Day 37

After a good breakfast, I decided to get out for a walk early while the weather was still co-operating. After a good long dry stretch the weather is showing signs of breaking and returning back to normal. Unfortunately everybody else in the house was feeling a bit lazy so I was on my lonesome. I decided to christen a new pair of gaiters as the zip on my old ones had really had it.

Anyway, the rain more or less held off for the duration but it was quite windy. It was  at a strange level though and was kind of whispering through the trees. The bilberries are coming along nicely – there might be a good harvest this year if the birds don’t get them first.

There are quite a few signs in the forest that it hasn’t been forested for all that long. In times past there were dozens if not hundreds of people living up on the mountain. Believe or not, this is the remains of a house. It looks a lot more house-like from the other side.

There are lots of fine old stone walls in the forest. The forestry people seem to be quite find of just driving through them with machinery when they are in the way but this one is surviving quite nicely. I’d like to see a concrete block wall last so well buried in a forest for 50 years.

It is getting close to the time for bluebells. Unfortunately, they aren’t that common in the forest. When I first started walking there, there were great carpets like this that I assumed were bluebell.

So as spring approached, I was really looking forward to the explosion of blue mist from the bluebells but unfortunately it never happened. I still haven’t managed to find out what the plant actually is but this is its extremely disappointing floral effort.

There are a few stands of bluebells and they are due out in the next week or two so I’ll post a couple of pictures when I get the chance. Bluebells apparently need hundreds of years to get properly established naturally and unfortunately not a lot of the forest is deciduous so they are never going to do particularly well.

I finished up my walk just as the rain was getting serious but not so bad that I needed to get my coat out.