It was another cold and frosty start to the day today, an overnight frost left the garden covered in a white hue and the leaves on the bushes glistening in the early morning sunlight. 

After the dog walk, breakfast and with a good weather forecast predicted for the rest of the day, I packed the car, dogs and all and we headed up the A1 to the Thorpe Perrow Arboretum for the day.  We had an uneventful drive up the A1 motorway, the journey from home takes just under one hour and is a pleasant drive, the market town of Bedale always looks nice but especially at this time of year with the daffodils bringing a splash of colour. The Arboretum is just a five minute drive from Bedale, we arrived just before eleven o’clock. There was just a handful of cars in the car park when we arrived so parking was and never is an issue. I took Meg and Gracie for a short walk around the fringe of the car park to burn off some of their excess energy before we headed over to the visitors centre and entrance to the Arboretum. 

After leaving the visitors centre we turned right and followed the path alongside of the stream, Snowdrops formed huge swathes on the grass under the trees, there are well over twenty different varieties of Snowdrops in the Arboretum, I always think that it is nice reminder that Spring isn’t too far away when the Snowdrops are in full flower. As well as the Snowdrops, there were huge areas of orange Crocus planted on the verges adding additional colour to the surrounding woodland. Complementing the Crocus and Snowdrops were the Daffodils, the miniature ones in full flower the taller ones will be flowering in the next week or so. Walking past the pet cemetery on the left we continued along the path keeping the stream on our right hand side, this opens up into a small lake in front of the Estate house which is set back on the far side of the lake, the view across to the house is always picturesque, the beautiful manicured lawns and borders always worth a photograph. After a short break admiring the view we continued our walk alongside the lake, passing Kate’s island on the right and continued through the Milbank Pinetum to the Bird of Prey Centre. With having Meg and Gracie with us today we continued our walk along the ‘Red Oak Avenue’ following the boundary fence to the huge Catherine Parr Oak which was looking absolutely resplendent in the late morning sunshine, here we stopped for some more photographs before we continued our walk around the smaller lake, crossing the ‘Broad Walk’ to the Acorn Sculpture, another photo stop before continuing our walk across the meadow to pick up ‘Fern Avenue’ leading into ‘Main Avenue’ and arriving at the Monument, there were several young families sat around enjoying the view and having a picnic so we continued our walk following the boundary fence and over the wooden footbridge, and back to the visitors centre. There were many people and families sat in the sunshine, picnicking and eating lunch in the sunshine, we joined them for our brunch, it was hard to believe that we were able to sit outside in sunshine eating our brunch when this time last year the county was covered in a blanket of snow. I wonder if and when we will have our winter this year?