This weekend was my first full weekend in Creswell, & seeing as the weather stayed bright & clear, we decided to get out & explore!

Saturday morning, Clare & I headed down to Creswell Crags.  We see so little of it on the cycle to & from School, that we thought it was about time we saw what else it had to offer.

It really is glorious down there; the cliffs are very impressive & it was lovely to see more of it.  There are a number of caves down there, none of which were open for general exploration, although there is an organised tour you can go on. 

Some of the caves go quite far back, & they've been excavating them since the 1800's.  They've found wolves teeth, & the remains of lynx's & hyena's down there!

There is a little meadow just after the lake, a lovely place for picnic & I think we'll definitely take advantage of it in the Spring!

We stopped off at the cafe in the visitors centre & had coffee's out in the sunshine.  Then, we wandered down to the Estate & had a look round the farm shop.  There are so many tempting treats in there it's hard not to spend money, but I managed to resist this time!

We picked up a couple of books in the gift shop with walks in the local area, round Sherwood Forest & the Peak District, so there's plenty to explore while we're here!

Today, we decided to try out one of the walks from our new books; the Thoresby Border walk round Clumber Park.  It was another glorious day & Clare, Alex & I took advantage of the late afternoon sunshine.

Our chosen walk was approximately five miles long & started out in the little village of Hardwick.  We crossed over a ford & through a field, then walked down a long (very long!) road.

There were literally hundreds & hundreds of mushrooms all along the verge!  All shapes & sizes, some of them were really very impressive.  I wish I knew more about which varieties were safe to eat, but they do a fungi foraging walk at the weekends, so I think I might have to take advantage of that soon =D

We crossed over the lake & stopped off at the Tea Rooms, for tea & a lovely scone with cream & jam! =D

Then, back to the car & home.  A very enjoyable weekend in all =)