Astridge forest Sweet chestnuts

Today we went for a walk in Astridge forest to see the leaves change and see what we could find, however Sophie's agender was different we had just bought her some Wellington boots and she was obsessed with finding a puddle to jump into the test out said new wellies.

Luckily it had rained the night before and there were quite a few large and rather muddy puddles, making all splashing and sploshing dreams realised to the happy tot.  As we continued up the path we were fortunate enough to be stopped in our tracks by a passing herd of deer, all followed by a young buck, what a beautiful sight to see.

We walked on looking out for more deer or other interesting things to talk about and Sophie loves to have a stick to hold while in the woods and was impressed until she saw an upgrade and thought she should have this large spooky tree which she said was her big stick.  We also found some strange looking eggs on loads of leaves of a tree and wondered what they were.

 As we walked on we found some bright green spiky jewels laying in the brown leaf litter and as all good forages had a plastic bag on us and started to collect up a whole bag these treats.

 Sophie couldn't believe her eyes as the ground was covered in them and in the silence of the woods all you could hear was her toddler voice shouting "MORE SPIKY MUMMY MORE "  We all got busy picking them up being careful not to prickle our fingers.  Then we sat and had a  little rest before heading back home.

 When we got home we double checked our bounty of loot and we thought we had sweet chestnuts and we had so we are looking forward to the cold nights drawing in when we have our fire burning so we can roast and munch our way through our latests foraged treat.