52 Walks in 2010 - Walk 34 - Wrest Park, Silsoe, Bedfordshire (17th October 2010)

Yesterday we paid our fourth and probably final visit to Wrest Park, Silsoe this year. In a few weeks time Wrest Park will close for the winter and apart from a couple of weekends when there are special events being held, it will be closed until next spring. When the park reopens next year it will be interesting as earlier this year Wrest Park was awarded a major grant of £1.14-million by the Heritage Lottery Fund and is due to undergo major improvements over the next year.

The gardens and park were certainly looking very autumnal with leaves turning brown and lying on the ground.





The Horse Chestnut trees were all looking very sorry for themselves. On the BBC Autumnwatch show last week they were saying that unless the leaf miner insect can be stopped the Horse Chestnut tree may become extinct in England. I hope that never happens.



We had fun crunching through the leaves........



....... and saw huge piles of rotting fallen apples gathered in the orchard. There were some very large wasp like insects on them but I wasn't brave enough to get close enough to them to take their photo.

There were lots of cones on the fir trees......

..... and we found some toadstools / mushrooms.

I had a little photo shoot with Lara .......

Whilst Wayne photographed me photographing Lara.