I had another great day in the Ryda åsar reserve. I explored a trail that I hadn’t been on yesterday and it went through some beautiful birch woods (where I did a small watercolour sketch) and then through some glorious pine forest with hundreds and hundreds of different fungi.

They were all shapes and sizes and some looked edible but I thought I’d better not risk it. Christina’s advice of sticking to the yellow ones hasn’t helped that much as there are many different types of yellow mushroom! There are also purple ones, red ones, brown ones, white ones, spotted ones, stinky phallic ones and some massive bracket fungi.

Bilberries grow everywhere on the higher ground and I found the Swedish speciality, lingonberries (which I did try).

After a few more sketches and my picnic in the sunshine, I followed the trail to the road and took a tiny track down to Öresjö lake. It looks like a great place to go swimming but I decided to save that for another day and headed back along the woodland trails to home.

I’m beginning to get ideas of a few things that I’d like to try out in the studio but I want to spend some more time outside drawing and exploring first. It is so rare that I have the luxury of working in the field. Far too often deadlines encroach, admin gets in the way or I work to complete specific projects or print ideas and having this time to just draw and gather visual information is brilliant. Just what I was hoping for. Here’s a random sample of a few of my sketches and monoprints. They certainly aren’t masterpieces but they are getting me thinking and looking. The simple act of stopping and drawing something makes you really look properly and I find it quite meditative. It stills my mind and opens it up ready for new ideas.

I thought that I must have covered a lot of miles today so I went back and ran the route this evening using my Garmin and it turns out that it was only about 6 miles but I’ve now done twice that which will explain why I’m feeling ready for bed!