This time of year I get the urge to visit Fountains Abbey to see the snowdrops to confirm to myself that Spring has arrived. Not quite the compulsion that some druids feel, that if they are not there to view the sun rise it won't, but getting to be quite the annual compulsion all the same. On Sunday we went and it has. Drifts of snowdrops peeping out of the autumn leaves accompanied by wild garlic (ramsoms) that you could just begin to smell.
The Yew is just beginning to flower and there is a lot of Yew at Fountains. Who knew it could be so pretty?
We parked in the bottom car park (if you have been there you will understand) and did the walk through the ruined abbey and round the Studley Royal ponds. A lot of work has been done since we were last there, lots of trees and shrubs removed, taking the landscape back to its original design. I can't help thinking its a bit too over manicured, I liked the overgrown bits.
Its a wonderful place. Full of textures and colours. I snapped these on my phone and it did really well - better than the camera I have. These are the roots of a yew exposed down an embankment. The trees at Fountains still bear the signs of being forested, ancient coppice stools, and an Ash with two massive trunks looking like they were at one time part of a laid hedge. The ghosts of the lay brothers and the labourers that followed them, working the land.
Fountains is a curious mixture of the wild, the dilapidated and an 18th century landscaped garden that has been managed to extremes. But inbetween, the snowdrops still bloom amongst the garlic and the debris of an autumn just gone.
