Otford and the Darent Valley

View across the Darent valley to Meenfield Wood and the war memorial, on the hillside opposite Shoreham,
the next small town along the valley from Otford. 2 February 2013.

It's winter and most of the OFC outings have been for birds, which are not my interest.  This was more of a walk along the valley, keeping an eye out for any interesting natural history.  It was a cold and windy day, in the middle of a rainy season, but on this day we had intermittent sunshine, which made a nice change.

It was interesting to see that war memorial - the cross on the hillside - because then I realised I was within sight of a walk in May last year, which I do not seem to have put on the blog.  We walked along the treeline on that hillside and I saw the cross from above.

The water you can see is flooded fields; the small river is behind the trees.

We saw a few wildflowers, including snowdrops and primroses, but they were on a bank outside some houses; perhaps they were seeding themselves, but they must have been planted originally.  And some flowers were survivors from last year.  The only true wild spring flower we saw was a Lesser Celandine.

Lesser Celandine, Ranunculus ficaria.  Otford, 2 February 2013.

A pretty little flower, related to Buttercups.  But winter and early spring are good times to look for mosses and lichens, and we saw some of those too.

Syntrichia intermedia.  Darent valley, 2 February 2013.

This lovely thing grows in round cushiony clumps on walls.

Ramalina fastigiata.  Darent valley, 2 February 2013.

This, as you can see, grows on twigs. 

I was using a new camera that has GPS built in, and there is software which produces a track of where you have been with it:

Walking route in the Darent valley, 2 February 2013.

We walked this route anticlockwise starting at the bottom right.  The pins mark where the photos were taken; in order, view - lichen - moss - flower.  Of course, I took more than that; enough for me to show a few next time.  Please ignore the trail off to the bottom left; I forgot to turn off the GPS and it tracked the car all the way home from inside the boot!