An autumn walk

It's been a beautiful autumn day today in this part of the world. A bit cold, but clear blue skies (mostly!) and lovely autumn colours. This morning we had a bit of a 1970s retro moment (or several), when we got up to discover there was a power cut. I suppose we should be grateful it happened in the morning, when we didn't need any lights or much heat! I remember vaguely from my own 1970s childhood evening power cuts, candles, our posh oil lamp and a gas lantern. For me, as a kid, it was deeply exciting - all the lights off and that flickering light from various sources. I remember being a bit obsessed by the oil lamp that lived on the windowsill in the front room, now obsolete, through the 1980s. Ali B never really enjoyed power cuts when she was little, as her childhood home shared the power source of the local hospital - which, of course, had an emergency generator to avoid disaster during power cuts.

But being a grown-up and a parent now I find power cuts slightly less romantic! We were rather wishing we didn't have our nice new dual fuel cooker, unable to grill anything for breakfast - until Ali B had the particularly great idea of doing banana pancakes. Yum yum.


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Anyway, the upshot of all this was that we thought it'd be best to spend the morning away from the house - and we decided to go for a little walk in Hanchurch Woods, which is a short drive from Newcastle-under-Lyme, over the motorway and into the countryside. I've tried to paste in the Google Maps code for this - I hope it works!

It was a lovely day for a walk, as you should be able to see from the pictures at the beginning and the end of this post. It was properly autumn, the wind coaxing the leaves out of the trees to spin down to the ground. A thick layer of leaves to kick up. Puddles to splash in - and even an array of ex-fireworks from Bonfire Night.

We didn't see much wildlife, apart from some blackbirds, a great tit and some dogs out for a walk. But we did see an intriguing-looking mushroom. We thought, rather excitedly, that it might be some kind of puffball. But we weren't brave enough to take it home with us. Just as well, as it turned out to be a 'Common Earthball', which according to this excellent mushroom site is 'mildly poisonous'. Oh. It's always a little disheartening to us poor townies when something we've never seen (or noticed) before turns out to have the 'common' prefix. Never mind!

To finish, a couple of photos - first of the earthball mushroom and then another couple of the beautiful autumn trees. A view across the road first, and then looking upwards to see the autumn colours of the larches.