Monk Coniston Tree Walk

Today was the first of five shadow training walks with the national park as part of the training to become a volunteer guided walk leader. A lovely 6 mile circular, graded moderately difficult,  from Coniston through the grounds of Monk Coniston to Tarn Hows and back via Tom Ghyll. Monk Coniston contains an excellent collection of exotic trees planed in the 1830s, 40s and 50s including giant sequoia, world's largest tree type, and coastal redwood, world's tallest tree type. Both of the aforementioned trees were very difficult to capture due to their size and height so instead I settled on a blip of the light coming through the delicate leaves of one of the lovely Japanese maple trees (acer). The group were very nice and there was plenty of conversation during the five hour walk despite the fact that English was not everyone's native language. We had an English lady fluent in German, a German couple and a French couple both fluent in English and a Swedish couple fluent in English and French!