I was up and out quite early this morning with Meg & Gracie and had a good long walk on the Barff for an hour or so, there was no sunrise this morning, but we had a good long walk. It was nice to watch and hear the Buzzard circling above my head, even the Woodpeckers are becoming more active at the moment, hammering on trees and branches in search of food and potential nest sites for the coming months. After breakfast we packed the car and headed up North again, but this time to the arboretum at Thorpe Perrow just outside of Bedale. It is approximately a fifty-minute drive from home.

We arrived at about 10.45am and were greeted with a lovely blue cloudless sky and sunshine, the temperature was 10C which made for a very pleasant day. After exchanging pleasantries with the staff at the entrance kiosk, we followed our usual route alongside the stream, clumps of snowdrops were just beginning to flower and should look lovely in a few weeks’ time for the half term holiday.

It sempt really quiet walking around today, not many people about considering the weather and time of day. I always like to take the dogs over the footbridge onto both ‘Henry’s Island’ and a little further on ‘Kate’s Island’. The tree sculpture adjacent to the footbridge here always amazes me, it creates a little fairy tale with little cottages linked by a staircase all carefully carved into the tree stump, I am sure there must be a story behind it.

The view across the lake looking towards the estate house is always beautiful no matter what time of year and no more so this morning with the sun shining and a lovely blue sky. We continued our walk, stopping on the wooden bridge crossing the lake to look across towards the ‘Catherine Parr Oak’. I like to stop here to take a photograph, the colour of the trees and shrubs reflecting in the water is always a very pleasant sight and with the old tree someway off in the distance makes for a nice picture. We headed towards the ‘Birds of Prey and Mammal Centre’ but as we had the dogs with us we continued our walk along ‘Birch Avenue’ to the ‘Jubilee Oak’.  We followed the trail around the small pond and the ‘Catherine Parr Oak’ and made our way over to ‘Bothy’, from here we continued our walk to the ‘Monument’ stopping for a while to admire the view along the ‘Main Avenue’, in another few weeks’ time the daffodils will be in full flower, and this area will be awash with colour.

From ‘the Monument’ it is just a few minutes’ walk to the café where we sat outside and enjoyed a very pleasant bacon butty and pot of tea. I am already looking forward to my next visit.