Out to lunch...

... but I'm afraid this isn't our car!

The pub is a well-known one in the Chilterns, in the small village of Fingest. We were first taken out here by my then boss in about 1959: that's more than fifty years ago!. Brakspears is excellent beer, for those who don't know it.

The reason we were in this place was really to have what turned out to be a last look at the autumn colours of the trees. The beech woods of the Chilterns, and their autumn displays, are well known. Nice sunny weather arrived in the early part of Saturday afternoon, and it seemed just right to see what the woods were looking like.

Here is a typical woodland sccene near the village (actually just outside Turville). The colours still have a surprising amount of green about them, but the leaves are rapidly falling.

On the way down from the Chilterns I took this

photograph of the edge of the woods

This is from the road from Christmas Common to Watlington, with the northern part of the Oxfordshire Plain laid out ahead. I thought the layers of colour and texture particularly appealing.

Although there is still quite a bit of sun illuninating the middle ground, the weather is evidently deteriorating. Soon afterwards, winds and heavy rain stripped almost all the leaves from our local trees, and I fear that almost all we see in this picture will have gone by the end of the weekend.