We ventured outside properly for the first time yesterday and today after almost a week indoors - it's been an unbelievably mild but very, very wet Christmas here in south east England. It did rain on us today but we were all gasping for fresh air and something vaguely resembling exercise for our fuller than full tummies so we pulled on our wellies and waterproofs and set off for an adventure in Gruffalo wood ...Strictly speaking "Gruffalo wood" is only a tiny copse of white poplar and aspen trees behind my parents' house that leads down to some ponds and a canal but it did offer up all sorts of excitement. We:
- Selected sticks because you always need a good stick on a walk
- Balanced on fallen logs
- Hid behind trees
- Gazed up to the top of the trees to guess whether the nests belonged to magpie or crow
- Listened for the woodpecker but couldn't hear him for the wind
- Trampled in heaps of fallen crab apples and decided we must pick & jelly them next year
- Jumped into a complete circle of enormous toadstools and magically "disappeared"
- Spotted 3 little reed buntings and laughed at their moustaches
- Were sad about all the conkers left uncollected by squirrels or children
- Carefully examined the snowdrop and bluebell shoots that are already peeping through
- Found a holly bush covered in hundreds of berries although our own bush has none which suggests the birds are as confused as the weatherman as to what the weather is doing!
- Looked for the heron on the pond but he wasn't there
- Walked cagily past two over "friendly" swans who were not impressed we'd forgotten bread
- Examined all the hills that a very busy "mouldy warp the mole" had made and worked out which ones were old ones and which ones with fresh soil he must have made
- And got pounced on by a big, bad Gruffalo ... although, he didn't have purple prickles ... and he did look just a little bit like grandpa ...
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