Raducanu, Ronaldo …and Roberts

Well, it was quite a weekend for records.

The world was amazed and delighted by a young woman who won a tennis title against all the odds, and still came over as the likeable girl-next-door. Half of Manchester (and elsewhere) cheered as a former hero returned and scored two goals to give them hope for the future. And meanwhile, as the orchestra strummed up for the Sunday Prom in Bedford Park, there was a record number of people attending our last formal walk of the year.

A very good friend of the Friends of Foster Hill Road Cemetery, Jo Roberts from the Forest of Marston Vale,  once more led a walk highlighting some fascinating and little-known stories about trees in Bedford Cemetery, and trees in general. She revisited some of the trees she talked about on her last walk here, two years ago, and it was as excellent as before.

Just like two years ago she was accompanied, in the distance, by the musicians in the Park. Last time the tunes were “Ride of the Valkyries” and “Colonel Bogey” but this time she had the challenge of talking about trees against a backdrop of “The Can-Can” (she didn’t dance to it though).

Jo has an excellent knowledge and way of presentation, and answered questions galore; several visitors were keenly writing notes. We learnt that you should NEVER park your car under a Lime tree, the kinds of fruit that you can eat but wouldn’t really want to try twice, and the clever way that trees communicate and help to protect each other.

Sixty-five people joined the walk, almost certainly a record for any of our walks, and all done without any audio aide. This was our contribution to Heritage Weekend and to the Bedfordshire Walking Festival’s events that weekend. There were many familiar faces, but many new visitors, who were impressed not just by Jo’s walk but also by the peaceful surroundings and the Friends’ hospitality…especially the cakes.

Our themed walks about the Natural History of the cemetery have been curtailed in recent times because of Covid, but we hope that in 2022 we will have more, such as the always popular Bat walk, an early morning Dawn Chorus walk (3.30!!!) and of course, another Tree Walk.

Nb If you haven’t seen it already, we recently produced an excellent leaflet about the trees in the Cemetery, produced by Jo and Friends’ volunteer, Clare Pope.