Here too, and on Claife Heights, are the spruce plantations. Disliked by so many people, for the mycologist they have considerable interest and are much to be preferred to sheep. Small stands of pines are scattered around sometimes within the spruce plantations, and are always worth a close look because of the particular fungi which grow there and nowhere else. Sphagnum too is widespread, not only in bogs but in the woodlands and on the fell-sides, maintained by the natural rainfall rather than wet boggy conditions. It is sometimes difficult not to.
Footpaths are everywhere.
From the start we took the decision to make repeated visits to selected sites in order to build up a fungal record over future years at those sites. Convenience, and knowledge of the area determined our choice as much as anything, though we have tried to include a reasonable cross-section of the habitats mentioned above. Not all the sites have been visited to the same extent, nor are they likely to be in future. If it is raining we can easily go for half an hour to the White Moss Common area to collect half a dozen or so specimens and then spend several hours indoors working on them. 1997 saw us extend our coverage to limestone woodland in the Witherslack area, and we made our first foray to the important dune system of Sandscale Haws.