Toys Hill, December

Ide Hill from the bottom of Scords Wood, December 2015.

Another walk around Toys Hill and Scords Wood, this time in December.  It was a beautiful sunny morning and this was the view from the bottom of the hillside.  English countryside with rolling hills, fields and woods.  It's almost the same outlook as the misty view in this post from Scords Wood in March 2012.  This shot with my EOS 5DS and 100mm lens collapses the distance and makes everything sharper, allowing for some slight haze still present in the air.  This looks like a lovely walk, and if my car had not been at  the top of the hill behind me I would have tried it!

A viewpoint is being cleared higher up Toys Hill, but there are still many young birches in the way, and it looks as though would be better in the afternoon, with the sun behind.

Viewpoint being re-cleared on Toys Hill, December 2015.

This time I also took a reflective and non-misty shot of the pond at the bottom, part of the waterworks that supplies the neighbouring Emmets Garden.

Toys Hill pond, December 2015

The sign just visible in the far corner explains how it works.

Sign explaining hydraulic ram pump, Toys Hill, December 2015.

The people who prepared this sign must have been at the front of the queue when the apostrophes and commas were handed out.  From the credit line, it also looks as though they had a couple of spare fonts.

The woods are wet and green, with bluebell leaves poking through the moss.  I came back with only one botanical photo:

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, Chrysoplenium oppositifolium.  Toys Hill, 23 December 2015.

Some Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, in early bud and looking very healthy,  near the hut below the pond that houses the pulse valve.

The Mist And The Tower

Mossy hummock of Polytrichastrum formosum, Bank Haircap. Toys Hill, 21 January 2014.

Another walk round Toy's Hill, following the one pictured here: Toy's Hill in Autumn. This time it was wetter and mistier. I walked a different route, passing mossy hummocks like this one.  There are many hummocks like this in some woods.  I suspect that they are eroded root balls pushed up when trees fall over.

Myxomycete on wet deadwood.  Toy's Hill, 21 January 2014.

At the bottom of the hill there was even more moss.  This shows a Myxomycete, an odd thing that moves around like a slow slime in one stage of its lifecycle, then stops and makes spores.  In the background, the fallen trees familiar from my previous walk.

Eroded pathway.  Toys Hill, 21 January 2014.

The rain has clearly had an effect.  Some of the paths are like this, with eroded channels down the middle.  It's almost like walking up a stream bed.

The pond at Toys Hill, 21 January 2014.

At the bottom is a pond that was used to provide water for the nearby Emmets estate.  This photo makes it look much bigger than it is. In fact the far bank is just to the left of this view and cuts in a straight line towards this viewpoint.

The Bat Tower at Toys Hill comes into view. 21 January 2014.

The route comes back up the hill, crosses a road, and loops around back to the car park.  Along the way is this Bat Tower, once a water tower but now converted specifically to be a bat roost.  So the name is not just fanciful.

This hill is the highest point in Kent, and you can see that there is no mist up here.

Toy's Hill in Autumn

The path down into the wood.  Toy's Hill, 7 December 2013.

Early in December I walked round some of Toy's Hill, through part of Scords Wood.  I was looking out for anything still in flower .. and saw nothing.  But it was an excellent walk.  The first photo is the path down into the wood.

Bracken, Pteridium aquilinum, high in a Silver Birch.  Toy's Hill, 7 December 2013.

Not far down, I saw what looked like a fern growing high in a tree!  When I got closer I saw it was an unusually tall stand of bracken, which grows differently; single leaf stems rising from the ground.  It mush be quite dark here before leaf fall to make them grow so high.

View from the edge of the wood over the Weald.  Toy's Hill, 7 December 2013.

There was an amazing view over the Weald at one edge of the wood, with layered distances just like a traditional painted landscape.  I would have liked to go down a little so that the photo would miss out those nearby branches, but the slope was too steep.  That body of water in the middle distance must be Bough Beech Reservoir, much loved by bird fans. 

I turned then, leaving the path, and walked up through the wood.  This turned out to be tricky.

