Framedlight

The second day of our weekend in Surrey, Alan got up early and went to his cycle event. I took the van just down the road from where we were staying to Holmwood Common, an area of National Trust woodland near Dorking. I have found this website from the Woodland Trust very useful for locating woods near you  http://visitwoods.org.uk/en/visit-woods/Pages/get-involved.aspx#.VswCqsdrGOv After lunch I drove to the rather old and tired Herne Hill Velodrome, where the event was finishing . Unfortunately the traffic was terrible and I missed Alan doing his celebratory circuit of the stadium. The first two photos in this series are focus stacked images. When the sun got out I managed to get some quite nice effects with the sun filtering through the leaves.

Early in May we went down to Surrey for the weekend as Alan was riding in a cycle event based near Dorking. We stopped at a large campsite, Henfold Lakes and were pleased to find that the woods behind the campsite were full of bluebells. And really blue bluebells, more intense than the more purple ones  seen near home. The Saturday afternoon we walked in the woods and as the sun was going down I went to an area by the campsite entrance that was full of wild garlic, very beautiful.

I felt I had to post something from a more recent outing than South America. On Bank Holiday Monday we went to visit my son Hugh and his girl friend in Surrey. They had very kindly organised a picnic excursion to the Winkworth Arboretum, a piece of land owned by the National Trust. Surrey has an amazing number of National Trust houses and gardens. There was a lake, rhododendrons  and bluebell woods as well as the meadow where we ate. Here are a few of the "pictures what I took". The lake had some ducklings on it who were all clustered on a tree stump. Finally some more general views of our picnic spot Hugh and Lizzie in the boat house