Westonbirt Arboretum

15th April 2007

Graham, poor fellow, spent time arranging this lovely trip to Westonbirt Arboretum and then injured his back. We maintained that he should ignore the screaming agony and come along but he said he would rather stay at home and lie on a board or something. "Rightly so", Graham.

However, the rest of us had a great time. We car-shared - Penny getting in to her dream, Dave's bright yellow Mazda MX5 sports car with the top down, and Steph into her dream, my air-con'd black-on-black beast mobile with Jack-the-Dog in the back - and drove up there in gloriously warm weather.

We then found a snag - even though their website assured us that they were dog-friendly, it seems that the fear that some little tike might soil their dainty fingers on some poo meant that poor old Jack was not allowed in the older part of the grounds where all the more interesting trees and stuff were hidden. We thought that was, a) a pathetic excuse (I used to teach my children to avoid dog poo and wash their hands after playing outside) and b) very disrupting, as we could not take Jack back home - too far - and could not leave him in the car - too hot. All-in-all not a good website comment! We would have moaned but there was no-one to moan to, so I shall be sending them the link to this page. Be warned if you are thinking of going there with your dogs!

Anyway, we wondered around the new areas and enjoyed almost four hours of heat and trees and chatting and spring flowers and more chatting and dusty paths. All very enjoyable indeed.

We ended the wandering part in Steph's other dream - a garden centre. Here we bought some cool plants, some at 50% discount, and Jack drank all the water thus leaving all the other dogs to suffer their thirst (not a Socialist bone in his body, I'm afraid).

Steph then dragged out a massive cool box and produced a huge chilled salad picnic seemingly from nowhere, and fed us all - we were reminded of loaves and fishes! - and we finished by watching the coffee shop close over the rims of the last coffees they sold. Then back again, Steph and I watching Penny's long hair flaring like a flickering flame from the passenger seat of Dave's golden Babe-mobile as they tried to leave us behind at every roundabout en route.

Turn your heating up to 24 degrees C, enjoy the pictures, and imagine what it was like for us.

Most of the shots have been donated by Penny and Steph, so thank you girls.

Richard