MY NEW TREE (READY FOR FOLLOWING IN APRIL)

It was Janet at Plantelicious that gave me the idea. When she went out to find a new tree to follow she completed her walk with a visit to a coffee shop. "Brilliant!" I thought. "But I'll do it the other way round. I'll start with a coffee shop and work outwards."

So off I went to Weymouth, found a good coffee shop where the coffee is strong but you get a little jug of milk to top it up with and they sell meringue nests with cream and fresh fruit (ah!) and set out from there to find a tree.

This proved harder than I had expected. The first tree I came to was a Cordyline outside the council offices. There are masses of Cordylines along the coast of south west England. It makes us feel exotic. We call them Palm Trees even though they aren't. But the trouble with Cordylines is that they don't do much. Their tough leaves are there all year round. They shed them in circles from the bottom, a few each year as the tree grows taller. Their flowers are dramatic but ugly. They are like huge dead Christmas trees flung on them by vandals. My tree for the last year was difficult to follow. I enjoyed it. I really did. But I wanted an easier one this year.

Next was a scraggly, youngish tree by the marina. I wouldn't have minded this one because it's branches were low enough to examine. I wouldn't have minded the crane in the background or the council offices or the law courts - but it would have been hard not to include cars and people. (I try to avoid car registration numbers and people who have not given their permission to be photographed. Stopping every passer by would have been . . . totally hopeless.)

Disconsolate, I wandered back towards town, bought a tray of chips and went to sit by the water in the part of the harbour where the working boats are. Across it was the Nothe Hill with the Nothe Fort and and Nothe Gardens - and trees. Towering above the rest was a fan of branches. "That's what I'll follow!" I thought. And set off to find which trunk they belonged to.

'My tree' is the one on the right - with its branches muddling with the one on its left.

To cut a long story short, I never exactly found it. Back to dejection. Evening was coming on. Light fading. But . . . do you find that some trees, some plants - some people for that matter - simply call to you? You see them (not necessarily across a crowded room) and think 'That's the one!'. It wasn't the right one, the one I'd tried to track down. Instead it was the one.

I don't think it's specially interesting. It has cars parked by it which means I can only take its picture from odd angles. and houses within view - I want neither in my pictures. Never mind.

There it is - in the picture at the top of the post. ( Taken the next day - I went back to check the 'the-ness'.)

But on that evening - 4th February 2015 . . . I took photos on my way back down to the water. I'll show you. It will give you a context for my March to March tree.

Near 'my' tree are some steps going down to the harbour. Across the way is the port where people embark to travel to the Channel Islands. It used to be possible to go to France too. But no longer.
And soon you won't even be able to go to the Channel Islands from Weymouth. It's something to do with a dispute between the company which runs the route and the council and money and the stability of the pier. But, for the moment - there's one of the cats seen through the trees from the steps.

You can see the Weymouth esplanade from here too - and the town clock and the Ridgeway beyond. (A long hill which comes between Weymouth and Dorchester. If you go between the two on a train you go through a tunnel.)

At the foot of the steps - another tree. I was a bit tempted to follow this one but so much of it is swathed with ivy it has lost its shape.

And along by the harbour . . .

This picture has nothing to do with trees but I liked the steps people would use to go down to boats and the reflections in the water so I've flung it irrelevantly in.

Actually, everything is irrelevant from here on. It's simply an account of my walk along the harbour so you can see where I went - more context.

And the context is, I reckon, pretty interesting. In summer the place is crowded with visitors. The beach is crammed with people building sandcastles and eating ice-creams. The first smell you smell when you get off the bus is not the sea but sun-cream. On a cold February evening it's different. It's peaceful, not frantic. Quiet, not filled with the noise of bands and festivals and people on holiday. But the work of a fishing port goes on. Across the water men were . . . either taking sacks of something out of a big white lorry or putting them in. (Remarkably informative post, this!)

Along a bit, beyond the Life Boat Station (which you would more easily see from the other side of the harbour) . . . a little street leads off to the left.

The street lights are coming on now.

Down this street you can see 'Brewer's Quay' (the big red brick building with the tall chimney). First it was a Brewery. Then it was a pleasant, touristy shopping centre where you could buy fudge and see an exhibition about the history of Weymouth. (About how the Black Death of 1348 landed here and how stone from quarries on nearby Portland was taken to rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666.) Then it closed for ages. Now it's an 'Emporium' - second hand shops, imported crafts, a sort of indoors tea-shop with the atmosphere of being outdoors . . . ).

Looking back we see the Pavilion Theatre. This too is in trouble. (Hard times in Weymouth. It may be scenic but lots of shops have shut. Others come and go. Employment tends to be seasonal.) The funny white tower is 'The Weymouth Eye'. What a swizz! Other towns get big wheels. Weymouth gets something that looks like a crematorium chimney.

And round a bit  more so we can look back to where we have come from. 'My' tree, though not visible among the others, is up there on the hill on the right. You can see the big catamaran straight ahead. You can see the 'Eye' and the theatre to the left of it. Come this way a bit but staying on the left (because we have been looking across from the pavement and road that's now on our right) you can make out the white lorry. I have a bit further to walk, then over a bridge to my chosen tea-shop. (Except it's closed.)

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I hope you've enjoyed this evening walk. I hope the page didn't take too long to load. The pictures are generally reduced in quality so the page loads quickly but this time . . . what with it being evening . . . and with some of the pictures being specially worth enlarging . . . I've loaded them full size. Google reduces them somewhat but, hopefully, they are more detailed this way.

If you'd like to know more about Tree Following - even better to join in - there's lots of info. on the Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page.

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