Friends of the Fowey Estuary

We had a really enjoyable evening. The ambiance was cheerful ...

... the food good and the company excellent.

Thanks everyone, for a lovely event and a great year! Here's to more happy and interesting adventures in 2007.

Our exuberant and expert Foray Leader, Matt Lewis of the National Trust

Participants assemble at Lerryn car park.

Moving off across the stepping stones - you can see this was a popular event!

Almost at once Matt starts to unfold the amazing world of fungus - how throughout the year the air is full of millions of spoors and that fungus is an essential ingredient of healthy woodland, breaking down dying timber and recycling it as mulch.

We are soon wondering at a world of moss, slugs and exquisite beauty.

Maybe a culinary delight, maybe toxic? If you can't positively identify it as safe, don't eat it! It may smell like a field mushroom and even peel like a field mushroom, yet still make you unwell or even be deadly.

The visible part of a fungus is usually just a tiny part of the whole organism which can be a vast underground network or dormant and systemic in a tree waiting for the right conditions to activate and spread and eventually to flower and release its spoors.

We emerge from the woods blinking in the sunshine. Happily we have chosen a few hours of fine weather between the downpours.

We learn that each fungus has a different strategy for breaking down timber. In some cases the wood goes spongy quite quickly. In others, as here, the timber initially hardens and gets brittle and then cracks up into cubes and then breaks down into powder.

A different view of the previous picture to show the scale.

On horizontal timber, at first glance these could have been dismissed as animal droppings, but are in fact a fungus.

This fine old spreading Oak with its dying and fallen limbs and sparse leaf cover is reaching a state of graceful degradation and, left to its own devices, would turn to mulch.

At the lower edge of the field, there, just above our heads, is the "Porcelain Fungus" (Oudemansiella mucida) aka "Slimy Beech Cap" growing on its favourite host, a Beech Tree. Having seen one lot we are soon seeing them everywhere. For the rest of our lives we will be walking through woods looking up into the trees - and tripping over tree roots!

Back in the woods, Matt is immediately finding plenty to show us.

This participant has found some puffballs.

This is the remains of an old Beech tree that had broken off twenty feet above ground. The forester left the trunk as, with the top weight off it, though clearly weakened, it was not likely to fall for many years, and its rotting bulk will provide a rich habitat for all kinds of life.

Shelf fungus was once thought to be a tree killer, but it now seems that it is more of a symptom of disease rather than its cause, and the former almost manic felling and burning of affected trees was found to be ineffective as the spoors are everywhere. The current thinking tries to maintain a healthy balance.

A piece of Shelf Fungus.

Sorry, can't identify.

Though it looks insignificant, the Death Cap is intensely poisonous and causes death even if consumed in very small quantities. It is said to be responsible for most of the mushroom poisonings in the world. Nevertheless it is necessary for the health of the tree it grows under as it provides nutrients for the tree roots.

Sulphur Tuft, graceful, delicate and colourful.

Whether beautiful or hideous, delicious or lethal, fungi have it all.

A Google search for fungi will lead to a wealth of information - here is just one fungus link you might like to look at.

Explorers assembling at Bowithick (Landranger Map 201 GR 182828) ready to find the source of the River Fowey. (This shows the ford at Penpont Water.)

More cars arrive and in the end there were eighteen of us. Here we are chatting and checking gear.

Putting on our rucksacks and getting ready to leave Bowithick.

Before setting off we pose for a final photograph.

Heading into Bodmin Moor, we are aim for the little valley where the skyline dips in the distance. The horizontal scar on the hillside above the trees is the course of an old leat, now disused.

Looking back at Bowithick.

We follow the course of the disused Miner's Leat. With the light clear and bright, the breeze gentle and the temperature cool and invigorating after the summer heat, walking conditions were perfect.

Here we pause to check the map and admire a Buzzard.

Expedition Leader (map in hand) and Events Secretary (with binoculars).

On the trail. Just below this point there were the remains of a dam that had collected the water that fed the leat.

The party included the Membership Secretary shown here wearing red carrying her daughter in a papoose.

A few hundred yards further on and we have crossed the watershed into the catchment area of the River Fowey. Where is its source?

This four foot wide puddle is probably the most likely candidate to qualify as the Source of the River Fowey. It may move up the hill a bit in rainy weather. Anyway here is our best guess as of 16 September 2006 at 11:42 am.

The humpy ground extending thirty yards up beyond the spring may become the source in really wet weather. The watershed between Penpont Water and the River Fowey is marked on the map as having an altitude of 298 metres (978 feet) at a point near the grazing cows.

Mission accomplished, the intrepid explorers sit down and eat their picnic lunches.

With hunger satisfied and courage restored there is time to contemplate the Source of the River Fowey where such insignificant beginnings beget a catchment area of exquisite delights from Damsel Flies to the broad waters of the estuary.

We found a frog...

...and this pony, dappled the grey of the granite rocks but with a dark mane and tail. Truly a day to remember.