A trip to Hackfalls arboretum should be fun and it was. The road was windy and we enjoyed a trip into the house go hills which took about an hour and a half. The sun shine and we enjoyed the alpine like scenery, forests, pasture and smallholdings.
We arrived at the arboretum and the sign at the entrance pointed to information on the left and the car park on the right, so we followed the road to the right and parked near the entrance being the only car there. We walked into the arboretum and spent a glorious hour looking at the various trees on display. There were several large specimens of trees from around the world and we enjoyed reading the aluminium labels. We left the tree collection and went back tot the information office to discover we should have gone there first and paid ten dollars each to go in. We felt honour bound to pay albeit that the general feeling was that it was very expensive for what was there.
We had a very pleasant lunch overlooking a lake and then set off for home turning to visit Doneraille park, in which we immediately encountered a dirt road. The park included a large river and parking and camping area and having looked at those we decided to follow the dirt road , having no idea where it went, there were no maps in the car. The scenery was fantastic, remote farms, high pastures beautiful riverside areasand fairly large hills. After about an hour of driving we arrived at a crossroads and found to our amazement that the right turn was the road to Hackfalls. There was much hilarity in the car as we just sat there and laughed for about five minutes.
The rest of the drive home was uneventful and we passed a pleasant evening before retiring to bed.