Fungi Foray

A couple of weekends ago I signed up to go on a fungi foraging trip with the foraging expert from River Cottage. I love fungi anyway - one of my obsessions is taking photographs of the stuff. Plus mushrooms are tasty and foraging for free food interests me.

So we all met up at Kingcombe in Dorset and headed out into the countryside.Our guide, John Wright, would stop to show us interesting fungi and tell us all about it - how to identify things and whether or not it was edible.

This is him on the right telling us about, I think, honey fungus. I have a friend who is a gardener who'll tell me how evil honey fungus is so I was already familiar with that particular one! It kills trees, so not good. And I think it's quite hard to get rid of.

It was quite cold out - no rain but lots of mud so we all had our wellies on. We wandered all over the place looking for fungi and putting specimens in our baskets. Then we came to a really boggy area and was warned that we might get stuck so to be careful. I headed off and took a few photographs of various fungi - bracket fungi and a couple of others that I can't actually remember the name of. I decided not to follow my friend as the way she was heading looked really boggy, so I set off on my own.

Big mistake. It wasn't long before I was stuck fast and sinking. There was bog inside one of my wellies and I could not get out. Luckily, another member of the group spotted me and called for help. The photo on the left is one my friend took (she was too busy laughing and taking the photo to help!) of John Wright and several others hauling me out of the bog.

Once rescued, I spent the rest of the day wandering around with a squelchy, boggy welly! Oh, and shortly after this, I then fell in a badger set and had to be pulled out of that, too.

But, once we got back to the centre, there was yummy tea and lots of cake and goodies waiting for us. So I sat and filled my face and changed out of my wellies.

An informative and fun day.

Small part of the day's haul

The West Country: Beaches

I am from Somerset in England. A county in an area known as the West Country. Now, I may be biased, but it's the best part of the UK.

Lyme Regis

If you ever get to come on holiday here, I'll give you some recommendations. There are some great beaches here. Particularly Lyme Regis, in Dorset. It's very pretty and there's a sandy beach and a pebbly beach. It's also pretty famous for its 'Cobb' and fossils. You can get the best ice cream at the Alcove.

It's a pound to park all day, provided you don't mind walking down through the gardens from the car park. You can park closer to the beach, but I never bother. If the sun is shining, it will be very, very busy.

There is also Beer in Devon. Which is lovely, but pretty small. Seaton in Devon, which I would avoid as it's pretty grim. And Minehead in Somerset. You can take a steam train to Minehead from Bishops Lydeard, which is very pretty. Minehead itself is not my cup of tea as it's very touristy. And it has a Butlins.

There's also West Bay in Dorset. I would recommend West Bay as it's not too busy and has some very pretty scenery - the cliffs are very photogenic. Pretty good ice creams too.

Exmouth

Exmouth in Devon has a long sandy beach. It's a bit too far away for me so I tend not to go very often. Good for walking your dog along the beach, and if I remember rightly, the town's quite nice.

I think there's a lot of kite surfing at Exmouth, if you fancy that. 

Sidmouth, Devon again, also has a nice sandy beach. Although according to somebody I know from there, the town is 'pretentious.' I'd say give it a visit and make your own mind up!

And there you have it. Some of my local and not so local beaches. I'm from Somerset, but I'm from the south of the county, which means my local beaches are those in Devon and Dorset.

What's the best thing about beaches? Ice cream, of course.