A day at the woods....

It's that time of year again when my sister is marking exam papers. I was awake from 8.30am as I had an appointment at the dentist, I couldn't believe I ended up wasting an hour of my day for just a simple check up that lasted 2 minutes. I ended up phoning my sister and asking if she wanted me to collect my niece so that she could continue marking and I would take her to the woods. She told me she'd phone when she was ready which she did after 12pm.

What annoyed me most though was that she didn't tell my niece that she wouldn't be coming so when I asked her to get her shoes on so we could go she wanted to wait for her mum who was on the phone to the exam company. I just carried her out in the end screaming her head off and she cried for most of the time we were there.

I had hoped to take her for some weeks now as she seems to point out random trees telling me its the woods. So this was the only chance I had and its disappointing that she couldn't appreciate it for crying and thinking we'd abandoned her mum because she was supposed to come.  

This was actually the last photo I took as I had hoped on the way out that I'd take a photo of my niece standing at the gate but she refused to have her photo taken the whole time we were there. By the time we came back out anyway it was pouring with rain but its not so obvious here.

Wellingtons and shoes at the ready even though my niece was having a fit because she had white leggings on (thanks sis!) and was scared of getting them dirty even though she wanted to jump in all the muddy tracks along the path and on the way down.

I always love the creative looking roots that you see on the way down as this woodlands is mainly on a slope so I was quite weary of my niece dashing off as the trails/paths are quite narrow.

There are plenty of branches along the way but what is scary is to think that these have probably fallen down due to storms and over growth (lack of space for them to continue growing). Imagine if you were stood there and one of these came down... actually its not worth thinking about.

Once at the bottom you come to the stream. Whilst we were still at the top, I asked my niece what she could hear, of course she said birds since we were closer to the tree tops. I made her listen for the stream too and she was so happy when she spotted it before we got there. This orange water was always an attraction for all of us when we went with school which was on a regular basis. On the way back we used to stop at a teachers house for juice and a biscuit. That of course can no longer happen.

My niece also wanted an acorn but we didn't see any and to be honest I don't ever think I have. It actually really surprised me when she asked about one but then she knows such random things with watching childrens TV. After all she learned to speak English this way as none of us used to speak to her in English but now we can't help it as majority of her conversations to us are that way.

Once my niece realised there was a stream she asked if she could see the bridge, there were 3 that we came across and I would have carried on a long the trail but it just ended up too muddy and occasionally quite slippy so I decided it wasn't such a good idea to carry on up and down narrow hills as there weren't that many people around so if I fell...

This cow was staring at us which was creepy and it followed us for a bit but then I think they realised the rain was coming and every single one of them disappeared which was so weird but also quite cute as they were running up the hill. I've never seen them move so fast before as usually I just see them munching or lazing around. We also saw some squirrels.

I finally got sick of her moaning so decided to make my way back up. Half way up the wind blew and the rain came down but as we were still quite low down we didn't get wet, it wasn't until we reached the top and came out from under the blanket of leaves into the odd sky patches did we find out.

I took a million more photos but with Instagram not working properly you didn't get completely over loaded with them all. This is one of my favorite places in Bradford. It's just a shame that I don't go often enough.

I hope to see you again soon!

Are you having a good weekend?