Seale: Pining and Birching

Seale: Pining and Birching
13 March 2003

Location	Seale, Surrey, OS 145. Just like last time, I parked in the car park at Lower Puttenham Common alongside Littleworth Road. From there I walked through Britty Wood and Crooksbury Common to The Sands. But this time I took almost the same route back. When I returned to the car there was still some light so I went over to the lookout in Puttenham Common before heading home.

Weather	Sunny but cold in the wind.

Click on the images to see larger versions.


	The first part of the walk was in shady coniferous woodland. By the side of the trail, a fallen log was overgrown with moss.

I just think the intense greenness of the moss is yummy.

	A lot of the soil here is sand but in places the drainage isn't all that great. This large puddle is actually more or less permanent. I liked the way the sky is reflected in the still water.

Pondweed is growing on the surface.

	I collected some pine cones and created a still life on the sandy trail.

A bird created this one for me. My first guess would be that it was made by a pheasant but I'm not so sure that they like areas with as much dense woodland as this.

	The fierce thorns of the gorse, Ulex europaeus, give pause for thought.

The flowers are a lovely yellow colour, though.

	A part of Culverswell Hill on Crooksbury Common is heathland. Here airy birches and young pines are sprinkled on a bed of heather growing on sand.

A closer look at the heather.

	A pine obligingly held down a branch so that I could take a picture of its needles.

With the longer, twisted needles, I think this is another species of pine.

	I ventured into the woods. The light filtering down through the trees there was magical.

The ground was covered by a thick layer of fallen needles. It dampened the sound of my foot steps.

	Out on the path again, I took a picture of a pine trunk in all its rugged might.

In the Sands, I bought a Coke in the shop and took a picture of the Sands arms. Presumably the rose in the top left corner is the English rose. The helmet and spear I guess come from the Soldiers' Ring fort to the south of the village. A little further away is Waverley Abbey. That explains the monk in the lower left corner. I'm not sure about the hart, though. There could be a deer park in Hampton Park, I guess.

	On a gate post, this surly fellow was keeping a watchful eye on something to his right.

And this is what he was glaring at. I'd be suspicious too.

	Back in the woods, I walked along this avenue of birch trees.

Here's some birch bark glistening in the sun.

	The bark on young birches tends to be this strange maroon with a grey overlay instead. The green stuff doesn't belong to the tree, it's algae.

On older trees, the bark breaks up as the trunk expands. The previously pristine white bark becomes twisted and grey.

	Back to the pines. This is looking west on a path on Culverswell Hill.

And here we're looking south.

	There were piles of logs along the road. This is the diameter of one of them.

Back in Britty Wood, the sunlight played on as yet unfelled pine trunks growing in bracken.

	In a glade, I got a better look at the bracken.

The last picture is from the lookout on Puttenham Common looking back over the area where I walked today. It's a very satisfying last picture.