Fool's Wood is my third collection after I am living with the animals (2014), and Sumptuous beasts (2018).

On 25th September 2025 I made my annual visit to the New Forest National Park to walk a 10-mile circular route from Brockenhurst railway station.

Colgate, West Sussex, September 2025 There's a lot of different colours happening in this post. I've been wondering what makes a place 'good' for certain species of fungi. None more so than when I witnessed hundreds of fly agarics in some ancient woodland in Colgate in late September. This is one of those lovely spreads of fly agaric before the leaves fall and the October rain melts many of them.

I've had a burst of American visitors in recent days (to my blog, not my house). So thanks for visiting, y'all, and sorry about the year you've had. You may have noticed I've slipped to monthly posts on here. Between April and October I posted blogs every Monday without pause, which is a tricky task when working full-time. The focus on a regular deadline can be helpful, but it can also take over, meaning I wasn't taking the time to focus on the bigger blogs that are waiting in the wings.

Lower Beeding, West Sussex, September 2025 This is the second part of a bike ride round the edge of the western High Weald, which was surprisingly fruitful. This post focuses on a little churchyard at the edge of Coolhurst Wood, which has no public access (according to the hostile signage). There were lots of blushers in the grasslands, which were fun to frame against the church itself (see the blog header image, also).

Lower Beeding, West Sussex, September 2025 In September I was out on my bike to do some low-carbon mushrooming. It's a great way to get into some old woodlands that are very rich in fungi. Sussex is home to an astonishing array of ancient trees, most notably oak trees. This one is called the Sun Oak and is aged to over 800-years.

In mid-September I was out and about one morning to witness a big ol' bolete and hundreds of fly agaric in the woods.

I was walking along the River Arun one lunchtime when I spotted a massive fungal outpouring a short distance away.

Here's my seasonal update of stuff you don't need to know about, but then welcome to the Internet. What I’m writing Soon I will be self-publishing my third poetry collection, Fool’s Wood. It's seven years since my last one and this collection has taken longer because of LIFE. There will be a booklet and also an audio recording. Fungi Friday…

National Trust Sheffield Park, Fletching Parish, East Sussex, September 2025 A journey into the other half of Sussex! Sheffield Park is a wonderful park and garden near Uckfield in East Sussex. It's free to National Trust members to enter but there's a fee otherwise. Sheffield Park is Grade I listed due to the autumn colour in the grounds, and I think it's a very good place to see/photograph fungi.

Here's another entry in my slow-blogging Oak Timbers series. You can view my galleries and posts archive here. I visited Salisbury in Wiltshire (south-west England) for the first time in 2023 and was really charmed by the place. If you're interested in this kind of thing, Salisbury is the place for you. Here's a gallery of the timber-framed buildings that interested me the most.

I'm getting into more of a routine of recording and editing audio, so here is the latest episode of Unlocking Landscapes. Listen on Podbean or via the usual platforms. Also via YouTube: Following on from July's rather optimistic fungi walk, I popped back to the same area of ancient Wealden woodland to see if the rain had brought any mushrooms.

Colgate, West Sussex, August 2025 In August I was perusing the woods in hope of some late summer shrooms. In these dry periods (August usually has rain, but not this year) it's best to look for large dead or decaying wood. And so it proved. I passed a large fallen pine trunk that has spent several years decaying, soaking up rain and moisture, getting mossy, and accommodating fungal life.

Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria, June 2025 This is a longer post of the images I captured during a recent visit to Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. We travelled to Innsbruck on a sleeper train from Amsterdam. It's such a great experience and is significantly lower in carbon emissions compared with flying. If you consider the fact it's travel and accommodation, as well as the ability to see so much more, it's a better way to travel.

Ebernoe Parish, West Sussex, August 2025 On a hot and dry afternoon in late summer 2025 I headed out towards Petworth. The woods around there are well known for their fungal diversity, due to the amount of ancient Low Weald woodland, the number of old trees and lower impact land management. Let's keep it that way! It's surely one of the highest priority areas for conservation in the UK, so much so that I feel bad for even going there!

I'm back from my annual visit to the west of Ireland. I managed a couple of day trips to forage for photos, which will crystallise later this year into dedicated posts, all being well. Like many people I enjoy the Blind Boy Podcast, none more so when I have the headspace to take in all that gets said in an episode.

This is the first of a series of posts I've been working on covering national relationships with mushrooms. It's just a bit of fun, but there's definitely some interesting stuff to share.

Handcross, West Sussex, August 2025 Happy Fungi Friday! 🍄 It's that time of year when spindleshank is popping up at the toes of oaks that are not too healthy. I was in Handcross (technically Slaugham Parish) when I spotted my first spindleshanks of the year. They get their name from their long and spindly stipe or leg. Shank is an old English word for leg, hence redshank the wading bird with red legs.

In August I made my annual visit to the Weald and Downland Living Museum in the South Downs. You can see my timber-framed building photo gallery here. This is the first view you encounter inside the museum grounds after you pay your entry fee. Amazing to think the medieval hall house is from Cray in the London Borough of Bexley.

Welcome to a big blog of sunny alpine images, from my walking highlight of the year so far.

31st July 2025, Colgate, West Sussex The Parish of Colgate is a very wooded part of West Sussex and so it's one of my 'go-to' locations when the season is upon us. This was a quite optimistic walk around a large area of ancient woodland and pine plantation. It was a struggle to find anything, but this was the first thing I saw, growing on a fallen beech branch.

Not that kind of battle, but instead to the village in East Sussex. Battle the village is the site of one of the major battles of the Norman Conquest of England of 1066, when the Normans invaded Britain and defeated the Anglo-Saxons. It's a period in history that absolutely fascinates me. The land ownership brought about by the Normans has shaped much of the rural landscape today, bar the impact of the enclosures in the 18th-19th centuries.

East Court, East Grinstead (near Ashplatts Wood), July 2025 The summer bolete season is in full swing in West Sussex. Last week I found these large boletes in a little bit of woodland next to a lane. They were under oak. I turned one of the mushrooms over to check the underside. I found these wonderful tangerine pores with blue bruising.

It's been more than 20 years since I studied First World War fiction in sixth form college. It remains some of my favourite reading and has dominated my book consumption of late, so here's a run-through of my adventures in this very challenging area of literature and history. My family and the First World War The face above is that of my great-grandfather Wilfred Hill (1896-1961).

Horsham, West Sussex, July 2025 Happy Fungi Friday! 🍄 My wife sent me a photo while she was out for a walk with friends and asked, what's this? It was this. This is a massive old boundary oak stump next to a cricket pitch. There was a game going on at the time actually, but they were playing the wrong game unfortunately.