Although it was a tad muddy and drizzly yesterday, I dragged us out for a walk around Bramshaw Wood in the New Forest. It's near Nomansland (which has a pub, so hardly lives up to its name), on the northern end of the Forest, and hence not many people visit. It's a lovely mix of ancient woodland, with small streams and ancient Saxon boundary banks among other earthworks.
There are numerous paths - it being Open Access - making plotting a route rather difficult. An OS map isn't that useful BUT GPS is - on several occasions yesterday I was just pointing us in the right general direction. It was rather slow progress - negotiating extreme muddiness - it having rained a lot the night before - and tackling the holly bushes - but we were rewarded with beautiful mossy, gnarly beeches and oaks, fern-lined streams, and beautiful golds, oranges and yellows of the leaves falling around us. We saw one set of amazing fungi (look - don't pick, following the clear signage on most Forestry Commission car parks, to safeguard the amazing richness of fungi here), but apart from that, the fungi season appears to be over.
This morning was a different picture - sunny, with a cold biting wind on our walk into town along the river. Again, very muddy, but the beech and field maple leaves seemed to sparkle in the wind, and on our way back, we saw a kestrel hovering and had a fantastic view of a red kite effortlessly circling above us. So great to see these once-rare birds becoming a frequent sight in Salisbury.
Oh yes, and we also saw a red admiral butterfly - here we are in November, and without a really hard frost yet, some surprising species are hanging on! This week may bring an end to that :(
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