I’d promised myself an autumnal walk in North Cliffe Wood, but it was what I call a ‘weather cancelled’ day. I like my weather to have some personality: warm sunshine, blue skies and fluffball clouds all lovely of course, but I’m happy too with playful breezes, wild winds, and even heavy-duty rain, if I’m suitably dressed. But today, nothing. Everywhere - at least from the window of my flat - is a still, silent, army-blanket grey.

Feeling somewhat grumpy, I decide to go anyway, as this blog is promised. I note the irony of writing about the joys of sensory connection with nature when, I mutter to myself, there’s nothing happening to be joyous about… maybe I’ll stay in and do the hoovering instead. 

But the moment I step off the roadside and into the first ‘long straight’ of the pathway through the wood, everything changes. Actually, nothing has changed in terms of the cancelled weather, but with my first deep breath in I am assailed by that wonderful autumn woodland aroma. Much is made of ‘petrichor’: the smell of rain after a dry period, but the key component of that - the bacterium geosmin - is detectable any time, and especially so when there is decaying vegetation. Some people aren’t keen on that particular earthy, musty smell, but others - including me - love it. Smell and taste are intimately connected of course, and when I find a smell I like, I often feel as if I want to drink it in. Smasting, I call it.

So that’s what I do: walk further into the wood and stand, resting my back against one of the large oak trees just off the pathway. I close my eyes and take another deep breath, this time through my mouth. And another… and another. Smasting. I lick my lips, suck my teeth: mouthfuls of Autumn. I feel my grumpiness fade away.

Still leaning against the oak, I open my eyes to gaze on the autumn glory everyone appreciates: the changing greens, coppers and bronzes of leaves, bracken, and other vegetation, and the purple glows of heather flowers. My attention to the visual switches to auditory as I notice bird sounds: the plaintive autumnal robin call, a loud-mouthed wren warning me off, and a chit-chattering of something else… siskins! Visual again: I see three in a nearby alder, and realise there are lots more; and a mixed flock of other finches and tits coming through. But I don’t have my binoculars - a deliberate choice - so can’t ID properly and I resist trying to count them. I’m happy simply to be with them - be momentarily part of their flock, be momentarily Bird - as they busy themselves around me, feeding up on seeds and insects.

All quiet again. I wander on, enjoying the amber, topaz, garnet and ruby leaf colours (a woodland jewel box!); enjoying the silence, and even enjoying the greyness glimpsed through sky-reaching branches. Maybe not fifty shades, but outdoors in the natural world even the grey palette has its beauty.

There’s one last smell-and-sight delight before I leave. One classic autumn woodland beauty - a flash of white-spotted bright red, startling in the browns of leaf litter: a fly agaric mushroom. Other fungi are most definitely available - around 15 thousand different UK species apparently, with many appearing at North Cliffe Wood - but today I’m happy to see just this one magical favourite of mine. It’s huge too - almost tea plate sized - and at its best. I have to kneel next to it to take a photo and have a really good sniff, but it’s well worth getting my trousers muddy. Again.