Mycomania 1: Göljådalen

'Mushroom mad' is perhaps too strong a term for it, but 'mycophilia' seemed to carry unfortunate connotations, so let's stick with the above. Which was stirred two years ago in the Tweed valley near our friends the Lambtons and specifically in the glorious arboretum-garden of Dawyck and its 'cryptogamic sanctuary'. This year it was rekindled in the valley through which the River Göljån flows in Sweden's Fulufjället National Partk - a very different landscape from our walk around the Njupeskär waterfall the previous day.

Special circumstances pertain here which mean that most likely - and I'll have to check this out with my New Best Friends in Kew's Fungarium - I was seeing some rather unusual specimens which like to grow on dead wood. What I learnt from Martyn Ainsworth in a revelatory fungal walk around Kew last Thursday was that we can take nothing for granted in the mushroom world. Innocent-looking types can be cannily imitated by the deadlier ones; not all mushrooms have a mutually beneficial relationship with plants, some kill them; species names can change and shift within a year. I'd never risk gathering mushrooms to eat, maybe with the exception of a few boletes and chanterelles.

Not that you'd ever eat the bracket variety, which were in the majority on our walk either side of the Göljån. How were these special conditions created? During 30-31 August 1997 Sweden's heaviest recorded rainfall - over 400 millimetres in a single day - soaked the eastern slopes of Mount Fulufjället and swelled the waters of the little and greater Göljån rivers to 500 times their usual flow. A wave six metres high swept through Göljådalen, uprooting 10,000 cubic metres of timber - mostly spruces 35 metres high and half a metre across.

As the information board put it:

The massive volume of water ploughed new channels through loose soil and on the slopes leading down to the Göljån river, caused numerous landslides that removed nearly all vegetation. Left behind in the forest landscapes was a wide swathe that resembled a newly excavated highway. But only a few years later, flowers, grasses and mosses began to return. 

The compact logjams teem with life, offering ideal conditions for fastidious lichens, fungi and insects, that have difficulty finding suitable habitats, since deadwood is often a scarce commodity in modern forests. Several bird species have acquired an abundant food supply, and the wren has found new dwelling places.

We saw no birds and hardly heard any during either of our walks, though on the drive back from Göljådalen a capercaille crossed the track. But we did encounter plenty of the 'fastidious lichens and fungi' once we'd enjoyed a delicious picnic on this rickety bridge (photo by Jamie; the Diplo-mate permits a distant shot, and that's Susannah on the right).

Most of the rocks either side of the river were covered in extraordinary red lichen

and much else on the miniature scale was competing for attention.

First of the polypores or bracket fungi appeared on dead wood across another bridge

and then we found plenty on upright spruces. I like to think this is Hoof Fungus or Tinderbracket (Fomes fomentarius), though would that account for its astonishing shade of blue?

Two gilled mushrooms on the ground: is this Macrolepiota konradii, with the gills forcing their way upwards on to the cap?

It's highly unlikely this glowing orange-red loner is Caesar's Mushroom, Amanita caesarea, so called because Julius and Claudius prized it so highly, since that tends to flourish in Mediterranean regions, but it's the nearest correspondent in my ever-confusing guide and I like the idea.

New life was springing up in clearings presumably forged by the tidal wave

and the devastation was much more apparent in the lower reaches.

Here, on a dead tree by a tributary, I spotted the three brackets in the top picture - they might be more Hoof Fungus but I hope they are the rarer (except in Scandinavia) Phellinus nigricans.

No mushroom in my book corresponds to one with a growth on top like this one

and finally we have, I reckon, the Blueing Bracket (Postia subcaesia), half-moons glowing in the half-light.

More brackets to come in the Kew ramble write-up, identified by our guide. Now to show this to a nice person in the Fungarium for comment and correction. 

20/10  Part of the detailed reply which arrived sharpish from Kew:  

If only we could identify fungi from photos it would make life much easier; however it is rarely possible. Increasingly, we need to see the fruit body from all angles, measure the spores, study the suites of microcharacters and even obtain a DNA sequence to be certain of an identification. I’m afraid it is just not possible to be authoritative about the fungi you saw from the photos alone, with the exception of Fomes fomentarius, and, as you suggest, the orange one won’t be Amanita caesarea. Postia subcaesia might be correct, but it is one element of a group of similar species that would require an in-depth study to resolve.

Sorry to be so unhelpful, but the sheer number of fungal species on the planet (millions) mean that photos alone are rarely enough.

Around Njupeskär

We've been tramping relative flatlands more recently, though the terrain of our Norfolk churches chronicle which will still take me some time to assemble did lead us into modest valleys. Nothing, of course, compared to the canyon of  the Njupeskär waterfall and the river Njupån in Sweden's Fulufjället National Park, not far from the Norwegian border in what I suppose, technically speaking, is still Dalarna. Visions of our walk up to and above the waterfall kept me sane during nearly two hours of hideous, if painless, root canal treatment on Wednesday.

