Blogtober 2022 - Day 12 🚙

Yesterday we decided to get out and make the most of the sunshine with a trip to Dartmoor. We were tempted to go back to our mushroom spot but thought that there's so much more we've not explored so we went somewhere new - Burrator Reservoir.

Ed's photo!

It's such a beautiful area and we only saw a small part of it so we'll definitely be visiting again in the future!

After walking a while we headed down to the water, Jethro woke up and decided it was the perfect spot for some lunch, so I fed him and then we had our own food 😋 baby's first picnic! He also had his first very picturesque al fresco nappy change! Success ✅

We could see people fishing in the distance on the other side of the reservoir 🎣 and there were two men floating by in a little boat. But other than that it was just the odd dog walker passing by, it felt very peaceful and empty despite the number of cars that were parked up nearby. 

Of course Ed had a go at skimming stones!

It was a very interesting landscape, kind of felt like being at the beach but the beach was lined with oak trees so there were acorns all over the ground and even a few mushrooms dotted around! There were quite a few ducks and cormorants about, as well as a single white goose that looked like it was lost! The most exciting bird sighting was a grey heron that flew overhead.

Jethro did very well as it was the longest time he's spent being in the car/outside in his whole little life, so we're looking forward to more adventures with him 😊 

A myriad of mushrooms 🍄

[The alternative title I almost used: A fistful of fungus finds]

On our day off last week, Ed and I went out for an early morning walk on Dartmoor to hunt for mushrooms! We headed to the same spot we went to last year in the hope of spotting another magical fly agaric (amanita muscaria) 🤓 spoiler: we really hit the jackpot! As promised, here is the resulting fungus-photo-heavy post...

We brought our mushroom identification book along with us, admittedly we were too busy exploring to study it whilst we were out though:

A fun guy 😉

Autumnal reflections...

Although we were very much enjoying our outing, we were a bit disappointed that the coveted fly agaric was alluding us. We decided to cross the road, heading out of the woods and into the open, I followed a path through a gap in the undergrowth and...there she was! Our first little red beauty:

A little piece of Devon heaven.

We thought we were lucky seeing just one of these fairytale toadstools, but a little way ahead we stumbled across many more. It was so exciting, like we'd found buried treasure! 

They come in many shapes and sizes, and different shades from orange to dark crimson 🍄

One larger than a hand, some smaller than a fingertip:

Trying to blend in with the gorse 💛

We were making our way back to the car when we spotted another patch of fly agaric, just across the road from were we were parked! It was funny to think that if we'd just started our walk in a different direction we would have seen all these straight away:

Mmm looks just like a toasted marshmallow!

Possibly my favourite photo I took 😍

Hidden in amongst the ferns...

We ended our walk with a flask of coffee on a bench overlooking the autumnal landscape turning from green to brown. (You can see a photo of the bench and view in my post from last year!) 

Hope you enjoyed seeing our many fungus finds, we really must sit down with that book and try to identify them all! 😄