Burning bushes

Up on the moor, by Bench Tor, we kept seeing bushes that looked, at a distance, as though they were on fire. On closer examination we found them dotted with jelly-like fungi, in a range of colours from blood-orange through to clementine. Very Christmassy. My Roger Phillips Mushrooms book tells me they are Yellow Brain Fungi. Nice. We also saw the perfectly named King Alfred's Cakes. Back in the woods we found some rather elderly hedgehog mushrooms, which nevertheless went happily into a stew for dinner.

Gone fishin'

My brother Matthew was down and so we headed off to Babbacombe Pier in Torquay to do some angling. It is a pretty spot, with beautiful views, and, even better, it was deserted, so we didn't have to share the pier with anyone. We caught five whiting and a dogfish, using ragworm and mackerel as bait; we put the dogfish back. Whiting are apparently the winter equivalent of mackerel; they cruise around inshore in shoals and are quite easy to to catch. I baked them using a Madame Prunier recipe involving butter, wine, parsley and shallot. They were delicate in both taste and texture.

Stepping stones

The waters of the West Dart were dark and muscular. Swimming with two friends, it was a struggle pushing against the current (but a good way of fighting the cold). We swam upstream, before drifting back down again. I call this stretch of river the Amazon, because a snake swam across my path when I was there in the summer. No sign of snakes today though - only sheep.

Parson and clerk

If you travel on the train between Exeter and Newton Abbot, you will see the Parson and Clark as you pass along the rugged red-cliffed coastline between Dawlish and Teignmouth. They are two sandstone stacks, just crying out to be swum to. Well, we made it to the Clerk - the stone visible in the picture - but not to the Parson which is 'round the corner'. It was quite hard swimming, but very satisfying to make it to the rock, climb on it triumphantly, and then jump off.

Winter carnival

In the last Friday in November, Ashburton goes carnival crazy. Everyone flocks into the town in the evening, and hawkers mysteriously appear, selling luminous sticks, bunny ears and the like. Some time after eight o'clock, you start to hear music in the distance, and then you see flashing lights bouncing off the houses at the top of the hill. It's the arrival of the carnival floats. They come down the main street, one by one, as brash as can be. You've got the traditional carnival queens, but there are also various other tableaux including, this year, the Kumars, the Jungle, and Men in Suspenders. It feels like a tradition that goes back to the beginning of time. The winter, the darkness, lights, fire...it's almost pagan.

Aquatic exploring

Apparently the sea in November is warmer than it is in May. And when we plunged in off Castle Cove in Dartmouth, this definitely seemed to be the case.The waters were still, and a beautiful opaque green. We swam around by the Castle, admiring its ancient walls built into the bedrock. We then headed up the estuary where we got battered by waves and winds, and so returned to the calm of the Cove, where we amused ourselves jumping and diving off the rocks.

Down the dump

At the weekend I was initiated into the Ways of the Tip. Never having visited this hallowed place before, unlike everyone else it seems, I was rather excited. The tip in question is a little place in Buckfastleigh which is only open at the weekends. There is a man whose sole job is to sit in an old armchair in the driveway, reading his dirty magazines disguised in a copy of the Western Morning News, and directing traffic in. Once you get in, various hairy arsed guys in high visibility vests hang around watching you struggle to get your rubbish out of the car (and not offering to help). Then there's the siren call of the high quality tat to rummage through afterwards, to replace the tat you brought in....

Desperate times

...call for desperate measures. Is this the effect of the credit crunch? This sign has been put up in the window of the framing shop in Ashburton.

'Shroom report

There still seem to be quite a few hedgehog mushrooms out there, but the season hasn't lived up to its early promise. Virtually no boletes, apart from a solitary penny bun in September, and not that many chanterelles either, apart from a rash at the end of August/beginning of September. I found both types of hedgehog today: Hydnum repandum on the left of the picture, and Hydnum rufescens on the right.

Waterworld

Today it was such therapy to get in the water. Yes, it's the beginning of November, but it saved my sanity to leave the dreary damp of Dartmoor and take to the beach and sea at Mothecombe. The colours were beautiful and muted. The sea was grey-green, the eye of God was visible as the sun started to set, and the water was wonderfully calm.