I was thinking just where I could go to take pictures with my new Nikon 105 Macro lens that I had been lucky enough to get for Christmas.  I visited the churchyard of St. Clement's church as it's just five minutes from where we live and discovered many things that made for a lot of fun while trying to work out how the lens works at its best.  One thing is for certain though, it's all about trying many different settings on the camera to see what works best and not to worry too much about all the mistakes you make along the way.  This of course would have been so much harder before digital cameras came along and allowed us to check our pictures immediately.  The trick is to learn from those mistakes and then remember next time just what worked, something that as you use your camera more and more gets easier.

The weather forecast was for a heavy frost, something that could make for interesting pictures and I thought hard just where I would like to visit to make the most of the conditions.

I live on the East Kent coast in the lovely town of Sandwich, a really interesting medieval town that’s always worth a walk around.  Living so close to the sea we don’t often get a heavy frost so when you do it's well worth wrapping up warm and getting out and enjoying these conditions.  I’m not very good at getting up early and making the most of the special light that often happens just after sunrise but, in February the sunrise is quite late so no excuse to miss it this time.

East Blean is a wood I have been visiting for several years now and it’s easy for me to look back on pictures from previous years and know exactly when to make visits and be fairly confident of seeing the spring flowers at their best. I also know the woods fairly well by now so I know exactly the best places to go too.

Every year at bluebell time there is one place that is always on our must visit list and that is Kings Wood. It’s a large area of woodland close to Ashford and the woods are so large at 1500 acres that many animals such as deer, badgers and foxes can live without too much disturbance from visitors. There is also a population of adders and slow worms living in a secluded spot that we have visited in the past. The woods are said to have been a hunting ground of King Henry VIII.

Although I love to walk in my local woods I decided it was time I went to find other places to find bluebells and I had heard that the displays of bluebells at Ashridge Forest in Hertfordshire are well worth seeing. I organised a trip so I could be close and didn’t have too far to travel in the morning. I arrived at the main car park at the visitor centre on the estate which is looked after by the National Trust at around 9am and got talking to some regular visitors in the car park who directed me to a wood near Ringshall as being the best place to see the bluebells. I always find local knowledge by far the best way of finding out about a place and dog walkers are always worth asking.

In early May there is an incredible display of thousands of Green-Winged Orchids at Marden Meadows, which is situated near to Staplehurst, so it’s always worth a trip to this nature reserve looked after by the Kent Wildlife Trust.  One of the meadows is a good example of an unimproved hay meadow, which means it has never been fertilised and so plants that like these poor conditions grow very well.  The two adjacent fields have been purchased by Kent Wildlife Trust, who by spreading the hay and seeds from the unimproved meadow, hope to restore it to how it would have been in the past.

I love early May when everything is coming into growth and there is so much hope that this year’s weather will be better than last year's. Today’s day out was full of many highlights the first one stopping at Park Gate Down, my favourite orchid meadow, to have a quick look around and see if the first of the Monkey Orchids were in flower. I know of a very sheltered area where they always seem to flower earlier and sure enough the first ones were just showing. Monkey Orchids are unusual in that the flowers open from the top and they really do look like monkeys complete with their tails and smiling faces. Monkey Orchids only grow on a handful of sites in this country and it’s always a special moment when you see them growing and flowering again on this site.

I had so enjoyed our visit to Bonsai Bank just a few days earlier that I was keen to return as soon as I could as I knew the Lady Orchids would be getting better by the day. Taking the opportunity of some good weather I returned just 4 days later to see what else I might find and of course I wasn’t disappointed in the least. As soon as I entered the Bonsai Bank area I saw some lovely little Green Hairstreaks which are very strange when you see them fly as you wonder why you are seeing such a brown colour. As far as I’m aware they always sit with their wings closed so you never see the brown colouring. They are another tiny butterfly with just a 2.5cm wingspan and they can be hard to spot when sitting on a shrub with its bright new spring foliage.

We are lucky to live near to Stodmarsh National Nature Reserve, a very large area of reed beds to the east of Canterbury where there are certain birds you just know you will see such as Marsh Harriers and as ever we weren't disappointed. There is a very nice walk around the whole reserve and we had planned to do a circular one across the reed beds as far as Grove Ferry and back along the river to where we had parked.  The footpaths however were really flooded and guess who had left their boots in the other car?