from monday to friday this week, we've been on our annual it's-october-and-we've-got-a-week-off-let's-go-park-up-somewhere-beautiful-for-a-few-days jaunt. this year, it was Thetford Forest in Norfolk. it's been a favourite campervan haunt of ours since a friend mentioned it a few years ago. we've been two or three times, now, though not for about three years, for various reasons. and it was as quiet and peaceful as we remembered it. it's managed by the forestry commission, and is basically a vast triangular tree farm, consisting of mainly pine, but with a few pockets of deciduous planting here and there. as i said, we love it. it's so vast that despite the public access to the many many rides and dirt tracks and pathways that crisscross it, you often get the impression that you've got the whole place to yourself (well - you and the wildlife, that is...)
as usual, i took lots of pics and, amateurish though they are, i think they might give a better impression of why we love the place than i could with twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation. therefore, a photostory of our holiday folows:
we arrived about four-ish, and parked up in our favourite spot under the trees, almost in the centre of the forest. in case you're wondering, Talulah isn't an all-terrain vehicle, there's a dirt road that leads right through the heart of the forest. the potholes in said road, however, had me gritting my teeth and screwing my eyes shut waiting for the crunch of a grounding. thankfully, hubby managed to avoid the deepest ones.
off we went for a walk down the beech avenue in the fading light...
curses!
as often happens here, we ended up stumbling back in the dark, not entirely sure of the precise path to follow, but we made it back eventually. a little later, when we were snuggled up in bed listening to the radio, the moon came up, and shone through the skylights...
the next day, we set off again into the forest, but this time, with a purpose. a friend had loaned us a fantastic book on foraging for and identifying edible mushrooms, and both being mushroom lovers, we just couldn't resist.
however, something had got there before us...
but! we proudly identified and gathered a hatful of common yellow rusula mushrooms
it being October, of course the forest was full of fungus, some of it very beautiful.
i have absolutely no idea what this one is, but it was soooo pretty!
so, on return to Talulah, we had, ta-DAAAAAH!!!!
mushrooms on toast, what we had picked our veryownselves! (*whisper* if i'm honest, they were a little bland, but salt and pepper helped, and the pride of foraging, identifying and cooking wild food adds a piquancy all of its own) accompanied, for me, at least, by yarrow tea (see top of pic), as i was developing a stinking cold, and yarrow can be very effecacious in knocking it on the head.
accompanied, of course, by a good might's sleep.
camper tip: hats in bed = essential at this time of year - the wind was blowing straight across the North sea from Norway, and it was fecking FREEZING cold!
have to say though, the cold is kinda worth it when you get to wake up to this...
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the next day, we headed off to a place charmingly named Wells-Next-The-Sea, on the north coast, because even we can get bored walking around a pine forest for five days, and i had very fond memories of the beach, and the deli on the seafront (which, i was sad to learn, no longer sell the delicious blueberry brownies we had the last time we were there :(
the beach, however, was as lovely as i remembered. unfortunately, the Norwegian wind was still blowing hard. the patterns you can see on the sand are, in fact, caused by a mist of fine grains being blown across the surface. the effect of the brilliand sunlight on these streamers of sand was shimmeringly magical, and utterly mesmerising. sadly, not quite enough to distract from the bone-chillingly cold wind, so we escaped into the trees to shelter from it.
a little piece of heaven.
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it was so cold that night that we almost threw in the towel and buggered off home. however, we decided not to, and were soooo glad that we did.
heading back to Thetford Forest, this is what greeted us:
the wind had died somewhat and, in amongst the trees, it was almost warm. so off we went for another wander.
along the way, we encountered deer,, which we managed to sneak up on admirably (i thought) and photograph.....
.....and this singular construction....
it's not a sunken cabin, but one of several little constructions roofed with black-painted corrugated iron, created as a haven for the local adder population.
and just across the way was this stunning specemin of fungushood:
we instantly recognised it. here's one we found earlier:
these pics were taken the very first time we went there and, as you can see, these things are bloody ginormous!
excitedly, i whipped out the mushroom ID book, and we were thrilled to discover that this was not only a parasol mushroom (of course!), but....it was edible!
we grabbed the prize, and hot-footed it back to Talulah to fry it up in breadcrumbs.
it. was. utterly. UTTERLY. delicious.
and so, with a sense of triumph and euphoria, we headed home the next day for something even more exciting than delicious wild food.
but that's the subject of the next post.........
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