Walk in the Ashford's Woodland

Yesterday Mum and I went with the dogs to the woodlands where my fitness group and I would exercise on a routine and regular basis. Exercises involved include lots of running, pushups, situps, burpees etc. But I digress.


The park is filled with Oak trees and there were plenty of stinging nettles and bluebells around the woodlands, which covered a lot of ground.

As we moved into the first part where the exercises begin, namely where other visitors would practice using bicycles, we spotted a Robin, but I wasn't successful in getting a good picture. 


Afterwards, we saw a dead tree that must've been struck by lightning as it was burned inside like really burned. Inside was a massive colony of ants and I only took a picture so it may be a little hard to see them. But they were really active inside the tree.




Of all the things I didn't expect to see was two ladybirds mating on a leaf as we moved up the hill. Mum told me that ladybirds are very important to an ecosystem as their larvae eat greenflies and certain species of pests. Not sure how they do it. We also saw a bumblebee but we didn't have any tubes so I couldn't catch it and take a picture.


Along the fence near the railway, Mum pointed me to a Birch tree and what caught my attention was that the work Pink was engraved into the tree.

As we walked under a bridge, we found sweet chestnuts on the floor. These must explain why squirrels are here as my dogs saw one and wanted to chase it but we had them on the leads so they couldn't, nor did we want them to. We also spotted this tree, rather weird looking one. I'm not sure if its dead or not.

Mum showed me that the trees have been coppiced, which is that they have been cut down but only above the stump, allowing them to regrow in unusual ways.


There were a lot of birds out in the woodlands, but I don't know what sounds distinguish them from Robins, Blackbirds or Jays. We also found these trees with pink flowers, are these Camillia? If so, why are these here? They originate from Southeast Asia.


One of these Camellias was red. Very beautiful.

Much later we saw what I assume to be a Rhodedron, covered in blackflies and a very large insect. I don't know what it is exactly. I can't help but think my phone pictures look better on my phone when I take them but when they transfer to the computer, the quality degrades.





There were other flowers like Azalea as well but few and far between, most of the area was covered in Bramble, Stinging nettles and Bluebells.



While we were trailing back to reach the car we found a few spots where cones were all over the floor.

My final picture will be this tree. I think it's an oak tree but it was very large and had so many branches.


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