A Sunday Afternoon Walk in the Woods and Park

A Sundy Afternoon Walk in Lesnes Abbey Woods and the adjacent Lesnes Abbey Park to be precise. We toddled down in the hopes of seeing some flowering Wood Anemones, Wild Bluebells and Wild Daffodils *. And Yippee; our luck was in viz.

(the plant in the above picture is growing on a tree trunk above ground level)

Vague hopes of seeing some flowering Greater Stitchwort were not fulfilled but hopefully not too long to wait now with the plants coming on nicely viz.

Similarly; no sign of flowers on the Wood Sorrel growing nearby yet.

But some nearby Snowdrops are still in flower viz.

Planted we assume but now left to their own devices.

Before leaving the Woods we noticed a Grey Squirrel tucking into what appeared to be a Sweet Chestnut viz.

And shortly afterwards we spotted a Grey Squirrel watching us viz.

The same Squirrel both times? We'll never know.

In Lesnes Abbey Park the Alexanders are almost flowered out now.  We looked for signs of the Lesser Calamint (a well documented population) but apart from finding a few old dried flowers and seeds, nothing doing, yet. But we could smell Mint when we touched the old dried flowers which was nice.

The nearby Gorse looked very pretty with the Sun glistening on the yellow flowers viz.

Some Cow Parsley was also flowering.

Moving on to the Lesnes Abbey' Ruins we were surprised to find a few Rue-Leaved Saxifrage plants (a well documented population) already flowering viz.

Also what we assume to be lots of smaller plants viz.

Disappointingly, we were unable to find any Ivy-Leaved Toadflax in flower; there are however plenty of plants growing on the Abbey' Ruins so that is something to look forward to.

But we did see a few Common Daisies growing on the Ruins and flowering very prettily viz.

And a super-pretty unidentified Crane's-Bill viz.

Black Spleenwort grows in profusion on the Abbey' Ruins with Wall-Rue being far less prolific. Annoyingly we were unable to locate the single Maidenhair Spleenwort plant found a few weeks ago.

It was disappointing but we suppose not too unsurprising, it being a Sunny and Warmish Sunday afternoon, to see quite a few children (some with their parents) and at least one parent, climbing on the Ruins. Said parent actually read out loud one of the notices asking people not to climb on the Ruins, then promptly joined his children up on the Ruins whereupon he took out and examined his 'phone or whatever it was.

We spotted a few Bees but were only able to photograph one assumed Buff-Tailed Bumblebee or White-Tailed Bumblebee wandering around on the grass viz.

We also noticed a Seven-Spot Ladybird viz.

We ended the outing by joining the footpath leading up to New Road, passing the patch of Wild Garlic (aka Ramsons) which we assume, should be flowering within the next few weeks.

Whilst walking along the footpath we passed quite a few Lords-and-Ladies (aka the Cuckoo-Pint) viz.

And whilst walking up New Road towards the car we spotted some flowering Lesser Celandine viz.

* we are very much aware that our knowledge of wild flowers &c. is essentially next to nothing so we surely overlook some very interesting and unusual plants. But that cannot be helped; we simply enjoy getting out and about.