THE DEVIL'S FUNGUS

I am taking some walkers through the Devil's Punchbowl on Saturday, so did a quick run through to check it was not too boggy.  It was interesting to see the old A3 again.  You may remember that the old A3 at this point was a terrible 2-lane road in the middle of a motorway/dual carriageway through route.  It was scenic.  But it was a notorious bottleneck.  Thanks to the Olympics, we finally have a tunnel (the longest land tunnel in Britain actually).  The old road was broken up and left to Nature.  Here it is now.

Such an improvement!  The whole hillside now runs down uninterrupted into the Devil's Punch Bowl.  This is a view across the Punch Bowl.

Down in the bowl itself, there are horses

- this one came to say hello -

Some useful waymarks, pointing out the footpaths . . .

and fungus.  I had never seen Fly Agaric grow like this before.

Here's a nice one up close.

 

These are great to get parties going.  But they are also highly poisonous with an as yet unidentified poison.  Which can be a bit of a downer at parties.  And these look so solid and distinct, you'd have thought they were easily identifiable.  But they're not in my identification book.  Anyone any idea?

There is also a small stream with what seemed a totally out of proportion bridge.  Until I saw this depth marker.

 

There are one or two houses in the Punch Bowl (including a Youth Hostel), but construction is now not permitted there, nor very close.  Most of the habitation is scattered around the perimeter and is well-established like this.

Or like this.

This is the Three Horseshoes, which you might remember from our Greensand Way walk.

BATTY FUN GUY

I haven't had time yet to write up any of my recent travels, leave alone sift through all the pics.  But today, in a rare burst of autumn sunshine, we went for a walk on Ebernoe Common.

In the days when the South Downs and much of Sussex was covered with woodland, commoners used to graze their cattle in the woods.  This practice is now being reintroduced on commonland that still has wooded areas.  Like Ebernoe.  But it's sometimes disconcerting to meet a cow walking the same footpaths.

 Otherwise it looks like an ordinary wood.

 

I've no idea where the name comes from, by the way; it's a good old Saxon name probably from the Old English 'eg' meaning island and 'burna' meaning river (the town is completely surrounded by rivers).  Here's a lake in the forest.

 Ebernoe has about 200 residents, but has a nice cricket pitch and still has an annual Horn Fair (when 'much wassailing and cuckoldry there be').  The common is famous for having over 400 varieties of fungus and 16 of the 18 varieties of bat (flying, not cricket), including 2 that are now very rare. When we arrived, we found a leaflet saying that 1,000 varieties of fungus have been found.  But then it also said that there are only 16 varieties of bat in Britiain, so what do I know.

We started from the church which is an interesting building also in the woods.

I didn't see a bat, but I don't think I have ever seen so many toadstools.  It was impossible to walk through the forest without stepping on them.  Here are just a few (sorry about the crap pics; I'm no good with these sorts of close-ups with a point a shoot).
 

 

Of course it's the dead trees that also attract the bats.  But they also need meadows, like this.

There is no industry there now, but there used to be a major brickworks.

Then at home, for lunch we had to have . . . . yes . . . . mushrooms.
 

This sort of meal is now second nature for someone who has studied fungus for as long as I have, and who knows exactly where to get the best mushrooms.  These came from Tescos.