Dave's blog

Last week I’d planned to put in a pond, build a shed, put in a path and erect some kind of greenhouse but my plans were dashed when down came the snow! I perhaps wouldn’t have managed all the tasks in hand, I tend to overload myself and then feel bad when I can’t do everything I planned! So at least chipping away at some of the tasks would have been good but the weather had just made it impossible; filling a pond only for it to freeze is perhaps counter productive at best.

So instead last Monday I decided to take myself off to Abergavenny to enjoy the snow in a nice hilly, country setting. It’s only an hour by train there from Bristol and it really feels like you’re out in the wilds. I’m working on a novel at the moment and some of this features snowy surroundings so if I couldn’t do practical work then a little research would perhaps be the next best thing.

I arrived in the picturesque town of Abergavenny to a near blizzard. Sensing walking could be dangerous in this weather I took myself to a nice little café to sit it out with a newspaper, a nice hot cup of tea and jacket potato.

After half and hour or so the snow seemed to calm a little and I took myself on a route out of town, over the canal, and up a hill through a line of trees. I was so taken by the beauty of the landscape enveloped in snow I found myself taking countless pictures.

Half way up the hill I stumbled across a farmer whose land I must have been walking on. I asked him, “if I carry on walking up this way, how long before I…”

He interrupted, “how long before you die?!”

I laughed a little but saw that he was really only half joking, I’m sure dealing with a frozen corpse on your land is not a job most farmers would wish for. He advised I walk up a little to a spot where he turns the sheep out and if the fog has really set in and I can’t see much it would be for the best that I turn round and come back down.

Now I remember once whilst walking in Scotland myself and two friends aimed to climb a mountain and come back down within a day. On the ascent we met a well-seasoned walker who told us the footpath was only on our side of the mountain and our route would take us through ‘just, deer tracks and heather’. Rather than follow his advice we completely ignored it and just walked up the route we’d planed. After spending 24 longer than intended, sleeping in a tent pitched in a bog, drinking boiled snow (we’d run out of water), starving as we only packed enough food for 1 day and 1 night and twisting my ankle on the deer tracks and heather I have since then taken the advice of people who know an area better than I do!

I walked up to the area he turned the sheep out and the fog had really set in, visibility was low and I could barely walk two paces without slipping. Still something in me wanted to get to the top of the hill, it’s almost as if I have some suicidal gene that wants me to get into trouble! However, I ignored my self-destructive internal dialogue and stared heading back down the hill. I’d made quite a lot of notes for the novel and taken a lot of pictures so I’d done what I set out to do and I wandered back down.

Not wanting to cut the walk to short I wandered up and down the canal for a bit and stumbled across some velvet shank (Flammulina velutipes) growing out of a dead standing tree. It really stood out in the frost and I couldn’t resist taking a bit home to eat and taking a few pics.

Velvet shank is quite easy to identify but it can look like Galerina marginata, a particularly nasty mushroom. The toxins in Galerina margina (or Galerina autumnalis) are known as amatoxins give you bloody diarrhea and make you vomit about a day after ingestion. Then after a little bit of time you start to feel better so most hospitals will discharge you. During this brief respite your organs collapse causing a certain and very painful death. Needless to say I made darn sure I had he right mushroom before I ate them. A spore print is essential; look at the mushroom expert for more details.

Velvet shank is a bit bland so I stir fried it up with, amongst other things, some chilli, black beans, ginger and had it with tofu, broccoli, home grown Jew’s ear fungus (or jelly ear) with some soba noodles. It was pretty tasty once I flavoured it but I wonder if it’s always worth risking death for such a bland mushroom!?

The week was a bit more sedate after Monday, I felt risking death twice in 24 hours was quite enough for one week. It may be perhaps as I’ve given up smoking that I still need to be dicing with death on a daily basis. Perhaps it wasn’t the nicotine I was addicted to but the fact I was ingesting a poison.