after a nice breakfast at 6 oakfield street where we meet our co-guests as well (two americans, mother & daughter, on a two week tour of the UK), we are off via earls court underground to kew gardens! well, eventually we are off, as we at first board the wrong train but we manage to get that sorted and 20min later emerge at sunny kew gardens station, have a coffee at the starbucks right on the route to kew gardens, and arrive shortly after 10:00 at the victoria gate of the royal botanical gardens, kew

the weather is gorgeous and we are really looking forward to a day at kew: i just love the arboretum and the whole landscape. this year is particularly interesting as kew has just opened the rhizotron and xstrata treetop walk, a 200m walk way some 18m above ground winding its way through the tree tops of some very magnificent old trees!

i’m a bit apprehensive: on one hand i dearly love to get up there and have a walk-about in the tree tops, on the other hand i’m really afraid of heights and exposed places… this is going to interesting…

first things first, we register for the special 12:00 “champion trees of kew” walk — and then are off to have a go at the tree top walk.

the whole structure looks fantastic — and breathtaking. 18m above ground is quite a bit if you are not really a fan of exposed places. the walkway itself is constructed from punched and streched steel sheets, giving you plenty of the exposed stuff, enough to drown yourself in mrs d, true to form, just dances up the stairs and is on her way around the tree tops. me? well, i make it half-way up and then have to call it off and retreat down to safer grounds, where is stand with my head tilted back, longingly looking up, wishing i was made of sterner stuff and not such a wuss when it comes to heights…

…well, after about 10min i had enough of that and decided to give it another go: i must have been the slowest person ever to climb that staircase, resting every so often to get used to the height, until i finally was up on top of the first platform! wow! still scared i made my way round — and it was worth every bit of courage i had to scrape up: being up there in the tree tops was fantastic, the view across london was great and just the fact that i had made it up there was exhilarating! still scared but also enjoying it

the guide walk — champion trees of kew — was really interesting: champion trees are trees that are considered to be prime examples of their species and kew has quite a few of them.

lunch was long and leisurely at the conservatory and we really enjoyed it! most of the afternoon we spent walking through the arboretum, reading (remember the new elisabeth george? ;-), and enjoying our last vacation day in england.

a fantastic day.