Secret woodland pool

Pete and I had a long day of fieldwork in Hertfordshire, doing a preliminary scoping visit. The worst thing about the day was travelling down the A1(M). Despite waiting till we thought that the traffic should have eased, we got caught in several traffic jams.

But the scariest incident was on the A414 dual carriageway, when the car in front of us suddenly stopped, with no warning at all. I managed to slam on the brakes and stop in time,thinking they'd broken down. I eventually managed to pull out into the fast lane to get round the vehicle, thanks to a kind driver who slowed down and flashed me to go. As I looked in my mirror I saw the car which had stopped reverse back down the dual carriageway to turn into the slip road they'd just missed - narrowly avoiding a blue car which was turning off. It was one of the worst pieces of driving I've ever seen!

I was pretty tired after six hours of steady walking and nearly four hours of driving! Fortunately the showers were not too heavy or frequent, although some of them included balls of compacted snow. As we came to the end of our trek there was a thunderstorm close by, but fortunately we got back to the car before the rain started. We found some rather nice spots, including this shady woodland pool, which was full of frog spawn.