This is Sweden's highest cascade, topping 93 metres with a freefall of 70. It flows from the Rörsjo lakes on the c.900m high mountain plateau, which with its 900 million year old sandstone and diabase has been eroded for the past 200 million and kept more or less its current shape for 60 million. These are figures I can't really get my head around; one needs a book like Christopher Potter's You Are Here to put it all into perspective. Nor do I quite understand the principle of 'retrogressive erosion', but that's why we have the waterfall, its boulders and its canyon.

The first two kilometres from the visitors' centre, with its excellent Naturum, are accomplished by even the most timid or toddler-encumbered of visitors and take you past 400 year old larches and sparkling lakelets

along a boardwark near to the base of the waterfall. The sun only hits the cascades for a couple of early morning hours in midsummer.

Jamie coped with the spray and the boulders more nimbly than I did, so has the best shots close up.

We then retraced some of our steps and climbed towards Rörsjöarna

with the views north-east opening up all the time and the boulders covered with bright-green map lichen.

Clouds were rolling in and the wind strengthening, so we stopped for our packed lunch in a sheltered nest of rocks before pressing on for the plateau (third of Jamie's four pics).

J was content to sit and survey

while I clambered nearer to the upper falls

and Jamie once again got closer than the rest of us to view the cascade proper from above.

The Fulufjälllet plateau is famously unique in remaining ungrazed by reindeer, so the lichen called reindeer moss grows in thick carpets.

The terrain is also covered in dwarf birch and mountain heather

and boggy ground sometimes gives way to further lakelets.

One so wants to think of this sky-neighbour where mind-chains do not clank as untainted, but I read that due to acid rain the fish in the high lakes died out in the 1950s. Nowhere is quite safe from human fallout.

I'd like to have spent more time roaming the uplands, but by now it was late afternoon and we wound round the other side of the high ground above Njupeskär.

This is where I found my cloudberries. Indulge one more shot, with moss more in focus than my artfully sited discovery (not by any means the only one, but the most cumulus-like).

Back down we headed towards the waterfall zone, with lichened trees in profusion.

Here I had my first glimpse of the miniature fungi world - Roger Phillips' beautifully produced volume Mushrooms, a copy of which I'm now proud to own, suggests to me that the tallest specimens here might be Mycenae/bonnets, but then again they might be Hygrocybes/waxcaps -

which would give way to spectacular larger specimens on our walk the following day. To which, of course, I'll return, as it was a whole new landscape.

Late summer fruitfulness

Lingonberries, cloudberries, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants: the Swedish countryside yielded up its riches in August. Large bears can consume 100kg of berries each in a single day, my Fulufjället National Park leaflet tells me; we were more modest but could have lived off them quite happily. What I'm proudest of is discovering the rarest, the sensational cloudberry (hjortron)- so called because of its imitation of a cumulus, not because of the altitude at which it's found - the piquant taste of which when it bursts in the mouth no jam, with its added sweetness, can convey.

I read that cloudberries are most likely found on Alpine slopes in boggy areas, so it made sense to look out on the Fulufjället mountain plateau above Njupeskär waterfall. Which must be revisited in a blogramble, but for now here's the kind of terrain we're considering

and there, either side of several boardwalks were the occasional cloudberries - posed here, of course, because they do not readily reveal themselves in the vegetation.

Their strawberry-like leaves were already autumnal in colour, suggesting the end of the season, but Jamie and I feasted on most of what we found before taking back a handful each to the other two who'd gone ahead back down the cliff.

The more cultivated but still lovely terrain around Lake Siljan, further south-east, yields its fruits, too. There are wild raspberries

though the bushes of the other berries tend to belong to the owners of the attractive red-painted wooden houses in the villages on the shores. One such had a notice with an arrow, 'please help yourselves', alongside it. So Sophie (pictured with the sign behind her), J and I did

and gathered plenty of redcurrants

to go with Sophie's mother Inger's sublime baking.

Could we have had a more delightful traditional time in the little house by the lake? For starters, Inger had decked herself out in Swedish national costume to welcome us fresh from the campovan driven by Gillis, the adorable man Sophie has always called on her blog MNL (Mother's New Lover) followed by MNH (Mother's New Husband). Inger is in her early 80s and Gillis is 87, can you believe.

He was a forester, a hunter and a pilot, decided at 80 to give up shooting and flying before he killed someone but still knows a friend who can supply an elk. Which is why we had elk balls (as in meat balls, not testicles, I hasten to add) with breakfast

as well as elk tongue - thanks, Gillis, for pointing out the tip  - elk liver and elk kidneys.

We didn't see a real life specimen but Gillis was happy to pose alongside a stuffed one in the Naturum at the Siljansnäs Nature Reserve.

