Thistles and Toadstools...

A beautiful walk in the autumnal woods for the last day of September, complete with ferns, fungi and fleeing deer in the distance...

On the way there, tall thistles rose up proudly from the hedgerows, towards the sun, whilst in the woods, toadstools and fungi formed mysterious clusters on the shaded floor.

No sight of any wild boar; although their traces were everywhere, as were the hunters, out in force, in other parts of the woods, fortunately.

The Way to the Woods and Other Horizons...

Over the past months, my chief motivation to plough through all the dull rules and regulations concerning the Code de la Route (Highway Code) has been the thought of all the places I would like to visit, but can't at the present time.

I am absolutely not interested in having a car for day-to-day, bread-and-butter trips, to-and-fro work and/or shops. Public transport suits me fine.

However, it would be great to trek off and take the high road once in a while, or just get within stomping distance of all those paths that are just inaccessible right now.

Someone asked me recently where I would spend time for an ideal holiday. I felt a bit embarrassed to say that I would just love to visit certain parts of England.

I can understand that we set our sights on far-flung destinations, but why is it that in so doing we seem to overlook what's on our own doorstep? Or what was once on the doorstep, in my case.

All those places that are simply not fully registered until distance in time and space brings about the realisation that things of beauty and wonder can be found far closer to home!

For all the years spent in Cornwall, I hardly know anything other than the set-in-stone choices for the compulsory family walks and later on, sites that could be reached on bike.

So these regrets are my spur and my ever-growing list of places-to-see is my enticement to obtain that elusive driving licence. The Undercliff area of Dorset, the Lake District, the Yorkshire Moors, the Fens, any wilderness in Wales, Devon and Cornwall... It goes on and on and I haven't even started on France!

The photos here are of woodland in the mountainous Vosges region of Eastern France, bordering the Black Forest of Germany.

These woods are beautifully mossy, murky and mysterious and you encounter them as you follow the meandering paths along the crêtes.

These lead you along such a varied landscape.

Rocky outcrops mark the way, tracing across plains of  rich pasture, speckled with wild alpine flowers and grazed by cows, overlooking the distant, shady outlines of the mountain massif and the silhouettes of fir trees.

The weather seems to be just as varied; bright sunshine, cloudy overcast horizons and a considerable amount of snow in winter, of course. It was all beautiful, needless to say, and the towns are just ridiculously idyllic. But more about that in another post...

Other mysterious, magical woodlands and strange geological formations that I am intent on visiting are ones that I actually learnt of via the radio. The description of this incredible part of the Forest of Dean (back to England again!) was so vivid that I just had to google 'The Scowles' to see what it looked like. That this amazing landscape of gnarled yew trees, overgrown craters and caverns (Scowles) with stalactitic haematites, should have inspired Tolkien's Middle-earth forests in The Lord of the Rings did not surprise me in the least. It has likewise since attracted the producers of TV series and big-screen fims - Dr Who and Star Wars, no less! In fact, the whole area has been of interest since the late Stone Age, offering iron ore, ochre, charcoal and deposits of coal. And all that beauty that I hope to be able to capture on camera one of these days.

So, having finally taken and passed the theoretical part of the driving test, I now have to tackle the practical aspect. Hmm! Then I hit the road...

A Forest of Faux at Verzy...

The wet weather here has in no way let up, so I decided to see what all this rain looks like in the wilds. The Forest of Verzy is not far from Reims and its key attraction, the Faux (beech trees) do indeed look just as striking in the summer months, in full folliage, as they do during the barren winter period.

They just happen to be a little harder to locate when covered in a very green cloak of leaves!

The Faux domaine is said to be set in the gardens of an early abbey, from the 7th century, itself marking the site where a certain Lorrain evangelist, Saint Basle, had lived as a hermit.

Nothing remains today of this edifice that was destroyed during the Revolution years. The only link back to these origins are these strangely twisted, dwarf trees themselves - les faux - which may initially have come from the Lorraine region of France.

Indeed, apart from the relative wealth of Faux here in Verzy, this natural phenomenon is to be found in very few places around Europe (near Hanover in Germany and Malmö in Sweden).

 In spite of scientific research, the actual emergence of these trees remains somewhat a mystery, although a similar process of growth can be seen in certain forms of oak and chestnut.

A unique genetic composition is at the source of the phenomenon, but the tortillard effect is not always transmitted by seed (les faïnes) , of which few are fertile. Reproduction is also carried out by the formation of runners (le marcottage), which means that branches (les marcottes) grow out along the forest floor, taking root and creating off-shoot Faux, rather like ivy or honeysuckle.

The more usual trees...

Alternatively, a new Fau may grow from the formation of a long-running root (le drageonnage), which finally gains autonomy as a drageon from the parent tree.

Very wet underfoot!

Of course, there have been suggestions that the Faux are in fact fairy trees. Hmm... Well, what certainly was magical, was the effect of all that greenery, dripping with water.

Mosses, unfurled bracken, ferns and fungi...

All vying for space on the forest floor.

It's amazing how many shades of colour can be incorporated in the humblest form of 'greenery'.

Some of these growing forms looked like strange frilled flowers, or even frost...

These really were distinctly soggy, but still beautiful...

As were some of the local inhabitants, in their own slimy, soggy right!

Then, of course, there were the more traditional forms of flowering beauty...

And finally those majestic ferns, with their branched forms that just remind me of flying buttresses on Gothic cathedrals...

Yet another...Walk in the Winter Woods.

It was a bright day yesterday, as the temperature fell below zero, and so with the skies blue, air freezing and the (previously very muddy) tracks crisp and crunchy with ice underfoot I went to the woods.

I love the effects of the light streaming through the winter branches, and reflecting off the frozen water.

This gathers in all the pock-marks, puddles and pools that still remain from the mortars of the wartime years.

The ice seemed to have swirled around the trunks, shrivelled shoots and roots or the trees had simply risen up out of the water...

The water looked mysteriously milky in some parts and plain murky elsewhere...

Especially with the sunlight gleaming over the surface... And of course the sun brought out whatever colour was to be found...

Some of these were left over from the autumn...

And others were just evergreen...

With strange husky forms suspended alongside intricately veined leaves...

And never far from any of these, man-made traces - frozen tyre-tracks in this case on the path back home...

The Woods in Winter for the End of 2014... Almost there!

To mark the end of the year I went to the woods via the vineyards to see the effect of the (thin) layer of snow on the landscape.

The sunlight was quite bright, but the temperatures were certainly bracing, to put it mildly. This was mostly due to the biting wind, though this hadn't been strong enough to blow the snow from the Old Man's Beard...

Throughout the year the woods are managed, and the cut trees stacked along the paths. I liked the honey colour of these, and the strange ruff of fungi growing on the sectioned trunks.

This one looks like a sun figure....

However, the shadows started to grow longer as the afternoon drew to an end, and all the strange forms started to emerge...

Honey-comb tyre tracks, symbolically leading the way to a new year in the distance...

Straggly boot-lace branches underfoot, and snaggled forms above...

And finally the moon to close this year, and light the way towards 2015...
                                           Happy New Year....Almost there!