Early Spring in the Woods

Two weekends ago, I was in the rare situation of spending a weekend on my own, neither travelling to O.K.'s nor he coming to my place. Don't worry, all is well with us - it was simply a case of obligations on his side taking up all of the Saturday and me wanting/needing to do some stuff like cleaning my windows (you really had to open the windows to see whether it was day or night outside) and switching the contents of my wardrobe from the colder to the warmer season.

On the Saturday (11th of March), my Mum, my sister and I went for a walk to enjoy the early spring sunshine. Here are the pictures I took.

By the way, this was almost exactly the same route we took in November 2015, when it was warmer and sunnier than on this Saturday in March! Compare the pictures, if you like - click here for the 2015 post.

After the descent through the woods, the path stretches along the river for a while before, after a slight ascent, it emerges at the steep, rocky, heath-like bit above. From there, it leads along vineyards old and new, with a beck babbling by its side.

You know I have a "thing" for abandoned places, and these former vineyard walls certainly do it for me:

Some are still in use. I showed you these same places in November 2015, too. Click here if you want to see what the vineyards looked like in all their colourful glory then.

We suspect there might be a secret castle underneath all that wild growth, with Sleeping Beauty resting on a bed of faded silk:

We had a break here, with a little snack and some water. It was even warm enough to lay back in the sun, using our coats as blankets:

On we went, now moving back in the direction we had come from, parallel to the path down in the valley where we had been walking before:

Doesn't this look much more like November than March?

At first, the landscape may look rather dull, lacking colour. But if you look closely, you can detect spots of colour everywhere.

Violets:

Helleborus foetidus - it was not at all smelly, in spite of its name:

I will have to rely on my Mum to tell me the name of these - I know they are not aconites:

It was a much more pleasant way of spending a Saturday afternoon than cleaning windows... I still did that afterwards, though. Daylight was fading by that time, and when I looked at my windows again on Sunday morning, I did some of them again.

Now it's time to get some stuff done here at home. I have the day off and will be going out with my sister in about 2 hours.