Inger is about to explode with mirth, as she did when we played her the incomparable Florence Foster Jenkins as the Queen of the Night. Gillis sat straight-faced, hearing nothing amiss. Nature is his element; I only wish we'd gone on a forest walk with him so that he could have pointed out his huge knowledge. Here he is, followed by his stepdaughter, on the jetty at the bottom of the garden.

I love it that, though officially belonging to the house, the little beach is accessible to all under the Swedish Rights of Access. Rambler-persecuting Jeremy Clarksons wouldn't have a leg to stand on here. Houses rarely have fences around them; the communal spirit remains strong, for better mostly and also for worse (read one man's account of the ambiguous social legacy in Andrew Brown's Fishing in Utopia).  And certainly in Dalarna you can park anywhere and for free. My kind of country.

Can I detain you with one more ritual before we leave Leksand? I loved the national costume, the elkmeat, the Schnappslieder (to which traditional specimens I could only retort with the Iolanthe Nightmare Song). I hated more than any food I've ever tasted - and remember I love Palermitan spleen in a bun plus other offal - the seasonal delicacy of fermented Baltic herring, the infamous surströmming.

This can is a stink bomb waiting to be released. Which it can't be until around 15 August every year, and then not in public unless you've hired a restaurant or a railway carriage specially for the purpose. Why is this? I read that the herring are caught in April or May just before they begin to spawn. 'The fermentation starts from a lactic acid enzyme in the spine of the fish, and so the fermentation is by autolysis; together with bacteria, pungent smelling acids are formed in the fish such as proponic, butyric and acetic acids. Hydrogen sulphide [for God's sake!] is also produced'. At the end of the 1940s a Swedish royal decree prevented improperly fermented fish being sold. That's no longer law, but the trade still relies on the mid-August release date.

The family told us that the smell about to be unleashed in the picture was much milder than usual. But when the horror was served, I had to hold my breath so as not to gag on the ammonial stench. I did eat one - texture as vile as taste - and then had to endure the smell in my nostrils all night.

No such monstrosities were inflected on us down in gentle Lacock, where the beloved hosts of the best outdoor birthday party ever welcomed us back for a long weekend of walking and eating. Here, along with beans, courgettes and sensational baby corn on the cob, which you eat husks and all, were blackcurrants (thank you for the nudge below, Deborah) from the garden

and the sweetest of plums.

You've seen the hedge sculptures and the garden rooms before if you've been visiting for long, but in addition to an inedible giant pear by Deborah

and a fruit cornucopia of a hairdo

let me indulge fresh angles on the ascendable tower

and the earth mother, who waxes in strength of legs

and curvaceousness

We could have been quite content with the treasures on our doorstep and bracing local walks up to the ridge and back, but I'm mighty grateful Deborah and Andrew took us to the stunning garden at Iford, designed by Italophile Harold Peto who bought the house and grounds in 1899.

The assembly of Roman and Renaissance sculptures adorning pastiche historical structures, the beautiful integration of these with serene planting, seemed familiar - and then I read that Peto also designed one of the most beautifully located gardens I've ever seen, the island idyll of Ilnacullin in Ireland's Bantry Bay, visited on a day I'll not forget. This was almost as ravishing. Thus Peto in The Boke of Iford: 'Old buildings or fragments of masonry carry one's mind back to the past in a way that a garden of flowers only cannot do. Gardens that are too stony are equally unsatisfactory; it is the combination of the two, in just proportion, which is the most satisfying'.

The setting is daring, on a steep slope down to the house and the River Frome beneath. I'd better admit the serendipitous concatenation of events which led us to have the garden to ourselves, not knowing for a while the reason why. The narrow road down to the house and car park was blocked by a broken-down car so Andrew parked at the top and we walked along the coach lane, entering the terrace from above. When A went down to see about paying,  he found that the garden was officially closed on Fridays. Well, we didn't linger much longer but we'd already enjoyed the whopping great mulberries

and one fig each from the tree so aptly planted alongside the beautiful cloister where every summer operas are performed.

Much better, I reckoned, to enjoy it in tranquillity, with a fig to heighten the pleasure.

This little miracle of nature, though, found by the side of an upper pond, is definitely not for eating. Please note a great sculptor's fingers.

Finally we did get to the bottom of the valley, with the lovely old bridge over the Frome surmounted by the statue of Britannia Peto placed there, beneath which two gilded youths disputed as if, Deborah thought, in an advertisement for the romance of Oxbridge. You're fortunate that for that and the subsequent early evening whizz around Bradford-on-Avon the camera battery was flat. But this isn't the last you'll hear of BoA. We must return at the first possible opportunity and see again whether it would, as I impulsively thought gazing enviously on a Georgian weavers' terrace high above the Avon, be the perfect place to live.