Backlit acer trees at Westonbirt Arboretum

I recently contacted Incredibish for advice on the state of the autumnal colour show at Westonbirt Arboretum as I know he is a member and visits quite regularly. Woodpeckers and I were members for many years until we decided to stop paying as we weren’t going there often enough.

He told me to get my skates on if I wanted to see the acers, so I decided to make the effort. You need to book a slot, which I did late last night after renewing my membership. Despite my weariness after being at the market for the last couple of days, I arrived five minutes before the doors opened at 9am on a Sunday, and found a queue ahead of me, but that cleared quickly.

I knew where I wanted to go in the arboretum, which is a huge place, and was pleased to find only a few others joining me there. The acer glade and surrounding ‘drives’, ‘walks and ‘rides’ were still showing brilliantly even though some trees had already dropped all their leaves. That is the advantage of a large arboretum where they have such varied species that some were late in ‘turning’, probably depending on their original climatic locations in the world.

Of course I took many pictures and like Incredibish found that there was an element of frustration with other visitors most of whom were budding photographers too. But most people were very considerate. The ground was very muddy, because of the obvious clay elements in the soil.

By the time I decided to leave I had been there two and half hours and felt very pleased to have experienced the astonishing show of colours, shapes and forms in what was fine sunny weather. But I really noticed my delight in discovering the variety of trees of all types and it showed me that repeated visits will definitely be worthwhile especially when the arboretum returns to its normal visitor numbers. 

So I must thank Incredibish again for encouraging me to get out there as soon as possible. He was absolutely right.

There are a couple of 'Extras' I'll leave up for a short while.