A beautiful spring day

As I concluded in the last post, our next adventure was to head off to Oxburgh Hall. As I trying to figure which of the MANY photos to choose to share in the post, it became clear that if I did as originally planned, this would be a very long post to get the pictures in - and my mum told me some of the posts "have a lot in them" so I need to be careful not to provide too much to read ... just kidding mum; but my memory is holding up as I age (so far)!

So this post is sharing a few things about the morning and journey to get to Oxburgh Hall ... hoping to convey something of why the title of the post was used. Of course, it must be said that the beautiful spring day, in terms of climate, was just like a beautiful autumn day you will be experiencing at present. In terms of the landscape of course, quite different as you will see :).

These first few pictures show the morning we woke up to at the Dairy. The view of the Lake looking west is first; then an apple or pear blossom with the lake in the background looking east to the risen sun. The third one is the Lake under the rising sun (playing with the light contrasting the first one). In all of them you can see the leaves starting to emerge from buds in most of the trees, so even though the scenes remain bare they are far from naked and much more alive now.

As you will know from many earlier posts I am very aware of bird life at the moment. So it was a little spooky what I "saw" in the cloud in the next photo taken as we were heading down the drive out of the Dairy as we set off ... see what you think it is ...

I saw a swan flying off looking for a landing site ... a spot of too much early morning sun perhaps!

I know, I know. We were meant to be going to a grand Hall! However, there were so many things to notice along the way on such a clear still morning that I stopped a few more times to try and capture the sense of place ... these first one is a view through a treed avenue to the vivid yellow flowers of a mustard crop at the end of the tarmac; the second one is through that treed tunnel showing a clearer view of the mustard crop and the farm buildings behind. I am not a fan of mustard, but the fields in full bloom like this rival those of lavender for mine. Really beautiful.

And back along the same road, and the final stop before a vow to "just get to Oxburgh Hall without any more stops" (which I kept!), I had to capture the following images. They are variants on an earlier photo I shared of a similar view of naked nature but these are far less symmetrical - even so, and consistent with the trees around the Dairy, the beginnings of the new spring collection to cover naked nature is visible if still leaving room for imagination ... I hope to return before we head back to see what the "collection" looks like on parade :). The second and third ones below offer a neat contrast between the blue sky and the green shoots of a cereal crop field foregrounding and backgrounding the trees ... nature in all her glory with a little help from the farmer!

The loner

Mummy, Daddy & Baby bear!

A small crowd

So, you can see if you take a look at this link for Oxburgh Hall we were really looking forward to what we would see when we got there on beautiful spring day that was windless ... check the image of the Hall at sunset and note the reflection to get a sense of our anticipation :).

The day was off to a good start!