Erupting mushrooms lift driveway

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/england/berkshire/7699964.stm

Version 0 of 1.

A couple were left baffled when their driveway started to erupt only to find it was caused by a crop of mushrooms.

David and Carolyn Phillips of Reading, Berkshire, said they could not believe their eyes when the tarmac outside their home started lifting last week.

They thought the hump must have been caused by a tree root but when they called in an expert he was baffled.

It was only when Mr Phillips decided to cut away the top of the lump that he found the crop of mushrooms.

He said: "We noticed a hump starting to appear in our tarmac driveway.

"Over the course of the following few days it started to grow into a sort of mini eruption." None of the people we had contacted could believe that the eruption on the driveway could be caused by mushrooms David Phillips

The concerned pair contacted a local tree surgeon but he concluded it must be some sort of ground shifting, possibly a collapsed drain.

But when the council and water board could not find the root of the problem the couple were told as it was on their land they would have to investigate it themselves.

"We decided to take the potential risk of having our whole driveway dug up and break open the area of lifted tarmac expecting the worst," Mr Phillips added.

"Instead out popped a clump of mushrooms."

The tarmac driveway had been constructed about 20 years ago and there was no indication that anything may have been growing underneath, Mr Phillips added.

"None of the people we had contacted could believe that the eruption on the driveway could be caused by mushrooms.

"We can hardly believe it either."