Scenic Cotswolds

Dodging the forecast hurricane we made an early start whilst the sun still shone and headed to the pretty village of Withington in the Cotswolds. Unfortunately it appears that the world and his wife was out today and driving very slowly indeed so it was almost lunchtime when we got there.

 It seemed sensible to have lunch first under the circumstances and the village pub, The Mill Inn duly obliged. They also kindly let us leave the car in their car park when we went for the walk afterwards.

This is such a pretty village!

Lunch over we headed into the woods with the hope of seeing the Cross Dyke and the site of a medieval village. There is also a Roman villa there but it is buried peacefully under a field full of sheep and power lines so nothing to see, at least not from the ground.

The woods were magnificent. It is a good year for berries and the hedgerows were covered with hawthorn berries, sloes, blackberries, elderberries, rosehips, bryony  and crab apples. The hazels and oaks had started dropping their seeds and the ground was crunchy with beechmast. Truly a fruitful time of year.

I'm not sure if this is the Cross Dyke or not - it SHOULD be but I'm not 100% convinced. We were reasonably lost at this point as the paths are not well marked and some turned out to be deer tracks after a while. Map and compass and ideally a GPS are very useful at times!

As well as berries it is shaping up as a good year for fungi as well. We came across these 2 which I have yet to identify - any ideas anyone?

 This one too. It is in a bit of a state but it shows the creamy gills and the purple stem very well.  I'll add the names if anyone does manage to identify them for me.

Finally a nice view from the ridge. Not a walk then that was successful in terms of finding any archaeology but a nice day out none the less.