Hello!

I’m just going to ignore the piles of photos still waiting to be sorted and edited, and post some photos of yesterday!

It’s been raining a lot here, but we were fed up of being inside the flat the whole weekend, and we decided to go out anyway. We drove to Thetford Forest and visited Grimes Graves. These are 5000 year old flint mines! It’s very impressive, especially if you realize what it would have been like to be mining 5000 year ago… They used antlers to get the flint out! They needed flint for making tools like axes etc. To get to the flint, they dug a hole in the chalk upper layer and then made small tunnels from which they mined the flint. There are more than 400 of those mines in a small area! They are filled up now but you can still see the edges and dips. It makes a very impressive landscape. They opened up one of them for visitors.

These photos are taken inside the mine. In the first one you can see one of the tunnels, now supported with wood. In the second photo you can see the middle of the mine from where the tunnels start. It might look like those are big tunnels, but if you look at the third photo you can see how low they are! It made me a big claustrophobic to think what it would have been like to work in there all day…

Here’s a photo of what the landscape looks like outside. Paul is standing in one of the filled up mines, and around him you can see many more of dips – mines. It’s incredible to see!

We walked around for a while, and I had fun with my compact camera taking macro photos. There were lots of wildflowers, insects and other critters around. Unfortunately it was raining and a bit dark so it was hard to get sharp photos, but some worked out well anyway 🙂

The rain also has its good sides, I found those berries with raindrops on them! I love the reflections in the drops, and in the second photo I was trying to get this Escher effect 🙂

The site was closing at 6, so we drove further into the forest and went for a walk near the Little Ouse river (they same one I visited with Patama last year, see this post – bit sunnier then!) We saw a big group of scouts canoeing/kayaking down the river. The picture on the right is the village shop/post office in the tiny village of Santon Downham. Also to show you what flint is used for nowadays: houses!

It was nice to walk through the forest in the rain, and get some fresh air!

More raindrops! I wish I had brought a small tripod, these photos could be a lot better if they were really sharp.

That’s all! It was great to spend some hours outside, even if it was in the rain. Actually I quite liked the forest in the rain, and all the photo opportunities it brought 🙂