Jan 2007
Castlewellan Forest Park report
Tuesday January 2007 08:42 PM
Thanks to
Colin for the following walk report…
"Sunday 7th January was forecast to be wet! It was! But that did not dampen the spirits of the 28 people who turned up for the first walk of the new year in Castlewellan Park. There were a number of new people there, male and female, and everyone appeared to have enjoyed our days walking.
We started off by walking along the eastern flank of Castlewellan Lake to the end. At that point some of us split off to continue round the lake, while most of us continued on towards the boundary wall of the estate, climbing over and circumnavigating [ooh, hark at her! - ianP] numerous trees which had been blown down in the New Year's gales. For the most part we were shielded from the rain by tree cover. We caught glimpses of Slieve Croob and the Dromara Hills through the trees, and found the place where we had lunched two years ago on the same walk, a mossy glade overlooking that countryside.
We the continued round the back of Slievenaslat, encountering lots of ponies on the way down to Mitchell's lake. We went into the walled garden with its unique collection of trees collected by successive generations of the Annesley family who had lived in the Castle til the 1970's. The garden was asleep for the winter. The Annesleys had come there in 1742, but most of their plant collecting took place during the late Victorian era. We then returned via the northern end of the lake to the carpark, a bit wet but content."
"Sunday 7th January was forecast to be wet! It was! But that did not dampen the spirits of the 28 people who turned up for the first walk of the new year in Castlewellan Park. There were a number of new people there, male and female, and everyone appeared to have enjoyed our days walking.
We started off by walking along the eastern flank of Castlewellan Lake to the end. At that point some of us split off to continue round the lake, while most of us continued on towards the boundary wall of the estate, climbing over and circumnavigating [ooh, hark at her! - ianP] numerous trees which had been blown down in the New Year's gales. For the most part we were shielded from the rain by tree cover. We caught glimpses of Slieve Croob and the Dromara Hills through the trees, and found the place where we had lunched two years ago on the same walk, a mossy glade overlooking that countryside.
We the continued round the back of Slievenaslat, encountering lots of ponies on the way down to Mitchell's lake. We went into the walled garden with its unique collection of trees collected by successive generations of the Annesley family who had lived in the Castle til the 1970's. The garden was asleep for the winter. The Annesleys had come there in 1742, but most of their plant collecting took place during the late Victorian era. We then returned via the northern end of the lake to the carpark, a bit wet but content."
New Page in Photo Album
Saturday January 2007 08:09 PM
There's a new
page in the Photo Album entitled "Downloadable
Wallpapers". From here you can download large
versions of some of the best photos in the gallery,
and they'll be suitable for printing as well as
desktop wallpapers.
There aren't very many at the moment as I haven't worked out how to add preview images to the links yet! In the meantime, if there's a particular photo you'd like to see bigger, send me an email and I'll arrange for it to be included on this page.
There aren't very many at the moment as I haven't worked out how to add preview images to the links yet! In the meantime, if there's a particular photo you'd like to see bigger, send me an email and I'll arrange for it to be included on this page.
New Photos Added
Saturday January 2007 08:07 PM
Okay, there
was a bit of a lull in activity there, but I've
finally got around to adding photographs of the last
three walks (October, November and December) to the
photo gallery.
New walks for 2007 Calendar
Saturday January 2007 03:49 PM
Our 2007
calendar is now
partially online: thanks to Colin
for providing me with details of the walks that he'll
be leading in the coming year. Here's hoping that I
hear from the other leaders sometime soon…
