A Penchant For Dried Leaves

This afternoon Jackie drove me to the GP’s in Milford on Sea to order a repeat prescription.

We travelled via the winding, sunlit, autumnal, Barnes Lane.

We then turned back to the north of the forest.

Had the new traffic calming been installed on the road through Bramshaw, we wondered, in order to protect

the wandering donkeys always in evidence?

I have often seen them chewing prickly shrubs,

but a penchant for dried leaves was a new one for me.

Perhaps the efforts to slow the traffic had also been for the benefit of the basking, scratching, cud-chewing, cattle on and around the green, some of whom regularly diced with death.

The pannage period was not past for this parcel of pigs snuffling alongside Roger Penny Way. I was quite pleased to have positioned myself for these two shots, because I needed to venture down a soggy slope stepping over fallen, lichen covered, branches. Regular readers will know what happened last time I descended a much drier slope in a bit of a hurry.

Elizabeth is staying with Mum for a few days. Jackie and I dined on her splendid beef, mushrooms, and onion pie; Yorkshire pudding; new potatoes; roasted parsnips and butternut squash; and crisp cauliflower and carrots, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Calvet special release Merlot 2017.