LIE BACK AND TAKE IN THE FOREST

Like feng shui in the Nineties and more latterly hygge (the Danish philosophy of cosiness), forest

bathing is very much ‘A Thing’ at the moment. It’s a Japanese idea relating to being calm and focused within woodland. But you don’t have to give it a name or subscribe to a philosophy to relish the idea of lying on the forest floor and simply looking up. As Alan Power says, the upper canopy is the very best place to track the autumn: in the changing of colour, in the frantic hoarding of squirrels in the boughs, and in the gradual exposition of the sky as the leaves fall, allowing sunlight to penetrate the wood and kiss you on the nose. So bathe deeply, and enjoy.  WALK HERE: That’s the beauty of it: you can do this in that wood that’s five minutes from your door.

BIG VISION Brocken spectres take their name from a peak in the Harz Mountains of Germany where they are common. But this one was on Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire.