Winter Droving.

What a day!  Clickychick and I were booked on a days course with Cumbria Wildlife Trust on "Fungi in unimproved Grassland.  It was brilliant so much to learn, we began with an indoor session where I discovered Fungi are neither plant nor animal.  Recent discoveries have shown the cells previously thought to be plant have chitin cell walls not cellulose. Chitin is an animal product so they seem to be half way between and are now given a Kingdom of their own!   We followed this with collecting on the Eycott Hill Reserve and then back to the village hall for identification.

After the course it was home for a while and then out to Penrith's Winter Droving.  The whole day has things going on but we only go for the torchlight procession.  The procession is 2 or 3 hundred yard long of masked torch bearers in masks, bands and lanterns.  Some of the "lanterns" are huge.  Horses, stags, cattle, geese etc all much larger than life.

This Wolf (new this year) was designed by a young boy from one of the local primary schools .  Sponsored by Ullswater Steamers the "Lantern" was created by a professional lantern maker.