Lovelace

On Sunday, it being a fine day, we thought we ought to mark the google 'go' coup noticed at reference 1 in some way. After poring over the maps for a while, we lighted upon the notion of a picnic at Effingham Forest. once part of the estate belonging to the Earl of Lovelace, the husband of the first computer programmer in the world, also the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron (the chap who died for liberty in Greece), Ada Lovelace.

We found the right car park, roughly at gmaps 51.247029, -0.438276, but from there headed north into Sheepleas, being sure about the direction as for once we had thought to take our Montreal compass out - on what has turned out to be a rare outing. See reference 4.

Inspected the yew walk and found the box walk, the first time I have ever come across one of these last. Given that the big house, now the Horsley Park Hotel, was a few miles to the north and the area which included the two walks had been a famous old beech wood until most of the beeches were taken down in the hurricane of 1987, we were a bit puzzled why the walks were there - the sort of thing that was more usually an adjunct to the big house, rather than tucked away in the woods.

There were still some fine stands of old beech trees, but most of the ground was new growth. A lot of self seeded ash, with some planted oak, beech and wild cherry mixed in. It all looked rather well in the bright sunlight.

There was a lot of moss, rather odd considering we were on chalk downs, signs of bluebells to come and a reasonable showing of my favourite carex pendula. One notice of same being found at reference 3.

After our picnic we returned to the car, dumped the picnic gear and crossed the road to take a look at Effingham Forest proper, where we came across lots of handsome pine trees - at least we supposed they were pines. Tall evergreen trees with slender trunks which did not look at all like leylandii. Lots of rhododendrons growing among them. Some coppiced sweet chestnut. Plus a small bush with striking yellow flowers smelling of coconuts - aka gorse.

The famous bridges that Lovelace built, both so that he could ride around in greater comfort and so that he could better extract timber, will have to wait until the next occasion.

PS: on checking the record, I find that the last visit to this area was nearly six years ago, noticed at reference 2. Somewhat pulled up to see how much busier I was then than I feel like being now!

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/high-finance_9.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=feet+bathing.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/carex-pendula.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-quest-for-new-compass.html.

Group search key: ywa.