We poodled down from Hay-on-Wye to the
Westonbirt Arboretum, arriving in time for an early lunch in the visitors’ centre cafe. Then we set out on the “Autumn trail” (backwards, as we started from the cafe end, not the main entrance), which is a mile long. The map says “allow 1–1.5hrs”; that’s because you will keep stopping to commune with so many marvellous trees. Add yes, we took an hour to walk a mile.
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| the weather is considerably better than yesterday’s storm |
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| gorgeous autumn colours |
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unretouched photos taken from roughly the same spot with two different cameras:
left, a Canon EOS 20D, right, a Samsung Galaxy S7 |
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| I love the fine tracery that the branches make |
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| a beautiful pairing of colours and shapes |
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| a magnificent specimen; it is hard to get a scale, but the point where the trunk narrows and the first branch comes outwards the camera is over 6 feet high, and something weird is happening there ... |
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| ... inosculation |
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| plane tree weirdness: this isn’t two branches growing up out from the ground; it is a single branch where the left part is growing down into the ground |
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| another weirdly shaped tree |
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| an absolutely magnificent birch |
Highly recommended. There’s a second, longer trail, which we did not tackle, since we were next off to Avebury for a spot of ancient history.
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