Fallen trees making it hard to climb up the hill.  Toy's Hill, 7 December 2013.

The whole hillside was like this, fallen tree after fallen tree, all laid across my path.  They were all covered with moss, so it must be a damp environment.  I had to climb over, under or around dozens of these. 

Orange fungus crust on old deadwood.  Toy's Hill, 7 December 2013.

Suddenly, this caught my eye; a single piece of old deadwood covered with a bright orange fungus crust. 

Eventually I came to a path and walked back up.  Near the top I saw this:

Triceratops skull?  Toy's Hill, 7 December 2013.

You can see what I thought when I saw it.  Maybe there are other dinosaurs that look more like this, but Triceratops was impressed on my mind as a child, so that's what came up.  Regrettably, this is just wood.

Beech Fingers

Beech roots like a hand groping into the ground.  Toys Hill, 3 March 2012.

A startling formation of roots, looking a little like a hand groping into the ground, probably more so than an oak tree I posted last year. I know two people with some fingers fused on one hand, so this might look more lifelike to me than to most.

Toys Hill, March

View from Scord's Wood, 3 March 2012.

On another rainy and drizzly day the Orpington Field Club walked some of the trails around Toys Hill, looking in particular for mosses and liverworts.

We saw quite a few. I had seen some of the mosses before, but I was surprised by all the different liverworts, which are so inconspicuous and moss-like that I have probably seen them many times without realising it. I will put about a dozen moss and liverwort photos, as well as these and other photos from the walk, in this folder if anyone wants to see them all: Toys Hill photos.

Here is a sample.

Atrichum undulatum.  Toys Hill, 3 March 2012.

This is one of a group of mosses that grow in clumps with a robust and starry appearance. Some, the Polytrichums, have opaque leaves and have hairy caps over the young spore capsules; these have translucent wavy leaves and hairless caps.

Mnium hornum with capsules.  Toys Hill, 3 March 2012.

Mnium hornum is a common moss. This clump is full of spore capsules.

Diplophyllum albicans, a leafy liverwort. Toys Hill, 3 March 2012.

Some liverworts have flat lobes, and some are leafy, like this one, and hard to tell from mosses when they have no spore capsules. When they do, you can see that the capsules are rounded and dark brown or black, and the setae that bear them are fragile and temporary.

Lophocolea species.  A liverwort that smells of disinfectant.  Toys Hill, 3 March 2012.

This Lophocolea is spreading over a tree stump, and you can see some of the round capsules and whitish setae. This one is also unlike a moss in that if you drag a fingernail over it, it smells strongly of disinfectant.

We also saw some fungi, including one I had not seen before:

Bitter Oysterling, Panellus stipticus. Toys Hill, 3 March 2012.

This fungus was supposedly once used to stem the flow of blood. We also saw many more of the Scarlet Elfcups that I first saw back in February; some of these were noticeably larger, as much as 5cm across.

Scarlet Elf-cup, Sarcoscypha coccinea.  Scord's Wood, 3 March 2012.

I would not want you to think that we only saw mosses, liverworts and fungi. The woods were full of new growth. There were hillsides covered with bluebells, but only a few scattered plants were in flower. Primroses flowered by the paths, and there were small specimens of the so-called Golden Saxifrage in many places.  I didn't get decent photos of any of them.  There were ferns, including this one, which was on a clay bank:

Hard Fern, Blechnum spicant. Toys Hill, 3 March 2012.

Its fronds are branched once, with simple pinnae, unlike many of our ferns which are branched twice or three times. And Hazel catkins were abundant.  The tree in the centre of the top photo is full of them.  On the way back we passed an old water tower, which has been converted into a bat tower. There is a superb echo if you hoot into the doorway, and few could resist having a go.

Investigating the echo in the Bat Tower. Toys Hill, 3 March 2012.

As we approached the car park, the sun came out! But once again, because of the rain I didn't take my big camera. I wished I had it for a lot of these closeups. The two scenic views were taken with my iPhone, and the rest with my Ixus 100.