Autumn arriving at Shipley Country Park

 Sunshine has been in shorter supply this week, so when Wednesday afternoon looked like staying bright and sunny, I thought I should seize the opportunity and go out, and as Shipley Country Park is nearby that's where I went.

It was quite late in the day with the sun slanting across the lawns and under the trees

I was surprised to find so few people out and about on such a glorious afternoon but the park was surprisingly quiet - all the better to enjoy the moment.

The majority of trees are still green, but here and there the occasional leaf has already started to change colour, and autumn definitely feels on the way.

This Virginia Creeper in particular was looking absolutely gorgeous, caught in the low sunbeams. It almost makes the shorter days worthwhile.

A Year on - Picking Up The Pieces

It's a year now since my mother died, and it's been the worst year ever. Five months later my father died too. A week after that, we learned Dylan our dog had untreatable cancer. Together they proved devastating. There can't be any hard and fast rule about how soon you should get back to 'normal' after losing someone close, or how you should go about it. I just know that the loss of both parents and Dylan the dog left me wrecked, but maybe slowly I'm beginning to pick the pieces up and start again. Life does go on, even if it's in a completely new shape.

I've completely lost any sense of time. This whole year has passed in a blur. I look around me now, see that summer's over, it's September almost October, and wonder how I got here; much of the last few months is lost in a fog.


For a while, staggering along under a heap of grief, I felt it was necessary to get to a calmer place before re-starting life. There were so many things I wanted to do, places I wanted to go, but the mood never felt right.
I'd managed to make the big decisions - what to do with my parents' house, which of their many possessions to keep, which to give away or to charity shops -  but apart from going walking, I couldn't bring myself to do anything non-essential.

I wanted to go on holiday,
I wanted to get fitter again,
I wanted to stop eating ready meals and start cooking again -
but I wasn't ready to do any of this yet, because things didn't feel right. If I'd waited till they did, I'd never have done anything this year. A bit of external impetus was needed.


While we were wondering if, when, and where we should take a few days away, I heard of a book launch taking place in Norwich - it proved the catalyst to get me moving. We organised our days away, with an evening in Norwich in mind.  A second slightly longer holiday had to be planned around our youngest daughter's holidays. I took my holidays.

The first couple of days away left me exhausted, and I realised that to really enjoy my second break I had to get fitter NOW. Not massively 'run a marathon' fit - just enough to walk round Edinburgh for a couple of days, and then along some forest trails - so I started walking, often going out in the early evening, trying to make that 10,000 step target two or three times a week. I started getting fitter.

The allotment suddenly went into overdrive - producing a huge glut of marrows while we were away, so I had to find ways to use them, and got back to jam-making. Then blackberries, raspberries and runner beans started to crop, and coping with produce became a full time activity, finding interesting ways to serve things rather than just cram everything into the freezer. I ditched the ready meals.

Without these little 'pushes' from outside, I never would have attempted to do anything. I'd still be hoping to find that peaceful place, but getting out and doing things, even when I didn't overly feel like doing them, has helped immensely.


In Norfolk, the sun shone, I went paddling, and something inside started to thaw.
In Scotland, I re-visited favourite places, walked through forests, went swimming, and something healed.
Going out walking regularly, and having to deal with  all the allotment fruit and veg, took me out of myself, gave me something else to focus on.
I'm still often sad and 'down', but I'm no longer completely immersed in grief. This first anniversary seems a good point to start again.

Quarndon Sunset

My get fit streak continued with another sunset walk at weekend - this time to the village of Quarndon just outside Derby.













I found this path a couple of months ago when at Allestree Park and noticed its almost ideal position for sunset-watching.

It drops downhill from the road, with wide open views to the west, and then another path leads back up. It turns out my map reading isn't very good though, because I'd expected a longer walk, so we walked round again, while waiting for the sky to flush red. It didn't.

There was still a bright clear glow from the horizon but not the dramatics of other nights this week.















It's a pretty spot though, with a feel of open countryside despite its proximity to the city, and another time I might go along with a map and walk further.

Calke gardens

Any excuse really and I'm off out for a wander round somebody else's garden. Last week I thought it was time to give those at Calke Abbey another visit - although we've been in the area a lot, visiting Melbourne Art Trail and gardens there, and skirting round the edge of Calke estate while walking, we didn't have time to drop in properly (and I think the last time we visited was at wisteria time).

Calke Abbey prides itself on being an 'unstately' stately home, where things have deteriorated and decayed over years of neglect, and been preserved in that condition by the National Trust.
The gardens fortunately have been restored - probably not as the original owners would have expected them to be, but once again filled with flowers and vegetables.

This is the one bit of formal bedding, and these flowerbeds underneath the palms looked far brighter in real life, but the camera refused to bring the bright yellows, purples, and reds to life.

A doorway leads out to what was once another walled garden but is now mainly grassed with the exception of two beds of annual flowers still flowering despite the approach of autumn

Lining the main path to the gardening sheds and boilerhouses are more flowerbeds. Earlier in the year these had red tulips growing through blue forget-me-nots while wisteria climbed up the walls. Now they're home to a stunning display of dahlias, ranging in colour from yellow through peach.apricot shades to darkest red, and in shape from small pompoms to huge cactus-flowered.

We wandered around the vegetable garden, unable to resist any gardener's habit of comparing the crops to one's own (I really want to know how they've grown such huge pumpkins), then to the lawned area in front of the house looking out into the deer park, but the deer were further away and not so easily seen. Heading towards the exit we discovered we'd taken more time than realised and were almost the last people there. The stables were all shut up for the night; the cafe and reception area closed.







With no one around, Calke definitely felt like a abandoned house.

A Splendid Sunset - with a little help from the phone

Last week's return of summer brought some wonderful sunsets with it.

If I haven't had time to get out during the day a good sunset is always an excuse to go out for an hour or so in the evening. It's relaxing and adds to my steps count for the day.

On Tuesday I settled for a short walk up past the local playing field, round the wood to a point where I can see over Derbyshire (and a new building site, though that disappears in evening photos)

After a burst of yellow as the sun dropped below the horizon, the sky settled to blue with just a small glowing area to mark where the sun had set

But, waiting a while, the sky flooded with pink












To be honest, these four photos aren't accurate.














I haven't used filters but the phone exaggerated the colours I could see, deepening the purple and lightening the yellow.


They're too wonderful to not share, though

These last two are nearer to the colours I saw - still a lovely sunset, just a little less dramatic.