Cliffs in South Western Portugal

Whilst visiting the bottom left hand corner of Europe for my nephew's wedding, we stayed in Salema where the wedding took place. I was taken with the cliffs there which my cousin authoritatively assured me were ferruginous limestone - I could not possibly disagree!  We also travelled the short distance to Cabo São Vicente which is where all of the shots from the top of the cliffs were taken

Return to an English summer

Having been in the arid Algarve for 10 days, we returned to find that summer is well under way in our garden. The flowers in bloom have moved on and the pollinators are out in force.  Two bees and a hoverfly (I think), our first rose in flower and the beauty in decay of an iris which peaked in our absence.

Fungi

I visited Brandon Woods today in search of fungi. As in most years they were plentiful, though not as prolific as last year.  I also searched in vain for any Fly Agaric which I saw last year.  The Fly Agaric is not that rare, but it is one fungus which I could have identified positively.  No doubt more knowledgeable friends will sort out some ids for me.  The only one that I can identify positively is the stag's horn fungus in the last but one shot.  In the final shot I had spotted the slug gorging on mycelium, but I didn't see the tiny snail until I looked at the images at home.

First, two views of the same colony on rotting timber:

 

 on the forest floor:

This (on a well rotted tree stump) had a cap which is half the size of my little finger nail

 

 On the floor:

 

Tree-stump colony:

 

 The next 3 images were on the rotting end of a sawn off tree.  The Stag's horn may be seen in the first image to give some idea of scale: