After all the Christmas and New Year festivities, today was the first opportunity I had to get out with the camera. I had been out earlier this morning with Meg & Gracie for a cold and muddy walk on Brayton Barff, after breakfast we decided to pop up to The Arboretum at Thorpe Perrow, Bedale, for a bit of a break from the house and stretch our legs, so to speak.

It was a pleasant fifty-minute drive up the A1 this morning, the traffic was busy around the Leeds and York junctions but once past the Wetherby turn off the traffic eased off considerably. It looked like being a nice day, the sun was trying to break through the menacing dark rain clouds, I think the strengthening westerly wind kept the rain away fortunately.

It was about 11.15am as I drove into the car park, there was only a small handful of cars parked so there was plenty of parking places, though that is never a problem here. We unloaded the dogs out of the car, put our winter clothing on, wellies and hats and made our way over to the kiosk, unfortunately with the weather being quite wild and wet of late there was a note on the kiosk window saying the tearoom would be closed today due to the weather, disaster for me so no cup of tea or lemon drizzle cake! oh well. We continued our walk through the garden, past the front of the cafeteria and across the stream, there was plenty of water flowing this morning, on our last visit here last October the stream was dry. After crossing the foot bridge, we headed towards the children’s play area and joined the ‘Water steps footpath’ which follows the stream, passing Henry’s island on the right of us. We sat for a few moments to admire the low morning sunlight as it flickered through the trees and glistened on the water in front of us. Continuing our walk along the side of the lake we passed Kate’s Island and stopped to look at the beautifully carved structure in the tree on the waters edge. From here we followed the path to the mammals centre and turned left through the Dell, along Birch Avenue to the beautiful Jubilee Oak where we had another rest for five minutes. With the amount of rain we have had the past few days many of the tracks were quite muddy so after our little rest we decided to head back to the lake to pick up the ‘Annabel’s walk’ through the trees, over the raised walk way through the bog garden to the children’s play area and back to the tea room. It was nice to see lots of emerging bulbs coming through on the woodland floor, in a couple of weeks’ time the snowdrops will be in full bloom so we will have to return then to admire them in all there glory, hopefully it will be a little drier underfoot and the tea room will be open. Although a little muddy underfoot at the moment, it is still always very nice to come for a walk and admire the beautiful trees and wildlife.