NEW FOREST (1)

I've always liked the New Forest, and Anna and I have been down there 3 times in the past 2 years - staying in a campsite, a hotel and just this weekend, a haunted pub / hotel in Lymington, (south of the New Forest proper).

I have taken many photos and will endeavour to post about them all on "Blue-Grey" as soon as I can - this will take some time though.

At the moment I'm trying (with the help of some mycologists on WAB) to identify the 20 or so different types of mushrooms / toadstools Anna and I found on our walk through the deepest, darkest (best) parts of the forest yesterday afternoon. Some we already knew, like the very distinctive Common Inkcaps, the Fly Agaric and the Amethyst Deceiver, but most we need some help on.

When I've identified them all (the best I can) I will post on those fungi...

We didn't just walk through the forest. We took a marvellous walk along the marshes between Hampshire and the Solent and along Hurst Spit to Hurst Castle (one of Henry VIII's old coastal fortresses and where later, Charles I was held before he was beheaded).

Luckily for me, I know far more about my avian friends than my fungal foes, so I'll post about those first - at least I can identify them!

We stayed in "The Angel Inn", Lymington. This is a 12 century coaching Inn, which was instrumental in smuggling activities over the years.

It is (still) reputed to be haunted by a number of ghosts, and appears ( I think ) in the "Most haunted pubs in Britain" book.

Many deaths have occurred (not so recently though) in the Angel Inn, and many lost souls have been seen over the years in its dark, beamed corridors at night. The most haunted corridor is actually on the second floor (where WE slept!). Here, a ghostly grey woman walks up and down at night. A face is often seen at the Kitchen Window at night time (when no-one is in the kitchen), on the ground floor, and when the Ballroom was last refurbished, and the grand piano was taken away for rennovations, soft, spooky piano music was heard all over the hotel!

I have had only one very strange (paranormal?!) experience in my life. I cannot explain what happened to me one night in a haunted house, in a haunted village just outside Thame in Oxfordshire, but I'll not forget it in a hurry - and this comes from a man who has quite literally spent MONTHS in the dead of night in the middle of huge woods, miles from the nearest house.

Anyway, Anna didn't see a ghost at "The Angel, Lymington", and nor, sadly, did I.

The haunted second floor corridor - our door nearest to the camera, RHS.