Beeches, great wonderful trees in lovely woods still carpeted with fall(en) leaves and still only the lightest shading of a new year’s green:
Oaks:
Wild garlic:
And bluebells
a mist of them through the trees
Somehow they are never as beautiful in pictures as they are when you stand before them and your heart rises. The wild cherry trees are rather more photogenic.
And this, my favourite picture of them all I think.
These are all from the Chilterns, we were staying in Nettlebed for a wedding in Bix stealing the thunder from my birthday. Perhaps my favourite cousin was worth it. I love the chalky hills full of flint, the villages of old brick and flint in patterned beauty. I was hoping to find old chalk cottages but we never managed to get there. Instead we found mansion after mansion, fence after residential fence scattered through hills, and more than one of these new kinds of meadow:
The people were absolutely the least endearing feature of this countryside. Though I will also never forget the cows.
We made it back for wine however.