Not the King's Oak

This oak sits outside the entrance to Boscobel Hall, on the Shropshire/Staffordshire border.  It is on Monarch's Way, which marks the escape route of King Charles II after his defeat at the battle of Worcester in 1651.  The route is more than 651 miles long and this is it's most northerly point.  It finally ends on the south coast near Brighton.

In the grounds of the Hall lies the King's Oak, which it is said the King hid on from the chasing Army.  I think they are pretty certain that the tree was an off shoot of the original he would have hid in.  Even that one has seen better days and a smaller oak, propagated from that tree, stands in wait for the day when the elder tree falls.

I was tempted to turn this into a mono, as it seems to offer itself as a minimalist landscape for the theme of mono Monday, but I resisted.  There have been way to many mono images in my journal of late (something to do with the grey weather!).