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Beautiful photos, especially the lonely oak ones... Took me while to work out the bark rubbing one though... initially I thought it was a snow clad trunk!

In Yorkshire at the moment the native alder's (Alnus glutinosa) male catkins are still closed and a striking purple. There are some other alders planted around Sheffield streets and car-parks that I think are Italian alders (Alnus cordata) - their male catkins are already open and yellow. I was going to say you should check the leaves of your trees in a guide until I remembered that there won't be any!

Happy festival! (which yet again I've missed!) I saw some great catkins today en masse on some trees in Central (just beside the doctors surgery). I'm not sure what trees they are (maybe alder?) but I have to go back tomorrow with my camera - they were so photogenic!

In the UK, you don't get many big chestnuts. Even in the south, they're not incredibly big. The chestnuts over here are only good for growing chestnut trees.

I can't say I've ever come across a chestnut around here with decent sized nuts. They've always been about the size of the ones in this post. Obviously Britain's climate is not conducive to the growth of large chestnuts, although there may be favourable microclimates around, as you mention on your blog. Then again, I've read that the trees grown abroad to produce edible nuts are special cultivars (selected to produce just one large nut per cupule); the chestnuts growing wild in the UK are probably uncultivated.