4 December

Colourful mushrooms and winter sunshine...

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Short winter days with watery sunlight - and the beauty is in the spare detail now. The woods are open without their leaves and holly berries flasy crimson telegrams across the glades. Squirrels race along branches like quicksilver and hares dart away from your approach. But there is a slower beauty too - a flowering out of the gradual decay. Delicate fleshy 'ear fungus' growing (characteristically) on dead elder. And this purple beauty which I've yet to find the name for.

Wheatland Farm

Devon self catering cottage and eco lodges

home t. 01837 83499, email info@wheatlandfarm.co.uk, Wheatland Farm, Winkleigh, Devon, EX19 8DJ.

And I had company on my ramble - at least as far as the new 'climbing oak'. It's not for the faint hearted, being surrounded by a boggy nettle patch. But with branches like that (and a rope ladder) it just has to be scaled!