A great year for my favourite fungus

FOR 40 years I have picked forest mushrooms every autumn and winter, but I have never seen the abundance of perfect Boletus edulis, the king of mushrooms, that I encountered this year. I didn’t find them myself.

I was led to them by a remarkable man. Swearing me to secrecy, he took me on a tour of a sparsely populated region of south Munster revealing, at a number of sites, fat, firm boletus in a plenitude I have never previously witnessed.

At first, it was suggested that my wife and I should wear paper bags over our heads so that we wouldn’t see where he was taking us. However, such was the maze of by-roads, lanes and boreens we travelled that, although our eyes were wide open, we wouldn’t have a clue of how to find them again. How our friend, Horst, knew where to stop and climb that certain ditch to enter that certain small field – how he found that field in the first place – seemed little short of magic.