Young copper beech leaves

This morning I arranged to meet my fellow councillor Mike at his house a few hundred yards higher up the hill. We have a been involved in several projects together and now he is not standing for re-election, which I am very sorry about. He has a great deal of experience in areas which I don't and I think we complement each other very well. He was advising me on a new venture for me, but hopefully we might work together again one day.

I walked back down the hill through the old and the new cemeteries, which we as the town council are responsible for up-keeping. They are classed as a nature reserve because they have examples of the local traditional limestone grassland as well as adders, badgers and glow-worms. The site was formerly a rabbit warren and was then called Coneygre, coney being an old name for a rabbit.

The cemetery has many trees on the steep hillside including two quite large copper beech trees. I quickly snapped a couple of pictures from beneath the canopy of one copper beech as I think the colour of their just unfurled leaves is so pretty. I hope you agree.

I was in a rush because my friend Sylvain Guenot was coming to take a couple of portrait photos of me for my election pamphlet. When he sends me the copies I may put them on my webpages, as I have been asked to show my face here before now, and at least he is a good photographer. Very good, in fact.