It’s been a while since I had an urge to go to the woods. I’ve no idea why I did, but I did - and it was a good urge to follow up on. Even now, looking at the photos to create this post has been a good thing. Though obviously not as good as being there in person.
Petts Wood is relatively close by to us, but it’s a twenty minute car journey. We visited in October, so the photos are probably greener than it currently is. Even though it’s just over seven miles away, and somewhere we’ve driven past many a time, this was the first time we’d stopped, and the first time it was our destination.
We’d thought ahead and put our walking shoes into the boot, and changed into them before heading along the paths. But then again, not that clever enough to remember they were still in the boot of the car when we went food shopping just before Christmas. Finding them innocently there with a trolley load of shopping was quite a discovery.
I’m a fan of bracken anyway, but this view I could just keep breathing in. Maybe I should set that as my desktop wallpaper - though in reality, I don’t often see the wallpaper on my laptop as it’s covered by many layers of open windows.
The trees were fascinating too, and it’s true that the more you look, the more you see. At first glance the tree above looks an unusual shape, but looking more closely you’ll see that the horizontal part is actually a fallen tree that’s continued to grow towards the light, just in a slightly different way to when it was vertical.
The other thing that amazed me is that we’re less than twenty miles from central London, but the picture below could be much further afield.
These two photos represent how important it is to look down, as well as up. MOH was whinging that I was walking too slowly, but there was too much to see to race around. Perhaps if it were a place that was more familiar he might have a point.
And as we headed back to the car, the markings on the tree to the left definitely made us smile - it summed up our mood too.