A walk in the park

As I said in my previous post, yesterday we went for a bank holiday trip to the isolated Norfolk village of Heydon. Isolated? Yes, even more so than the rest of Norfolk. The road to the village has a dead-end sign at the beginning: the only way out is back the way you came. A bit like Stourbridge at the end of the Stourbridge Town Arm, if you like (but there are few other similarities).


Heydon is one of those English villages where nothing seems to have happened for the last half century. The bunting was up from, presumably, a street party to celebrate Prince William and Catherine's wedding - but it could equally have been left over from the Queen's coronation.


We'd come for a walk, and the parkland surrounding Heydon Hall was the place to do it. There were a lot of chestnut trees displaying their candles of blossom.


Some of the trees had succumbed to a disease which had rotted the timber from the inside. This one had obviously only recently fallen.


Lichen is supposed to be an indicator of the amount of pollution in the air. The lichen on this twig looked impressive: low pollution?


Another chestnut tree had been cut down and burned - I could break bits off the remaining stump which were as light as balsa. The disease had removed all traces of the growth rings (no photo).


Heydon Hall


The sun shone most of the time, but there was a chilly easterly breeze. The dappled light in the woods was gorgeous.


red campion

Back to canals tomorrow!