If you go down to the woods today

Here in Gilsland we are blessed with an abundance of Bluebell woods and I've been to three of the nearest ones.
The perfume when you visit these woods, with the bluebells in full bloom, is amazing and it's an experience I'd recommend especially if your feeling at all stressed, imagine sitting in a patch of bluebells with sun dappling through the trees and butterflies dancing amongst the flowers, pure magic.
The first wood I went to was Coomb Crags Wood, one of the places where the Roman's quarried stone for Hadrian's Wall at Birdoswald, it's a very pretty wood with several waterfalls along the way.
It is quite a strenuous walk with a couple of steep bits but I think it's worthwhile, lots of tree types so you get different plants in the understory.
I listed 30 different wildflowers in a one hour walk.
For the circular walk you can get details here

Bluebells in Coomb Crag Wood

My next visit was to Bellister Wood, this is owned by the National Trust and is near Fetherston Castle. This is one of the better known Bluebell woods and when I got to the best patch of flowers I discovered many of them had been flattened by photographers who had been lying down to get their shot. 'Early bird' and all that.

The Bluebells in Bellister Wood

Then I headed off to the Irthing Gorge Woodland often referred to as Spa Wood because it's behing the Gilsland Spa Hotel. This is probably one of the easiest woods to visit, park in the hotel car park, walk down into the woods, cross the Spa Bridge and turn left into the birch wood.

The hotel has a coffee shop and does lunches, so you can make an outing of it.

Irthing Gorge Bluebells, this woodland is managed by the Woodland Trust so it's very natural

Spiders (a second spider is just behind the flower, you can see it's leg)  and web surround the flower

I was on my way back to the car when it started to rain and it poured, for once I got back just in time to avoid a soaking.

Something I've been wanting to try, camera was on the tripod and I used a filter to slow the shutter speed right down to give a longish exposure. Press the shutter and move the camera vertically to blur the shot while retaining some definition.

It's probably easier to get this effect using photoshopping but as I've said before I'm a photoshop klutz.

Thankyou for viewing.