I managed to get out bright and early this morning. The weather forecast has been appalling for this area for several days now with rain, more rain and thundery showers predicted, we had some rain and thunder yesterday afternoon but not a lot and after some overnight rain which had cleared by this morning it was a reasonable start to the day. We had a wet dog walk earlier mainly due to the vegetation, bracken, ferns and nettles in the woodland being at shoulder length height and walking through the woods along the narrow trails you can soon get wet through. The Yorkshire Dales seem to be suffering at the moment with significant amounts of rainfall over a short period of time which no doubt will lead to flooding over there in the next few days.

I had another hour long meeting in Harrogate mid-morning today so was a good excuse afterwards to pop over to RHS Harlow Carr for brunch and a walk around the lovely gardens.

It was around mid-day as I parked the car in the car park. It was a reasonable morning, a greyish sky with some patches of blue, the sun was managing to break through the clouds for a few moments before disappearing again and the temperature was bordering on 20C and it was dry. I always seem to be fated with either a cloudy white or a dull day on my visit here, but regardless of the weather it is always a nice place to visit, though it would be nice to have wall to wall sunshine at least on some of my visits.  

We popped into Betty’s for a quick coffee before our walk around the gardens. 

After our light refreshment we entered the gardens, down the steps, turned left and followed the path to the early learning centre, the grass and flower beds were looking green and lush with plenty of colour. The QM lake was covered in green weed, much like Selby canal, but the experts all say that it is quite safe to the fish life underneath and the weed is full of nutrients, as a koi keeper I would tend to differ with their logic but that is another matter. 

We stopped for a few moments to admire the borders and planting around the recently restored sunken garden before heading round the corner and continuing along the Streamside walk, past the QM Lake on our right. I always have to stop for a few moments and admire the small wooden floating island which houses a duck box, quite a palatial building. We continued along the Streamside walk noting the increased flow of water in the stream. It looks as though a lot of work has been carried out earlier this year strengthening the banks of the stream and turning it into more of a feature adding some huge boulders along its length. It never ceases to amaze me that on every visit there is always something else to notice which you never saw on your previous visit and it is same with the planting, there is always lots of colours along the borders no matter what time of year you visit. We continued following the stream towards the old bath house, stopping for a few more moments to admire the views over the stream to the huge main borders, they make quite a picture especially at this time of year. On reaching the old bath house we doubled back on ourselves a little by following the other side of the stream before climbing up the slight incline to the Sandstone Rock Garden, again lots of work has been carried out here with lots of additional huge boulders added to enhance this part of the garden. We continued our walk up the slope towards the main path adjacent to the plant centre where we turned right and headed back to the visitors centre and to Bettys Cafeteria for a very pleasant late brunch.