May 15 2011

Inspiration – Walk in the Woods

Another Sunday walk taking photos for inspiration. Today was Redburn Park in Belfast overlooking Belfast Lough and the Famous Harland and Wolfe Shipyard were the ill fated Titanic was built.

David and Goliath Cranes at the Shipyard

By land sea and air. Plane coming into land at Belfast City Airport and the Stenna HSS Ferry sitting at dock waiting for it’s trip to Scotland.

Further along the Lough Side is Holywood, that’s our Holywood, and it was there first 🙂

Right, you know where I talking about now. Here’s some of the beautiful Beech and other trees in the Park.

I saw at least 5 rafts where fallen Beech have regrown.

The old root base can been seen on this raft.

A cracker raft but hard to photograph

Old rotten root base of the tree above

This one was falling but was saved by surrounding trees and remains healthy even with half the roots out of the ground.

There was a lot of deadwood on the ground and this was encouraging many types of Fungi.

How the mighty have fallen

Some other trees that caught my eye.

My usual collection of nebari and root shots 🙂

Loads of paths in every direction leave you wandering what’s around the next corner.

And a few natural deadwood features, a hollow trunk and a uro.

After looking at all these, you’ll feel as if you were with me and in Stephen’s case, he was 🙂

May 1 2011

Walk in the Sunshine

You guessed it, my usual snaps from my Sunday morning walk. A few nice trees and an a few general shots to promote the scenery in Northern Ireland 🙂

Apr 24 2011

Easter Walk in the Woods

My family and I went for our traditional egg throwing/rolling session in the local woods followed by a bit of a walk. The bluebells are just reaching their peak flowering and it was beautiful to see the blue carpet wherever you looked.

It’s mostly a Beech and Hazel wood and many of the Beech are well into the growing season.

This is the battle ground for the egg rolling where I regained the winners title this year 🙂

Tree roots criss cross all the paths and the ground actually feels and sounds hollow under foot in many places.

Flowers can be seen everywhere. Here’s our native Bluebell, not the Spanish one that seems to be taking over!!

Some of the Yellow Gorse/Whinbush flowers. The air was heady with the scent of coconut from these stunning flowers. Pity they are too problematic for bonsai.

Some of the Blackthorn were still holding onto their flowers.

One of my favourite photos of the day, an old Beech ringed with a patch of Bluebells. New Beech seedling can also be seen reaching for the light before the parents shade them out.

Ferns starting to emerge.

After a nice walk I just had to take a seat 🙂

Apr 10 2011

Walking on Sunshine

Had my usual Sunday morning walk today and what a day it was. Only problem was all the fair weather walkers clogging up the beach!! The second part of the walk was in the woods and it was less crowded and a lot cooler. Here’s a few pics from the day including some inspirational uro’s and deadwood.