Go foraging in Lesnes Abbey Woods

Time certainly goes by quickly, and it's amazing to think it's over a month since your author took up a Saturday invitation to go foraging in Lesnes Abbey Woods with semi-professional forager Monica Wilde of Napiers Remedies. It was an enlightening experience, re-exploring an area of ancient woodland which once surrounded a wealthy Lesnes Abbey, and making use of Monica's considerable expertise to decipher what each plant was and whether or not it was edible.

The woods cover more than 200 acres of hillside and are rich with wildlife and home to just as wide a range of plants as any rural woodland, so they make an excellent ground for the urban forager seeking sustenance from fungi and woodland plants. Only the most blinkered urbanite can have failed to notice that plants have well and truly sprung into life in every little green place in the city, and leaf cover has returned to shade to the floor, but nevertheless, our woodlands remain rich with edible plants such as Chickweed, Alexanders and Common Hogweed, allowing foragers to follow in the footsteps of monks, peasants and neolithic men, in seeking sustenance in the woods.

For more on the woods, see http://www.visitlesnes.co.uk/