metre across.

My guess this is one of the oldest trees here, just behind it hidden by the bushes is an old dry stone wall. These woods were originally market gardens gardens and farm land growing everything from strawberries, rhubarb and daffodils and they would then send the harvested produce by river to the train stations. A few of the boundary walls are left, hidden beneath the undergrowth. Cast iron gates are slowly decaying amongst the thriving trees and if you look carefully you can see the old stone gate posts. I walked down what was once perhaps a right of way between the farms. The trees towering over on both sides growing between the stone walls and the path beneath my feet slowly being washed away down to the slate once quarried just a few miles away.

pine cones gathered ready for christmas wreaths and deocrations,
These will be dried out allowing them to open.

A patch of the woodland has been taken over by pine trees. Thick layers of pine needles litter the floor and not much else grows. The odd fungus grows on a decaying pine and squirrels come for the pine seeds. Once they've gone, not even the birds bother much with these trees.

Pine trees. Squirrels were already in the trees
tearing at the pine cones for the seeds.

fallen leaves outside my house.