After the cold and wet weather, we had a break with sun and a warm 12C temperature. We decided to go for a walk in the local area and drove over to Stowe Gardens. It is that time of year, Snowdrop season. R had booked our arrival time online a couple of days before. We arrived and walked down from the car park. The NT shop, restaurant and loos were of course closed. A small van was selling coffee and light lunches at the entrance. (We had already stocked up with Ginsters Cornish pasty from our local shop.)

A longish walk down the hill to the gardens, where our names were checked. The loos were here, a row of Portaloos. We enjoyed a three-hour walk, with a well-deserved lunch break of Pasty. The Snowdrops were somewhat a disappointment, there were clusters of them, but not the huge waves of them there were a few years back.

We met a man and wife taking pictures of the snowdrops with a background of the Temple of Ancient Virtue. He was using a 4×5 Walker Camera. I believe he could adjust the angle of the photographic plate to reduce converging verticles and change the plane of focus. At least he doesn’t have hundreds of images to choose from when doing his final edits.