Monday 30 November 2009

Very old tree, very careless parking.

After the excitement of discovering the 389th Bomb Group museum at Hethel we continued our November walk past a well preserved bomb shelter...


...to one of the smallest nature reserves in the country. According to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust it has an area of 0.025 hectares (a sixteenth of an acre) - although a new fence has been erected which must have increased its size - and contains just one thing. A hawthorn tree. A 700 year-old hawthorn tree, that is, which makes it the oldest on record in East Anglia. From the website: "In the mid-eighteenth century, the hawthorn trunk measured more than 12 feet in circumference, but is now a shadow of its former self."



Hethel Old Thorn is next to Hethel Church, where we stopped for coffee (in the porch, but I don't suppose anyone would have minded if we'd sat in the pews).


Then we trudged past decaying buildings...


...through an underpass...


...over bridges...


back to the Bird in Hand for lunch.

What we didn't see on the walk was this car parked on a hedge.


Between my recce and the "proper" walk it had been cleared away.

3 comments:

Vallypee said...

Oooh, I'll have to read these two later! Got to dash now, but that looks like a slight miscalculation in the last pic!

Anonymous said...

That footbridge looks a bit dodgy too - I hope there's aren't any photos of you upside-down in the ditch :-)
Sue, Indigo Dream

Halfie said...

VallyP, The weird thing was that there were no tyre marks on the road. I couldn't work out how it ended up in that position.

Sue, I am very fleet of foot (and I had the only camera!)