A different Saturday today! We hadn't expected to need to clean the lodge but when last-minute bookings came in they were for a Friday turnaround so we were both free.

We had booked places at a talk and field trip run by the Cumbrian Wildlife Trust, entitled "Fungi of Unimproved Grassland". This involved a presentation in the morning. a field trip to our local reserve, Eycott Hill and a discussion back at base about what we had found.

In all the times I've been to Eycott Hill, I've never seen any fungus but, off The Man and I went with our plastic box and dinner fork to ease out our finds. There were toadstools there, just hidden in the grass. See extra of it in situ. We weren't the ones who found the only magic mushroom but we were the only ones who found this blipped specimen., Hygrocybe irrigata, Slimy Waxcap. In fact the tutor hadn't seen one for years! 

I learnt a lot: when I was it school living things were divided into the Plant Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom, now there is also at least one more, to include fungi. Their cell structure is NOT cellulose like a plant, but chitin like an inset's outer exoskeleton! So, not actually a plant but, not an animal either!

In the evening we went into town for the pre-Christmas Winter Droving (much earlier this year. I've put in Extras a new lantern. The wolf was winner of a school competition , the designed by Cole Dudworth. Town was packed! At one point, as we were walking back to the car, at each step my shoes were being pulled off my heels by the person behind me!