Thurstaston Common, Wirral

The dogs took us for a two-and-a-half hour walk through the old woodland on Thurstaston Common. This time of the year is one of our favourites for outdoor photography; the skies have character, and the light is sharper than in the height of summer.

The woods were full of colour; yellow, gold, rust, emerald and sage green lichens and mosses covered the gnarled, pitted bark of the trees, whose foliage is just starting to show their gradual turn towards autumn. Glossy ivy smothered old farmers' stiles. Mushrooms like ivory-yellow tabletops grew in crabbed tangles of tree roots. Jays and squirrels chattered overhead.

And as we walked from the Common onto a public footpath by open farmland around Frankby, we watched the Red Arrows zooming around, drawing red and blue doodles in the sky high above the freshly-ploughed fields.

That's not a bad way to spend the August Bank Holiday, if you ask me!

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