Well, it’s a jolly exciting week next week. Monday, should fate allow, sees the 100th edition of the ‘Docus. Plus we take the wraps off our new directory / community-hub “Mendy’s Guide”. A place where you can find links to providers of all kinds of local goods and services.

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Meanwhile, the forecast says we’re expecting a couple of misty mornings this weekend. That’s when the morning view across Chew Valley Lake makes it worth getting up early.

If you see a couple out walking five dogs and a diplodocus this Sunday afternoon, come up and say Hello!

Have a great weekend.

Paul

Barcode – Poem for dogs.

UB40 - A birthday card for a middle-aged pirate

Fastidious – The three old presenters of Top Gear.

Migraine – That corn doesn't belong to you.

Depend - Where the diving boards are.

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If you want a dog walk with a bit of a shiver this Halloween weekend, Cranmore Woods has it all: a lonely tower, a ghost who may have posed for his own statue, and mushrooms that melt away overnight. It even sits beside a school called All Hallows.

Cranmore Tower rises out of the beeches on the hill above Cranmore. It's a 45-metre Italianate folly, built in 1862–64 by architect Thomas Henry Wyatt for John Moore Paget of Cranmore Hall. At 280 metres above sea level, it marks the highest point on the whole Mendip Way. In the Second World War the Home Guard used it as a lookout.

Roman remains and a coin hoard were reportedly found beside it in the 1980s. Then there's its resident. According to Somerset and Bath Paranormal, people report a fleeting male figure inside, thought to be a former tower keeper. Oddly, a small statue in an alcove on the outside wall is said to look just like him. Which came first, nobody can say. The tower is now private and closed, but a public footpath passes close by and it looks suitably spooky through the trees at dusk.

The name of All Hallows, the prep school at Cranmore Hall, is pure coincidence: the school started in Bognor Regis in 1938 and brought the name with it. Still, how many walks pass All Hallows at Halloween?

Mendiplodocus reader John East, a keen photographer since he was 13 and now 79, explored the fungi in Cranmore Woods recently with a Nikon Z8, a 105mm macro lens and a tripod. "I wasn't too disappointed," he says, and his pictures below prove it. Most are focus-stacked, blending 50 to 100 shots into one sharp image. "It sounds simple," he says, "but it isn't!"

His star find is the Shaggy Inkcap, also known as the Lawyer's Wig, and it's the perfect Halloween fungus. It starts as a tall, white, scaly column, then within hours its gills turn pink, then black, and the cap dissolves into an inky liquid. People have even used it to write with. It's the mushroom that writes its own ghost story and then disappears.

Folklore links rings of mushrooms with fairies, witches and even the Devil, who, as regular readers know, gets everywhere on Mendip.

Start from the small, unsigned woodland car park for five or six cars off the lane between Waterlip and Chantry. A track reaches the tower in about 20 minutes, and a three-kilometre dog-friendly circuit makes a good hour out. Expect mud after rain, and it gets dark early now, so set off in good time unless you fancy meeting the keeper.

Keep dogs away from fungi, as many are poisonous, and leave the mushrooms for the next photographer. Do you know which fungi are in John's other pictures below? Hit reply and tell us.

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