Day 243
Salix avenue, Marks Hall
Saturday 18th February 2017
It's snowdrop time and today we visited the Marks Hall Estate near Coggeshall to see their collection. It's a pretty incredible place with something for everyone, from rolling parkland to formally designed, contemporary gardens. It has one of the best winter gardens in the country with an avenue of Salix and along the edge of the top lake, are the red stems of Cornus juxtaposed with the pure white of Birch trees.
My big Pentax had another outing today and I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures which I will probably get back from the lab in about a month. I love using this camera, it's from a previous age, photography is so much more tangible on something this size. There were quite a few people with expensive DSLRs and big lenses wandering around the gardens today and just about everyone of them did a double take when they saw my camera, but no one came to talk to me about it despite their inquisitiveness; we are so English.
We had a wander around Coggeshall on the way home and then watched Captain Fantastic, which we both really enjoyed. I am still amazed that we can just stream a movie at will. I know that sounds like a pretty odd statement for someone with a technology background and given how heavily connected we are these days, but when we first moved to Tollesbury we went from fast broadband capable of streaming movies to a bit of soggy string connecting us to the local exchange. Our options were working out what we wanted to watch tomorrow so we could download it overnight or picking up a DVD from Fred's Store. Now that we have superfast broadband in our lives, it really makes you appreciate what opportunities it brings. I have recently ordered some wedding albums and it took around 5 minutes to upload a whole album to the printers; that took around 8 hours in the good old days!
Snowdrops at Marks Hall