‘Ow much?!?

These photos were taken on a recent visit to Westonbirt Arboretum to have a look at the autumn leaves. Unfortunately, half of North Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire also had the same idea! We thought we'd just go for a quick walk on a Saturday morning in a nice Forestry Commission park and when we got there we found that they charge for admission (I’m sure they didn’t used to practice extortion). We had a Daily Mail moment when we were asked to pay £7.50 EACH to get into land that we pay for through our taxes. Not £7.50 per car...EACH! We don't mind paying to see the woods lit up at night near Christmas, when they've put some effort in and people are working overtime, but £7.50 to walk round some trees?!? It really made us appreciate the free walks we do on public footpaths. We made sure that we got our money’s worth and rather than the hour we were going to spend there we stayed nearly 5 hours instead!

We were cheered up by finding that the Merlin Events Golden Leaves tour of the Cotswolds had stopped off here so we had lots of nice cars to look at. In the end a very pleasant day was had but, as we ended up buying lunch there, we spent nearly 35 quid! Ignore what I said on a previous post, yes I am a tightwad and I do resent paying £15 to look at trees. The home-made soup was good though.
A week later we stopped off at Dyrham Park (‘cos we can get in free with the National Trust card!) on the way to look at Claire’s newly built flat (which is gorgeous and new and shiny and I'm dead jealous ‘cos both the en-suite and the bathroom are bigger than ours!). We'd forgotten how nice it was and must go back for a longer walk with proper boots.

We're currently awaiting - with bated breath on my part - our first nephew / niece as it's about a week late now. We spent Saturday evening feeding Helen pickles and making her giggle but as yet Horace is staying put. He's proably heard the weather forecast...

The fundraising total is currently £1,920.51 - only £80 to go to our target figure.

Bev