Halloween #2

When I visited the gardens at Thorp Perrow, I couldn't avoid parts of the 'Halloween Trail', which I suppose is aimed at youngsters but certainly spooked this oldie! I nearly jumped out of my skin when I turned a corner to be greeted by the above piratical lot and my movement triggered a very loud, taped rendering of 'What shall we do with a drunken sailor?' 👀

I was less bothered by this slender being enjoying a bath. She seems to have pinched my shower cap! 😂

I didn't stop for a 'Psychic Reading'... No thank you! 

Apparently the estate only has a skeleton staff of gardeners. No wonder, when the trees harbour scary beings like the one below! 

The Bog Garden was inhabited by this toothsome hulk (!), making no bones about everything. It seemed he'd scared a couple of visitors so much that they landed headfirst in the bog! I made sure I didn't end up the same way, making a rapid exit to a less terror-filled part of the gardens! 

It's a good job I'm 70+ and not just 7. The displays might have scarred me for life. 

Halloween #1

The shops are full of Halloween tat: masks, ghosts, skeletons, witches' hats, fake spider webs and so on - not to forget, of course, pumpkins (which we never normally see in our stores). When I was a child it was not 'a thing' but over the years we seem to have borrowed from the US and imported a lot of the drama. I'm not sure it's a good thing, given the amount of evil there is in the world as it is, but most people would argue it's 'just a bit of fun'. 

I didn't need to buy any props. I found enough to scare me out on my walk!  ;)

And here's the same photo that I showed earlier, taken in Hirst Woods, but given a radically different colour palette. Spooky or what? 

Thorp Perrow's water features

The gardens at Thorp Perrow have a couple of lakes, ponds and a stream running through. On a very drizzly, almost misty, day, it was interesting how the light rendered the water differently in different places, depending on the tree cover and adjacent colours. So... four images, four distinctive and diverse representations. 

Thorp Perrow Hall (above) is not open to the public. It was built in the early 18th century and remodelled in the 1800s. The gardens and arboretum were the creation of Colonel Sir Leonard Ropner (1895-1977) and still belong to his family, who I assume live in the Hall. 

Under the trees

There are paths at Thorp Perrow but you don't have to stick to them and are quite at liberty to meander wherever you like through the trees. That means that you can get right under the branches. Sometimes the best views of the colours and patterns of the leaf canopy come from looking 'through' and 'up', as I've sought to show in these images. 

The splendour of maples

Part of the gardens at Thorp Perrow are given over to ornamental maples (acers) and of course they look wonderful at this time of year. There is a magnificent avenue of them, aligned on Thorp Perrow Hall at one end and the gazebo memorial to Sir Leonard Ropner, the arboretum's creator, at the other.

The stone columns of the gazebo nicely framed another small tree: 

Elsewhere, the cascades of leaves in different tones and hues reminded me of a tapestry.

Autumn leaf studies

Thorp Perrow, being an arboretum, of course means it's all about the foliage. Native and non-native trees and shrubs have a huge variety of leaf forms and, at this time of year, colour too. Rather than taking lots of 'general views' of the gardens, I found myself wanting to focus on the details and the wonderful mix of shape and hue. So much to enjoy...

 

Thorp Perrow Arboretum

I planned to visit Thorp Perrow Arboretum, near Bedale, during the autumn, as the colour there is usually magnificent. I went last year in November, a little too late for most of the acers, many of which had shed their leaves by then. So I planned an earlier date this year. Sadly, the weather on my chosen day was dreary, with constant drizzle interspersed with heavier showers. Not what was forecast! The overcast skies, however, do cut down the glare so that it's arguable that the colours actually look better and more saturated. The damp was a bit energy-sapping, I have to admit. I was saturated too! I retired to the café after a while, to dry out with coffee and cake, so that perked me up again.

There are few places locally with the range of colour that Thorp Perrow offers. The trees are a mix of native and exotic, collected by the owners of Thorp Perrow Hall since the 1800s and developed into an arboretum by Sir Leonard Ropner from 1931. It is now considered to be one of the UK's finest arboretums. 

The several long avenues of native trees had not really started to turn colour, though there was a carpet of dead leaves underfoot. 

Not many flowers make it through to this time of year - and Thorp Perrow isn't big on flowers anyway, being an arboretum rather than 'a garden' - but patches of autumn flowering cyclamen had been naturalised around some of the trees. They look such a delicate plant but they are surprisingly hardy.

I can go a bit giddy on taking photos in these surroundings, so I'll be showing you more over the coming days! Feel free to scroll past...  

Gratitude

Heavy rain in the morning and a forecast of high winds in the afternoon seemed to presage a day indoors. In the event, the skies cleared and there was a super bright, sunny spell early afternoon, which made me abandon the women's football match I'd been watching on TV and hurry out for a walk. The skies were such a clear blue and the sunshine made the autumn leaves glow. So much beauty in our ordinary places... I spent the walk in a profound state of gratitude for being right here, right now.  

On arriving at the Victoria Road bridge over the canal, my gratitude took a bit of a tumble... It seems that Northern Gas Networks, in their wisdom, have scheduled gas works on the canal towpath towards Shipley, starting the very same day that the towpath closure begins in the opposite direction from Hirst Lock. Typical! So it looks like all walks along the canal, apart from the short stretch from Saltaire's centre to the lock, will be out of bounds for a while. Ho hum. 

Never mind. It will just encourage me to explore some of the lesser trodden paths locally, like I did during the Covid lockdown.  

Notes from an autumn walk

The weather has been changeable and unpredictable - dull, damp and dismal one day followed by bright, warm sunshine the next. It's playing havoc with my inner thermostat and I never know what to wear! On the bright days it seems criminal to stay in so, even if I have things that must be done, I try to have a short local walk. 

I found out that my favourite route - along the canal towpath to Dowley Gap and then back along the riverbank - is to be closed from now until the end of the year to allow them to upgrade and resurface the towpath (as they have already done on the section from Shipley to Saltaire). The riverbank has to be closed too, because there is no access at the far end if the towpath is closed. That means I shall have to find alternative walking routes - and it seemed to require a farewell walk before the closure. 

In the end I didn't take any photos along most of the route, but the (newly elongated and smoothed) weir was in full flow and so I stopped to look at that. (The alteration is supposed to allow fish to travel upriver more easily.) Then I stopped to admire the autumn colours on the nature reserve and in Roberts Park. Every time I take a local walk, I'm glad to live here. 

One glorious tree

We have a newish vicar at my church, so we held an 'away-day' at St John's church halls in nearby Baildon, in order to do some praying and planning together as a church family seeking to serve our community. It was a lovely autumnal day, a bit too nice to be inside really. I contented myself with a stroll around the small churchyard during the lunch break. 

There was one rather lovely tree, making quite a statement in its autumn finery. 

The view over the rear wall of the churchyard is rather wonderful too.