Autumn Walk

I've been wanting to take my camera on a walk with us for a while. First I held off because Tara started getting difficult walking on her lead again and she'd pull so much that it just wasn't practical, with two of us on a walk we'd have to keep swapping otherwise we'd end up all sore and achey after the walk. Then we got the halti and she learned to walk nicely, but then the weather turned horrible and so I would end up leaving my camera at home when we went out for our walks.

The summer has been so wet that I missed out on lots of photos that I would've liked to have taken, but I've been determined to get some of the pretty Autumn colours. We got up and walked Tara to Kerrycroy on Friday morning and decided to do the same thing on Saturday as well. So I took my camera on the second day, it was dry, fairly warm (if you kept moving) and Autumn was very definitely in full swing.

We wandered down the hill from our house. I've been watching these bushes change colour and I've been hoping to get a snap of it. Since we got Tara this hill has become less of an obstacle, I can happily powerwalk up it now, so I like to think that I've gotten fitter since we got her.

This is where the road forks, to the left of this picture is the road to the front gate (the hill we've just come down is on the right). Up ahead the road forks again, the right hand road leads back to the big house, the road we take is on the left. I keep on promising myself that Tara and I will walk straight ahead towards the beach, but the road that way can get a bit muddy and so we have to wait until we have a bit of dry weather; there's not been a huge amount of that this year.

 

I love that tree on the right, it looks like something right out of Lord of the Rings, the party tree perhaps, or one of the ones the Hobbits hang out under when they meet the Elves on the way out of the Shire. The one on the left Mr Click pointed out to me as looking a bit sorry for itself, I'm not sure what sort of tree it is. There are so many interesting plants and trees on the Estate, but there are really only so many photos you can take of them, so I'm trying to pace myself and not take too many photos of them all at once.

 

 

These pictures remind me of something out of a Pixar film, A Bug's Life perhaps. This tree shed hundreds of leaves whenever the wind blew even just a little bit. I stood underneath trying to snap photos of the leaves falling down, but the one on the left was the best I got (the others were all too blurred). If this tree carries on at this rate, by the next time we walk under it, it'll be completely naked!

 

 

This is another path/road leading down towards the beach. The gate here always used to be shut but I think they've done up one of the buildings down here because it's always open and we saw a post van down there. Tara's desperate to go down here but despite there being a signpost pointing out a trail down there (and seeing people walking down there at times) it's always had a sign saying 'Private' on the gate and I don't want to get into trouble. We always head along to Kerrycroy so from here you just carry on following the main road.

 

 

I quite like this picture, this is pretty much at the end of our walk. There's a bit of a slope down to the Kerrycroy gate (where there used to be loads of logs beside the road). This is a sign post which has, obviously, fallen over a little bit, and so has been propped up against the tree here. We normally turn around here if we don't feel like taking the walk back up the slope (this is where you come out of the trees and suddenly end up really really warm).

 

 

This was where we turned around on our walk (where the big logs used to be). This was one of the trees felled during the storm at the beginning of the year.

 

 

As I said, Autumn has well and truly arrived. If I didn't have my camera, I definitely would have been running and jumping in these leaves - Tara's discovered that this is a very fun game and so at some point I'm going to have to go wild in the leaves with her. Autumn seemed to hit here very suddenly, we've gone from having loads of green grass under these trees to nothing but brown leaves.

 

 

This is Tara modelling her new Halti. It's the second one, after she ate the first one, but it's made a huge improvement to the way that she walks on the lead. Plus it's stops her jumping up at random passersby, which has been great for when we're taking her walks when it's busy. She's still not totally keen on it, but even there she's improving, and if we don't put it on, she still walks pretty well on the ordinary lead (until she realises she's not wearing the Halti, that is).

 

 

I'm looking forward to taking some walks when the weather gets even colder, as long as it stays dry and doesn't get icy. I'd quite like to get some frosty weather snaps. Or maybe even some snowy day photos. Mr Click has found some awesome snowboots and I'd quite like to get some for myself in the hopes that I'll be well prepared if we have any snowy weather. As long as it's dry, I've got to remember to take my camera out with me a little bit more often.