Wild boar in the woods!

Today we saw a group of 6-8 wild boar in the woods! We'd gone up to have a wander around and do a few jobs, such as making a new mallet from a single piece of birch:

As we were walking to the car, parked in the wayleave, we heard the sounds of an animal moving in the woodland on the other side, but thought nothing of it, as there are plenty of pheasants, squirrels, etc. which can make quite a bit of noise...

We got in the car and set off, when Tracy shouted to stop. Between 6 and 8 boar were only were only about 10m from the car! As we were inside the car, they weren't immediately scared of of us, but were clearly on the move, so we hurriedly got Tracy's camera out and then wound down the window and snapped some pictures. As soon as the window was down though, they started to move off, so we only had a few seconds. They were behind the trees, so the autofocus didn't do a great job, but I've cropped and enhanced the pictures a bit so you can make out the boar in them:

I jumped out of the car and ran along the wayleave with the SLR to try and get more pictures, but the pigs were too fast...

Anyway, the rest of our visit was uneventful, everything is just very wet!

Yes - that's water coming up out of a hole in the last one - this happens quite a bit in the woods, with water uphill taking an underground route for a short distance before resurfacing further down.

Mike