While we live in a fairly rural area, most of the land around here is farm land with hedgerows and occasional trees, rather than large wooded areas. Over the years, this has posed a bit of a challenge for my "Colours of Autumn" drive. While there are wooded areas around, it is difficult to find a route that takes in as many areas as possibly, that are also on quiet country roads, with suitable places to safely pull in and stop for photos. At this time of the year, I also don't want to be driving miles to find places and out for hours in the cold.
 

 
The weekend weather forecast was stormy, with strong gale force winds and overcast on Saturday, which was bad for pictures. Sunday was stormy again but with bonus rain! As a result, I postponed the drive until Monday when the wind was meant to drop to 15mph. Tuesday was back to gales with more rain later in the week. The clocks also changed to Greenwich time over the weekend, so the nights were cutting in sooner.
 

 
Monday started out windy and began to cloud over mid morning, but the wind dropped to a reasonable lever and the sun came back out around Noon, so I headed out at 1pm for what ended up a three hour, 35 mile drive. I began with a trip for fuel, only to find none of the pumps had E5 fuel, only E10, so I had to backtrack to a slightly more expensive station to fill up. The trip began to the West of Durham, heading towards Ushaw.
 

 
I would have liked to see more orange and red in the trees and perhaps another week waiting might have produced some better colours in the trees, but with all the storms and gale force winds, I had my doubts that there would be many leaves left if I waited much longer. The map in the first image shows the route with the stops, with a closer aerial image of each photo location.
 

 
The last group of pictures were taken near the local church and one in the garden after getting home. By the time of the last few stops, the sun was getting low in the sky, the temperature was dropping and the setting sun meant that the vivid colours faded, but I'd had an enjoyable afternoon behind the wheel and camera shutter.