Wild October Day 28

I considered Kew Gardens for today's outing, but thought that might be better for a visit earlier in the year (if I can stomach a return trip to London one day!) so decided instead to visit the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve in London and then walk from there to Richmond Park.

That didn't quite go to plan. London is defeating me slowly, hehe! To get to London WWT, I had to go on three tubes and then walk a couple of miles too. The middle tube was a 19 minute journey, standing on a crammed train (I wasn't happy, I thought all the tubes were just a couple of minutes and wasn't mentally prepared for a twenty minute one!). I honestly almost cried when I casually asked 'How long am I on this tube for?' expecting an answer along the lines of 3 minutes.
"Nineteen minutes" came the reply. I thought it was a joke at first; when I realised that was the actual journey time, I almost had a meltdown but I sucked it up and survived it (I didn't have much choice but to go with it!) 😌

By the time I'd walked around the WWT reserve (in the knowledge that I had to repeat the earlier tube journeys in reverse!) I couldn't face walking roughly 4 miles to Richmond and another 4 miles back to the tube station, so skipped the park and went back to the apartment early to hide from London. 👍

I'd wanted to visit the wetlands reserve in the hope of seeing a wasp spider. I know they have them there and someone I know visited a few weeks ago and saw them. I was rather late in the season though so there was no sign of them (I looked really hard!) today.

I did find some nice fungi and the parakeets are a novelty for me around here too!

The first time I've seen the Thames I think.  Not my favourite river by a long way!

I've never seen any kind of bird's nest fungus before so I was quite excited to find this Fluted bird's nest. I don't think I'd have spotted it amongst the wood chip were it not for the sign pointing it out.

Redlead roundheads...

I liked the wobbly bridge! It dips into the water in the middle (depending on how heavy you are) and a big jump gets you a good splashing!

There were times, walking around the reserve that I could almost forget I was in London. Then I'd enter a hide and see London... urgh!

There was also a sign pointing out this pancake crust fungus and informing me that I probably won't see this anywhere else. This fungus doesn't grow in the UK usually, but the bridge it's on is made from English oak grown sustainably in France, where the fungus does grow, so it came here in this wood from France.

Crystal brain fungus...

I'm not sure what is fungus is...  my only thought was perhaps coral spot grown much larger than I've seen it before, but I don't even know if it does that!

Wild October Day 19

Today I walked at Dimmingsdale, close to Alton Towers as I hadn't walked there for a while (I'd guessed two or three years but my photo archives tell me it's been four and a half years since I last walked here!).

On the horizon above you can see the towers at Alton Towers

I found huge oak leaves!

Lovely mushroom spotted in a garden I walked past...

Some kind of bolete I think.

As I walked along the path, I almost walked into a little slug dangling on a thread! I didn't get a clear photo as it was swaying too much on the breeze!

I ended with an autumn spice hot chocolate at The Ramblers Retreat... watching the birds amongst the trees.

Sadly I couldn't drink the hot chocolate though. The autumn spice flavour was nice but chocolate was so sweet and powdery it wasn't good. I also had some cake and that was really bad too. This was my second visit to this particular cafe and I wasn't impressed the first time so a big thumbs down for this cafe for me!

Bad hot chocolate aside, a lovely five mile walk :)

Wild October Day 12

After an overnight stay in sheffield (I saw Gary Numan live last night) I decided to head home via a quick stop at Curbar Gap to get in a 'daily al fresco cuppa' from Jolly's.  I was hoping for a hazelnut praline hot chocolate of course, but it wasn't on the menu (maybe next time!) so I had a cup of Darjeeling and a chocolate and pistachio shortbread.

I planned to just sit and enjoy the view and then head home and think about spending some proper time outdoors later but sitting on Curbar Edge, I decided to just have 'a little wander' whilst I was there. Four miles later, I got back to the car!

I walked along the top of Curbar Edge and then headed down into the woods. I couldn't resist, this is a lovely wood to wander in.

 I saw a couple of fox moth caterpillars, as well as a speckled wood butterfly and a bumblebee.

Horses's hoof fungus

Earthball

Turkey tail (Trametes versicolor)

Burying beetle (Nicrophorus vespilloides)

Birch polypore

There was a lot of silver birch all over the woods and I couldn't just walk past it (I've a fire to do next week at work and two the following wood - good kindling is always needed!) and whilst collected a good bundle (as much as I could carry!) I kept spotting this fungus. I've no idea what it is ... my best guess is stagshorn but it doesn't have the shape and that just doesn't seem quite right to me. Whatever it is, I left any wood with fungus behind to carry on their existence in the wood.

Artist's bracket

Amethyst deceiver

How was your weekend?