Today Phil and I went on a little tour of Northern Ireland. This wasn’t a random thing, we did have a purpose. We were looking for new collecting sites and checking on a few old ones. We planned to get the required permissions needed to collect legally, so we could devote the day of collecting to just digging trees. We also wanted to touch base with the  land owners who previously had allowed us to collect on their land, just to let them know that we’d be back in the Spring.

It was a very successful day and we achieved everything we wanted, and more. I’m not about to broadcast to the world exactly where we collect, that would be rather stupid!! We are eejits [idiots], but not complete eejits!!! 🙂 However, I did take plenty of photographs along the way that won’t compromise our plans. I plan to share these over the next few days. Some are trees for inspiration, some wildlife etc.

It was a long drive with most places not yielding much in the way of decent yamadori, however, many nice trees were on view.

A common sight in Ireland, a hawthorn in a field. Untouched due to superstition that it’s a ‘fairy tree’.

A few Birch.

Some of the views along the coast and up in among the rivers and Glens, are truly beautiful.

The mountain in this image is shrouded with cloud. It kind of looks like a volcano that has spewed forth a cloud of ash!

Sheep grazing in the glens.

A panoramic of the last two shots.

Rathlin Island

Stay tuned, plenty more to come….