Last week's hike along the Fairy Lanes.
A loop of rambling old tracks and tiny villages that feels like I've stepped into Middle Earth. I keep expecting to see Hobbits working the fields or elves riding past..
Distance: only 6km but one of my favourites.
(I left Lola the wolfdog behind as she's still a growing (if exceedingly enormous) puppy. The breeder gave me a loooong lecture and CHARTS about how long she is allowed to walk/excercise at x months old - AND NO LONGER. Growing muscles and joints are delicate. So proper hiking is Inderdit until the Spring.)
Most of the forests around here are pine as we are 700m above Sea Level, but this sheltered valley feels like a different world.
I even found a Chestnut tree and tons of fallen chestnuts! It's normally too cold and high for them - they stop growing before Meymac as the hills rise and the altitude gets too great. The odd specimen you do find are young trees or saplings, and have never seen nuts on them before - unlike Dordogne, where the trees are groaning under the weight of them.
(One year driving to an apple orchard, we stopped for a picnic under some trees. When suddenly.. *CRACK* *CRACK* Loud pops around us like gunfire.
It was the Chestnuts bursting in the heat of the afternoon sun - the spiky pods bursting open)
