This journal entry covers all those pictures from our holiday that never quite fitted into any other album, but would be a shame not to include on the website. As is well known the weather was not doing its best during early September but we are never put off and can always find something to do. I do, however, rather like my camera so if it was raining the kind of stair-rods rain that it often did, my camera stayed safely in the dry of my bag.

We had been looking forward to this day before we came on our holiday: not only had we arranged to meet up with Andrew Leaney and Terry Bottomley for a walk during the day but we had also booked a table at Lucy’s on a Plate in Ambleside that evening for their “Up the Duff” Pudding night. So it was up to Andrew to suggest a walk that would leave us very hungry and in need of all those calories coming our way during the evening.

We had planned to meet Terry at the Old Dungeon Ghyll car park on what looked like another morning where we would see some more rain and indeed the forecast was for some heavy showers once more. Terry told us that he had in fact had a really good night’s sleep despite our doubts that he would have found anywhere dry enough to pitch his tent. None of us after our soaking of the previous day on Red Screes fancied walking up into the clouds once more so our plan today was to do a low-level walk around Great and Little Langdale, doing a circuit around Lingmoor Fell.

At the end of our Lakeland stay we were invited to spend a couple of days with Ann and Roger at Oak Cottage. It’s always a pleasure to stay there, and at last a much needed sunny day was forecast for the Monday so it was arranged that some of us would have a walk together.

It had been a few years since we have visited this amazing garden and we really fancied a day out in some beautiful weather having had some rotten weather during the previous week too. I also wanted somewhere I could really test out my new lens on too. Our recent holiday in the Lake District had been such poor weather I just hadn’t really had the chance to put it through a real test of just what it could do.

I was born and grew up in Canterbury: a relatively small cathedral city that is surrounded by some lovely countryside. Nigel and I have known each other for over 30 years but we didn’t know each other when we were both at the same primary school. The walk we have now done twice this year starts from the back of the school along some of the old footpaths we would have walked along as youngsters, going to places where we probably shouldn’t have been like the old Lime Kiln Quarry. I guess times were very different when as youngsters we probably did do things we probably shouldn’t have, but never really came to any harm.

Now there are many of us that really don’t like zoos and I’m sure a lot of us have memories of visiting zoos and seeing some very unhappy looking animals in the past. There is a zoo, or as it refers to itself a wild animal park, just outside Canterbury called Howletts that is certainly a very different place to the traditional zoo. You often read of zoos who aim to breed endangered animals and then reintroduce the animals into the wild and wonder if they ever succeed. Howletts and its sister park at Port Lympne are such places and do just that. The Aspinall Foundation has successfully reintroduced Western Lowland Gorilla, Black Rhinoceros, Sumatran Rhinoceros and Przewalski’s Horse back into the wild.

I felt it had been far too long since I’d visited the woods but when I looked at my last set of pictures from here it had only been 4 weeks .When its autumn though you have to get out and capture those wonderful colours before the autumn gales strip the leaves off the trees mind you there is nothing like taking yourself back to being a child when kicking all those leaves up.

When we were on a recent visit to Great Dixter on the 21st September we also made a visit to the delightful town of Rye in East Sussex as its only 7 miles from that wonderful garden. We always love to visit this very picturesque town because it like stepping back in time as you walk around the cobbled streets and enjoy looking in the numerous gift shops that all seem to stock different things. There are also plenty art and photo galleries and to give you a chance to relax and decide just what it is you would like to buy there are plenty of coffee shops and tea rooms to relax in too.

We are lucky that living where we do that there are quite a lot of different woods where we can walk although I most often end up at East Blean woods. Instead of walking where we usually do though we decided that a walk in Church Wood which is just outside Canterbury would make a nice change. We know in the past it can be good for autumnal colours too. We really are struggling with the weather being very sunny at all right now which if all those yellows and golds are to really shine out is what is needed.