My partner, our friends and I, spent the day at Westonbirt National Arboretum over the weekend and the colours of the leaves were quite amazing.

Of course the glory belonged to the Acers and Maples, proudly commanding the attention of an astonishingly large audience. As soon as we drove into the entrance we joined the back of one of two quarter mile long queues, slowly being funneled through temporary booths where £7.50 per head is taken, and directed like aeroplanes landing, into tight orderly rows in one of several overflow fields.

I was so taken aback by the festival-like set-up that I asked one of the many attendants if there was a special event of some sort taking place at the time. Expecting some sort of live band to be playing, I was amused to hear the simple response, in broad local dialect: "autumn colours!".

Despite the sea of cars, once walking around among the fine display it didn't seem too busy and we enjoyed the trip.

On the way out I wondered if the amount of CO2 produced by the cars, needed to transport such quantities of spectators, out-produced the absorption of the trees in the Arboretum itself.