It seems to me autumn leaves fell very late this year. Perhaps the mild season is part of a longer growing season and later falls of leaves each year due to climate change. I visited Cloughlea(gh) [spelling varies] woods in Co. Wicklow this weekend and since I had company and an impatient golden retriever with me, it was hard to do my usual slow focus on a specific area and subject. I felt I did more of a scatter gun approach to exploring the whole river valley where the trees were in full autumn glow.
Since I’ve only been to this location two or three times before, it seems like a good approach to getting to know an area – breath first search instead of depth first search. We walked down stream from the road as far as the trees would take us, then back to the car for coffee, then upstream until we were in coniferous forest only. Some of the down stream photos I got are shown below, lightly edited in Adobe Ligthroom only.
After a break we wandered up the path looking down onto the river valley. We scrambled down a steep slope to the river near the top of the valley hoping there would be a safe walk along the river bank. However this was not the case, and a repeat scramble on very soft banks was required to get to a more navigable part of the river bank further down stream. The images from this part are below.
