A weekend spent in Northern Switzerland staying with our eldest son James and Olivia who live in the city of Winterthur. During our stay we visited the impressive Rhine Falls, Europe's largest water falls.

A couple of days spent in Oxfordshire where I would hope to find some of the rare Chiltern Gentians that grow in this area as well as the magnificent Red Kites that can be seen in the area too.

We couldn’t believe it had been two months since our last walk following the route of the Royal Military Canal, but our busy summer weekends meant that we just hadn’t had the chance to get back to the walks. Today though we were setting off to another area completely new to us, and today we started our walk from the delightful village of Appledore.

A visit to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park with the photograohic workshop company Wild Arena turnd out to be one of the most enjoyable photographic days out this year. The day was memorable too for the very close encounters with some of the animals.

On a very quick trip to drop our youngest son off at Lancaster University we took the opportunity to have a very quick look around the City of Lancaster and then visited Morecambe Bay, somewhere I’d wanted to visit for a while. I always take my camera with me wherever I go but seeing the car was full of all the things our son needed for university there was limited room for any camera equipment and later in the day I really wished I had my tripod with me.

This years Ploughing Match was held at Merton Farm near Canterbury I had never been to one before so was keen to see what kind of pictures I could take Sadly it was very overcast but it was still a very interesting day out
 

The eighth of the Royal Military Canal walks was very varied, with riverbanks, wide open marsh levels and a walk along the beach at Camber, but strangely no view of the canal itself.  The reason is that, from Iden Lock to the Cinque Port of Rye, the River Rother was incorporated into the defences provided elsewhere by the canal.

In contrast to the previous walk, the ninth walk is very short, only about 3 miles, but in common with the eighth walk there was no view of the Royal Military Canal.  In the same way that the defences to the north-east of Rye were provided by the River Rother, to the south-west of Rye they were provided by the River Brede.

Today we went a bit further afield for a walk, driving about 80 miles to Surrey for a walk around Box Hill.  It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a while, as it’s probably the most well-known point on the North Downs, and is a good viewpoint across the Weald as far as the South Downs.
 

Continuing our search for autumn colour we went to Scotney Castle, near Lamberhurst in West Kent.  The site is owned by the National Trust and actually contains the ruins of a medieval, moated manor house and the Tudor-style country house built to replace the castle as a residence in the 19th century.