We have had Jenny’s grandchildren stopping with us since the weekend which is lovely. Today Jenny, her daughter and our two granddaughters headed off to Leeds for a day girlie shopping, which left me with Jack our 5 year old grandson and his dad, who like me didn’t fancy a day visiting all the girlie shops in the Victoria Quarter. So after breakfast we decided to head up to the Arboretum at Thorpe Perrow, just outside of Bedale. It is just a fifty minute drive from home so not too far away.

The Autumnal colours of the trees as we arrived and parked up in the car park were quite stunning, beautiful golden and yellow coloured leaves glistening in the morning sunlight.

The Arboretum covers an area of 100 acres so there was plenty of space for Jack to have a good run round and burn of some of his endless energy. I had left Meg & Gracie at home today, I think they would appreciate a bit of peace and quiet and be able to have the house to themselves for a few hours.

With it being half term week the Arboretum had set up a really good Halloween trail and quiz amongst the trees. One of our first visits to the Arboretum was about this time last year, then we followed a similar trail which was excellent, hence the revisit today.

We collected our trail map from the visitors centre and headed off for the start of the trail. It was a lovely morning, a bright blue sky and 15C which made for a really pleasant day. On passing the children’s play area we started the quiz, pencil in hand and wrote down the letters which formed part of the quiz as we made our way through the trees. Crossing the bridge over the bog garden were some remarkable characters, including skeletons, witches and Spiders, all very life like and quite scary and these continued for the full length of the trail. By the time we reached the end of the trail some 15 minutes later the letters we had been writing down spelled out a spooky theme, all good stuff and really enjoyed by us all. The trail ended at the Bird and Mammal centre, we arrived at the bird centre just in time for the 11.30am Owl display. After the flying display we headed through the gift shop to the Mammal centre, buying a bag of bird and mammal food as we passed through the shop. On walking across the courtyard we headed for the ducks and goats, after feeding them we headed round the corner to the Shetland sheep, all extremely friendly as they poked their heads through the wire fencing hoping for a handful of food which Jack was eagerly dispensing to them all. After the sheep we headed into the Wallaby enclosure, I was quite surprised as to how inquisitive they were, they sat quite contently as they took some food out of Jacks hands. After the Wallabies we walked over to the meerkats enclosure, they busily went about their business completely oblivious to the visitors walking past their enclosure. As we came out of the Mammal enclosure Jack wanted to do the Halloween trail in reverse, so we followed our earlier footsteps back to the café for a very pleasant late brunch prior to the journey home. After all the fresh air I was partially hoping that Jack would have been tired out and go to sleep when we reached the car for the journey home, alas it wasn’t to be as one of the little prizes he received in his gift bag for completing the Halloween Trail was a quiz book so we spent the whole journey home listening to Jack answering the questions out of his new book.

As a footnote: Jack enjoyed the day so much we had to do it again the following day, this time with his mum, sisters and grandma!