It was a dull and cloudy start to the day this morning, though the daily weather forecast was pretty good, so after breakfast we decided to take Meg and Gracie to the Arboretum at Thorpe Perrow near Bedale. Looking back through my diary, I was surprised to see that our last visit to the arboretum was October last year for the Halloween week.

This morning’s journey took just over one hour, we had a good drive up the A1, the traffic was reasonably light with no holdups, which for a Friday was pretty good.

By the time we arrived at the Arboretum the sun was shining, and it looked as though it was going to be a nice day. We popped into the café for a takeaway coffee before we set of for a walk amongst the woodland. The first thing that struck me as we left the café and crossed the small footbridge over the stream was how much water was flowing beneath us, on most of our visits last year, from what I can remember, the stream was dry for most of the time, I can remember on one of our visits one of our grandchildren running along the dry stream bottom. We followed the stream for a few minutes, stopping to have a word with some of the arboretum staff who were busily cutting back and felling some of the trees along the banks of the stream. It was nice to see huge clumps of Snowdrops coming into flower, I think within about two to three weeks they should be at their best.  We had to stop for a few moments as a group of ducks waddled across the path and eventually into the stream at the side of the path. As we passed Henry’s Island on the right, we rounded the corner where the stream opens up into the main lake, here the views are stunning, several swans were busily swimming on the water, several ducks were bobbing and diving, feeding on the plankton on the bed of the lake. The water was flat calm and the view looking over to Thorpe Perrow Hall looked quite enchanting, especially with the sunshining on the house, the blue sky and the beautiful reflections in the water. I could sit here for ages to admire the view. After passing over another footbridge we headed through into the Milbank Pinetum, this was where in the 1840’s and 1850’s Lady Augusta Milbank the then owner, received seeds from many parts of the world including North America and raised and cultivated them here in what is now the arboretum.

We continued our walk through the Pinetum till we reached the Bird of Prey and Mammal Centre where we turned left onto Beach Avenue. On reaching the Jubilee Oak planted to commemorate the Jubilee of King George V in 1935, we veered off to the right to the Catherine Parr Oak, this is a beautiful ‘veteran’ tree, with a girth measuring just over six metres, it was planted around the year 1534, the same year that Catherine Parr married Baron Latimer of Snape. They lived locally at Snape Castle (which can be seen from the car park) until the Barons death in 1543. Catherine went on to marry King Henry V111, his final wife, who survived him. The tree is currently on a veteran tree programme which allows for specific work to be carried out to it over a twelve year period. Hopefully this work should enable it to naturally regenerate and enable it to live for another 500 years. After leaving this veteran Oak, we continued our walk alongside the small pond and made our way to ‘the Bothy’ from where we continued our walk along ‘Carolyn’s walk’ to the monument, ‘Cypress Avenue’ which runs parallel to ‘Carolyn’s walk’ was all fenced today, it looked as though they may have been carrying out some housekeeping in that area. After stopping at the monument for a few moments to admire the view down ‘the Main Avenue’ and all the emerging Snowdrops and Daffodil shoots we made our way over the stream and back to the visitors centre and café for a very enjoyable sausage and egg sandwich and cup of tea, Meg & Gracie are quite partial to a sausage sandwich too. A return visit is planned in a couple of weeks by which time the Snowdrops should be in full flower and from previous visits know that it should be quite a spectacle.