Typical behaviour of a mushroom forager!

So back to the beautiful Fungi I started talking about in yesterday’s post about Mushrooms in Epping Forest
The problem with foraging for mushrooms is that people will not tell you where the good spots are. Why would they? You would then proceed to pick all their mushrooms. It is something that has made me laugh in the past when out foraging: You leave the house at 6am and try to get to the “good spots” before anyone else can make it. You pick mushrooms with a knife so not to disturb the fine mycelium (mushroom roots) underneath the ground.

First you hear them and then after a while you see them. The other mushroom hunter!!! If you choose to speak to each other, you carefully try and eye up each others baskets to see how the other has done. Inquiries about where they have found this amazing mushroom or that one get waved off by an intentionally imprecise wave of their arm. Haha! It is good fun. ?

So I recommend it and I promise I will be good and will tell you my secret mushroom spots if you give me a hint and let me know where in the UK (ideally near London) I can find mushrooms of a similar size and flavour of that one in my photograph.