Tree Fungus

These rather startling fungus formations were on a tree in Shotover Country Park. The Park is on one of the highest local hills just outside Oxford, and is a rather special place, with fine walks, nature trails, and the like.

The road up to the car park, and the track that continues down used to be part of the turnpike between Oxford and London. The excellent headington.org website has an interesting entry about the road, and includes a couple of nice photographs. A link there takes you to a famous painting by Turner of the hill in the early 1800s.

I took a couple of photographs of the trees inside part of the wooded area to show what it is like:

Photograph 1

Photograph 2

Photograph 3

But what were we doing there? Well, it turned out to be to do with a screw. Our son was visiting for the weekend from the USA, and on Sunday we went on a car drive that included the town of Witney. On the way there, our observant offspring said that he thought one of my car tyres looked a bit flat. When we got home, pressure measurement showed him to be right, so I pumped up the tyre. However, by Monday evening, the tyre was pretty flat again, and evidently something needed to be done. So this lunchtime we went to see Mr Kwik-Fit. I had to decide between pumping the tyre up again and hoping that it would hold until we got to K-F, or exchanging it for the spare. I decided on the former, and was very glad when I saw the struggle Mr K-F had with a final wheel nut, even with the most professional tools. K-F found a rather large screw embedded in the tyre, and quickly repaired the hole. K-F's most convenient location for us is near Shotover.

At the very least, a potential irritation (flat tyre) turned into a most pleasant mini-expedition (Shotover).