Queen Elizabeth Oak

This sessile oak (Quercus petraea) is in Cowdray Park and is famous for several things. Firstly, it is between 800 and 1000 years old, which is remarkable enough. Commensurate with its great age the tree has a girth of 12.6 metres and, apparently, you can fit 14 people within its hollow trunk. If all that wasn't enough, the tree was sheltered under by none other than Queen Elizabeth I in 1591.

Not one of my most straightforward blips, as it turned out. The short version is that whilst trekking across a field to see the tree, Polly, followed by Basil, rolled in fresh cow pats and then had to be wrapped up and transported home at great speed for an emergency hose-down. The house now smells of a combination of damp dog and cow poo. It's not nice :(. On the bright side, at least it wasn't fox poo they rolled in and at least it was yesterday that my mother-in-law came to visit.

Here is a shot of Dirty Polly inside the tree trunk...