Wapley Hill, Mudlogged

Looking south from Wapley Hill towards Hereford, September 6th 2008

I try and get up the hill two or three times a week, and I suppose it is my 'patch' of wildness, the best place for seeing the natural world near here. This whole valley is a man-made landscape, of course, controlled and modelled for thousands of years. The pine forest on Wapley Hill is probably 30 or 40 years old, but the long avenue of beech trees through the middle is older, I think. This morning - after the heavy rains of the last week - the ground was sodden and the paths were either deep mud or washed to the bedrock. I was trying to see colour, the bronzes and deep plum-reds of the bracken and the starting-to-turn acid yellows of the beech trees. A lot of mushrooms, mainly yellow and purple russulas (I think) and the occasional fly agaric. The old tree stumps - moss-covered, starfish-like - had tiny clumps of slimy brown capped mushrooms on slender pale stems, and the mossy branches had tiny black dead men's fingers. The bracken seemed to be turning russet and bronze from the ground up; the pictures don't do it justice. A good morning, tramping through the sodden woods, collecting kindling and recording changes in bracken and moss.