Autumn Walking

You might have realised that I love walking.  Sadly at this time of year walking opportunities are fewer due to dark evenings but I have had a couple of lovely walks recently.

A few Saturdays ago I went over to one of my favourite places, Marks Hall Arboretum.  I walked up towards the lake,

and then around on the Millennium walk, along the bottom edge of the lake,

up to the memorial site where I'd heard the autumn colour was especially good.

The memorial site is a memorial to the serviceman who were stationed at Marks Hall during the 2nd world war - the colours in the acers were stunning.

This is acer rubrum 'October Glory'.  And it was living up to its name!

Then I walked back through the woods to the walled garden.

From the walled garden the views over the lake were lovely.

Later that same week my cousin and his wife, who now live in America, came to visit.  They wanted to walk on the Sudbury water meadows and we had a glorious day for a 4.5 mile circular route.

We walked along the river Stour, across the meadows the the Salmon Leap (no salmon in the river nowadays as far as I know!),

with time for a quick selfie

before walking back home along the river.  

Two great walks, hopefully to be repeated again very soon!

Exciting, Challenging and Relaxing - Three Very Different Days.

I've just had 2 weeks off work - I didn't go away but I did do lots of things.

The most exciting thing I did was a 20m tree climb.  Using ropes, knots and karabiners I climbed right into the tree canopy.

The tree was a 30m high, 200yr old sycamore in Marks Hall Arboretum

I'm the circled one, about to go through the canopy!

Once we'd got to the top (there were 6 adults and 2 children in my group, including the curator of Marks Hall), we did a free-fall abseil back down to earth.  This is where you don't put your feet on anything but control the descent through the ropes (picture the SAS climbing down a rope from a helicopter) - it was amazing.

The most challenging thing I did was to make a new deck for in front of my shed.  The old one was made of pallets and was rotting.

The reason I need a deck here is because underneath it is a big hole.  A old brick lined drainage chamber (old cess pit) which dates from when the houses were first built and before they were connected to the main sewer.

It's about 15ft deep and is not what you want to fall into (although it was very useful for chucking the old rotting wood into!).

It was challenging as the normal way of constructing a deck wouldn't work as there wasn't enough solid ground to lay the joists on, but I persevered and adapted as I went along and this is the finished result - it's very solid and looks good too (though I say it myself!).

The most relaxing thing I did was visit Wicken Fen - I'd not been for many years and it was just as lovely as I remembered it.  I took a boat trip along Wicken Lode where we watched dragonflies darting all around.

It was a glorious day and I went for a long walk - ending up at the mere before returning back to the visitor centre.

I also visited Fen Cottage, which is one of the last remaining buildings of the hamlet that once existed by the reserve.

It's constructed of local materials including peat, wood, sedge. reed and clay, all of which would have been harvested from the fen.

It was occupied until 1972 and has been restored pretty much to how it was when the last people lived in it.

The cottage gardens are gorgeous!

It was a lovely, relaxing way to end my fortnight off.

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