My youngest son was currently home for two weeks leave, so we arranged to meet him and his family at the Thorpe Perrow arboretum, situated on the outskirts of Bedale.

It is just about a one hour’s drive from home to the arboretum and a little shorter for my son so fitted in quite well as a nice place to meet up for a catch up and see our grandchildren for the day.

We don’t usually venture out a great deal over the weekend, preferring mid-week now we are retired as it tends to be less busy, so this made a very pleasant change.

There was a ‘Halloween trail’ set up in the woodlands and having visited for several years now know that it always makes for a good day out and today was no exception.

It was 11.00am when we arrived in the car park, it was quite busy as was to be expected on a nice sunny day and the overflow car park was working nice and smoothly. We popped into the café/visitor’s centre as soon as we arrived and within a few minutes we all together as a family unit. It was a very pleasant morning, we had had some heavy overnight rain which made the ground a little wet, but the sun was shining and with very little wind made for a very pleasant walk. We followed our usual route and headed for the stream, managing to bypass the play area for the time being. The streamside walk was absolutely beautiful, the sun was shining, clusters of purple and white coloured Cyclamen were in full flower on the woodland floor and the trees were in their full autumn glory, the Maples and Acers looked especially colourful as the sunlight picked out the golden/brown/yellow colours of the leaves as they glistened in the dewy morning sunlight. 

We continued our walk alongside the stream, stopping at Henry’s Island to walk over the bridge and admire the sculpture. Passing the pet cemetery on our left we followed the trail alongside the lake to Kates Island, this is a lovely stretch of the walk, the views over the lake to the house are breath-taking as is the sculpture carved into the tree at the side of the footbridge. We stopped for a few moments to watch the crocodile under the bridge, then the skeletons in the boat, surrounded by sharks. I always like the view over the footbridge looking left leading into the ‘Milbank Pinetum’. Today the stream was covered in lilies but the shrubbery on either side of the stream was a lovely colour of reds, yellow and gold and looked especially colourful in the morning sunlight. From here we followed the ‘Halloween trail’ into the woodland. I have to say we saw some amazing and colourful characters and skeletons as we made our way to the ‘Mammal Centre’.

We had a pleasant walk around the ‘Bird of Prey Centre’ before heading over to one of the ‘pop up cafes’ for brunch, after which we continued our walk along the ‘Halloween Trail’ back to the children’s play area. From here it is just a short walk back to the café and visitors centre were, although the café was operating a takeaway service, we enjoyed a very nice cup of tea and cake, sat outside under one of the huge canvas shelters. We enjoyed a lovely day with the family and grandchildren, very special times.

The Halloween Trail runs from the 8th October to 1st November 2022.