De Leo Wall

It's Sunday morning and I have the day off. My Christmas shopping is done and the sun is shining brightly. The apartment's dirty (but it can wait), so what to do? How about a hike? Hmmm..need to be home early this afternoon...how about a walk in the park? Sounds like a fine idea!

I decided to go up to De Leo Wall, a.k.a. a large hill in Newcastle with one rather steep side to it. The weather was cold and clear so I had a good time taking pictures of ice and frost:


The view from De Leo Wall is pretty obstructed by trees, but nice all the same:


Unfortunately, it was incredibly windy! I was being showered the whole way by tree debris, some of it alarmingly large. I watched one whole tree blow over about 50 yards up the trail behind me. Here I am posing with the largest branch that actually hit me, luckily on the bounce: