Minor Miner

Fortunately for me no pictures exist of me after this... um... incident. You know those dalek shaped plastic compost bins. A good compost maker will have them choc-a-block full of rich, sweet, fruit-cake sticky compost. This is shovelled out of the bottom via a trap door, leaving, sometimes, and arching roof tunnel of compost right through to the back. Occasionally a dog might pass by looking for a place to bury a choice bone, and the dark recesses of this cavern can look quite attractive as a hidey hole.

But if that dog had more experience, she'd know that with time the compost "arch" sags and collapses, the "mine shaft" not being as it were propped up with pit-props. What is a miner to do then, when she knows that buried behind the roof collapse is her precious bone. Surely worth getting a bit... um .... grubby to retieve it?

Meanwhile, in Challock Forest the bluebells are just about at their peak. Unfortunately the leaves in the beech and chestnut are also racing to expand and the light levels are falling fast. It'll soon be over. It also being Bank Holiday Monday the car-park is choc-a also, and there are people everywhere..... WITHIN 100 yards of the car park. Yep, it's a bit like the Lake District. You'd think it would be crammed, the number of cars crawling nose-to-tail along the roads, but stop and walk 100 yards, and you've left 99% of them behind.

So it is in the Forest, and with our local knowledge of the back-ways and secret paths we can be alone in minutes, and able to enjoy in-interrupted bluebell walking. Hope these pics do it justice.

Deefer