Our breakfast at IHOP didn’t materialise, mainly because we didn’t pass an IHOP en route to Ocala National Forest, and we had to content ourselves with sausage sandwiches from the grocery/deli at Salt Springs, eaten in the car. At $1.99 it was value for money, at least.

Juniper Springs, within the forest, was magical. There was a swimming pool cut into the rock. It maintains a constant temperature of 70degrees throughout the year, and only the fact that my bathers were at the bottom of my suitcase stopped me going in.

The swimming pool at Juniper Springs

The pool and the trails had been built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, part of Roosevelt’s New Deal programme. There was millwheel which regulated water in the pool and provided power.

The millwheel

Carolina jasmine growing through the trees

Squirrel

? Indigo

Small fishes and one of the springs

Turtles

Turtles!