ANOTHER XMAS WALK...

We continued my family tradition of tamping down Christmas Day gastronomic excesses with an afternoon walk.

We were accompanied by a friend, who although she had lived around Thirsk for most of her life, had never walked on our green backyard, aka Sowerby Flatts.

The terminus of our peregrination was the Christmas tree, not the one in the Market Place, or by the Sowerby War Memorial, but the one that has grown up on Duckett's Ings, as a result of the “Johnny Appleseed” tree planting by Sowerby resident John Carrington, over a number of years.

When winter thins out the undergrowth, you get a chance to see how many trees he has planted, and I hope that I may live long enough to see his efforts mature into our own Forest of Arden.

It was a bit odd that our Christmas guest was unfamiliar with the Ings, since she, and her late husband had donated saplings to his efforts.

To get back to the Christmas tree, someones rooted traditional tree had really spruced itself up, and had grown to a height that not quite equalled the annual donation from the grateful people of Norway (for our support against the Nazis) of the Trafalgar Square tree, seems set fair to do so, unless it is felled by an unkind wind.

John issues an annual invitation to members of the public, on social media for decorations to be placed on the tree, and currently, they have responded royally.



(To read the rest of this article go along to your nearest stockist and buy a copy of the paper)