Season's Greetings...

We went for a walk in Paradise Wood today - somewhere we hardly ever go, mainly because it's on the other side of the River Don from our house, and to get there you have to drive several miles to cross the bridge at Boat Cottage and then double back upstream on the other side up a 'dead end' road.

But it's well worth it. The Wood certainly lives up to its name: it's quite a magical place on account of the native birchwood and the avenues and plantings of spectacular specimen conifers undertaken in the 18th century by the reforming Laird, Sir Archibald Grant. It's also now quite an eerie place, with dead trees and twisted branches writhing into grotesque shapes and apparitions.

But for today's Blip, what could be better than this shot of orange-brown slugs feasting on lilac-lavender coloured fungi...