SPRING!!!

Last Sunday was such a beautiful day weatherwise!
We took a drive over to Selworthy Village. You may remember, I wrote about this a while ago. It is not far from Dunster (which, if you are a fan of Agatha Christie's Hurcule Poirot, theTV series, you will have seen, I'll take some photos the next time I'm there).

The village is beautiful and owned by The National Trust. It is right on the edge of Exmoor National Park. Some of the scenes you can see on here this time, you would think you were miles from civilization, but actually, this is not the case! We were always within a mile from the nearest house.



You may remember that I have posted pics of these lovely cottages before.



This was the woods at the start of our walk.

Land uses change. For the past 18 months, volunteers have been working to restore the walls and hedges that have marked boundries and have allowed nature to flourish in their cracks. We hadn't walked very far before we noticed this bracket fungus on one of the trees

Then we looked up and saw this!

The tree is pretty dead, although it did look as though new spindly shoots were sprouting form it.

The woodland, known as Holinocote (once spelt and pronounced Hunecot) was mentioned in The Doomsday Book.

There are a number of interesting stone features as the spring runs its course down the hill. One is a bridge that marks a junction in the paths. It has a cutout at either side. So presumably the water comes down as a torrent during inclement weather. There is another pool higher up which directs the water in a certain course.

It is a pretty long, but not too steep a rise up to meet the coastal path. On the way, you pass through a memorial garden where clumps of daffodils were beginning to flower and a hut (although no in our photos, we did see it) stands as part of the memorial.

Carrying on up the hill, Steve made me stop and took the following!

While stopped at this point we heard the distant yaffel of a woodpecker, we saw some evidence of its drilling on some of the trees nearby, but the holes were not good enough to show you and the tree was very dead!
On and upwards again and we could feel the breeze coming over the top. It had been so peaceful and still in the woodland. There were just the occaisional bluetit or greattit calling, whilst hiding away from us.


Selworthy Beacon

 Then suddenly, we were at the top! Some of the tracks up here had, it is said been used by Canadian tanks during WWll, I could imagine some of the terrain being a battlefield up on the moor.
Selworthy's Beacon has exsisted since the sixteenth centuary wars with Frane and Spain.

Just a few more views from the beacon.  If you zoom in, you can see South Wales and Weston-Super-Mare acoss the other side of the estuary, depending on the direction of the photo.

Unless you know, this just looks like any other country track. However, as we turned the corner and began the downhill stretch, we could hear (and Steve could see...) two skylarks! They have become quite rare in the UK now, mostly dueto modern farm practices. It was just great to hear them!

Next week, there may not be a walk report, as my Dad, once again is coming to stay. But now the weather is getting warmer and we have seen more of the sun, hopefully it won't be long before we are able to get out on the tracks again!