This beautiful spot is little known around here. It’s a small wooded hillside, and every spring has the most amazing display of bluebells and wild garlic. Today was a little bright for the best photos – an overcast sky works best for bringing out the subtle colour of bluebells. 
We planted four of these trees when we moved in 11 years ago, and the blossom is spectacular every year. To be fair it only lasts a week or so, and makes an unholy mess when the blossom drops, but it’s well worth it for those few days…
…well, actually yellow, but you get the point. The warmer than usual weather over the last week has brought things on massively, especially the mustard seed crop, which now dominates arable crops around here. A veritable sea of yellow…
Our 10 year old granddaughter wanted ‘an adventure’ today, so as it was fine we decided to climb The Wrekin. This 1335ft hill is the highest point around here, and although there is a clear and reasonably well maintained path, it’s still a fair climb – around 1.5 miles in distance, but almost 1000ft in elevation. Views from the top are amazing…
Although much of the land around here is given over to agriculture (mainly dairy cattle), we are fortunate to have a reasonable amount of ‘open access’ land close by. It’s mostly mixed woodland and an excellent place for quiet reflection. This is Maer Hills, just a 10 min drive from home. 
I drive past this patch of woodland quite often, but rarely stop and explore. Today I had a few minutes to kill, so wandered through. Spring hasn’t really had any impact as yet, very few leaves on the trees, and the woodland floor is mostly dead leaves and ferns. Another couple of months and it’ll all change. 
I last took a photo from this spot around 20 years ago (it was a colour slide using my old medium format camera). Nothing much has changed, except it was autumn then and there were still leaves on the trees. I remember being so frustrated when I got the processed film back and realised there was an old tin can in the photo I hadn’t spotted. Nowadays it could be cloned out in seconds, but it ruined the photo back then!
