A New Year's day walk to check on the state of play in Sladers Leigh where the spring wildflowers seem to appear first.

Unlike last year, there are no primroses yet. Last year we had been keeping an eye on one that had been blooming in the last week of December but all was quiet this year.

Just beyond the top of Sladers Leigh, where it joins the old sunken coach road, is a bank of snowdrops which are showing clear signs of getting ready for the coming spring.

It's quite dim in the old sunken coach road, the banks are couple of metres high and bordered by ivy-covered trees which cuts down the already-inadequate light, so flash photography is necessary.

The winter solstice has been gone, the afternoon sun is moving back round to the west. There's less standing water than in early December but we're still pathetically grateful for a few brightening rays.

Fortunately, the weather soon brightens up a bit and so do we. In Sladers Leigh the hazel catkins are flowering and at the top of Sladers Leigh the bank of snowdrops is coming along nicely. But ... it's a little early as yet and it's still a bit gloomy down in the old sunken coach road.

The trees in Kings Wood have suffered somewhat from the winter gales and there have been some big casualties. Fortunately, our favourite trees have survived: here's the "not a Dangerous Beech" --- actually a small-leaved lime Tilia cordata, also known as the "Littleleaf linden" in the US. And a cross-section from a major chunk of one of the big beeches that is now unfortunately reduced to just a 20m high bare trunk, ready for the woodpeckers to move in.

We've been eagerly anticipating the primroses. The ones in Sladers Leigh are quite early. Last year we watched one bloom from late December right through to February.

Also, there are several colonies along the railway walk that are just beginning to show evidence of blooms.

For us, identifying fungi is difficult, hit and miss at best as there are zillions of different species. We'll try and patch in the names as and when we track them down.