I like these sky studies.
The unicorn reminded me of one of our daughter's childhood companions, "Tippy", who is now retired 😉

Nice interplay of patterns here.

Sounds like a Great British Weekend!

Here are two very different shots.

This one taken for the theme "over-processed portraits" one of the flickr groups I participate in had:

Over-processing my thoughts... by simple.joy, on Flickr

and a bee:

Colorful free-bee by simple.joy, on Flickr

Of course also both taken with very different adapted lenses...

Yes, beach shots.
The first is a silty layer in Permian sandstones. The red colour comes from iron oxide in the sediment deposited in a desert environment. In some places the iron oxide is reduced to a lower oxidation state which is green, but I don't know what would have governed where the different colours formed in the rock. The hole is just erosion in the present day beach environment.
The second is indeed a basalt sill formed into blocks as it cooled. The lichens were amazing.

The first shot reminds me of a comet. Lichen does make some nice patterns.

Dufton Pike - Not Duff In The Slightest

I'd never heard of Dufton before @Woodsider79 posted a set of images from Dufton Gill last week. After discovering it's relatively close (90 minute drive) from where I live and taking a virtual wander around the area using the OS Maps 3D view, I decided it might be fun to visit the area around Dufton Pike.

Dufton Pike is a steep, pointy hill, looking a bit like a mini mountain, that stand alone with a similar prominence sat close by, just Northwest of it. Together, these sit beside a steep ridge along the edge of the Northern section of the Pennines. The ridge is riddled with deep valleys (including the well known High Cup Nick, which looked very impressive during my drive into the area) and I thought, rather than simply climbing Dufton Pike itself, exploring one of the nearby valleys as high as I could manage might be more up my street.

With this in mind and a few hours break in the rotten weather that usually kicks in about this time of the year, most likely because I always take this week off work to celebrate surviving another orbit around the sun, I found myself hastily plotting a 7.5 mile route that looped either side of Dufton Pike, initially following the Pennine Way up to Green Fell, cutting across High Scald Fell, then descending via the disused mine workings at Threlkeld Side.

With one delay and another, I ended up putting boots on the ground in Dufton at 16:30. The weather was forecast to stay dry until 20:00 and sunset was further off around 21:10(ish), meaning, in addition to my fitness limits I now had a time constraint to consider.

It turned out to be almost exactly a mile to the foot of Dufton Pike and as I approached I hastily decided that my initial route was perhaps not entirely achievable given the time constraint I was now working under. So I decided to flip the route and head towards the valley containing the mine workings as this was likely to have the best paths and perhaps provide the most interesting walk. The revised plan was now to see how high up this valley I could get in a reasonable time and then, depending on how that had gone, make a decision whether or not to still cut across the apparently pathless High Scald Fell and perhaps turn back if it was getting late.

The walk to the top of the mine was a steady, persistent steep slog and it took me two hours to cover the 3.5 miles to the highest point I reached on that path. Still feeling okay, but getting a bit pressed for time I decided not to risk running out of daylight on High Scald Fell and, having consulted the map, decided to loop back in the opposite direction, following a broken set of paths and tracks on the map labelled as White Rake, this should take me back to the foot of Dufton Pike.

In the end I covered 6.9 miles and 1,500ft of ascent in 3:30, which is not bad going considering my heart condition and the general damper the medication I take for it puts on any attempt to push myself. The area itself is great with lots of photographically interesting views and I may revisit towards the end of the week if the weather improves as it's currently predicted to do. When I do revisit, it would be nice to get some better light as it was really dull and flat on this trip, although the look of these images remind me a lot of the way my Lakeland pictures used to look, not really surprising I suppose as this location is only a few tens of miles outside of the national park.

On this walk I was carrying the Nikon Z7, the 24-70 f/2.8S and 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 VR S, with what felt like pretty even use of both lenses. It was pretty overcast and went very dull as the clock passed 7PM, so the CPL stayed in the bag throughout. All images were taken hand held and processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23.

1 - First Sight

My first sighting of Dufton Pike, that little pyramid poking up over the meadow.

2 - A Better Look

Having rounded a corner I got my first proper look at Dufton Pike.

3 - Ridgey Business

At this point I was on the path running around Dufton Pike, you can see it rising off to the left. In the distance is the ridge I was planning to ascend, although you can't see the valley I'd planned to take because old Duffers is in the way.

This is a relatively small 11MP crop from the original 45MP image taken with the 24-70. If I'd thought about it at the time I'd have got the 100-400 out, but it was only once I'd got it back in C1P that I decided on this crop (presented in all its 11MP glory here).

11MP Crop

Thinking that was a bit low res, I tried running the edited image through Topaz AI and applying a bit of an upscale. This version has been scaled back up to 43MP and looks pretty good as long as you don't look too closely at the small rocks on the distant hillside which look weird. It's done a great job of the wire fence in the foreground though.

43MP Topaz upscale

4 - Into The Valley

At this point I've finally passed Dufton Pike and I'm starting to make my way up the valley. You can see the abandoned mine workings in the distance. That path is long and has the unfortunate tendency to continue climbing upwards, which is really inconsiderate.

5 - Looking Back at Dufton Pike

Believe it or not, those clouds aren't blown in the slightest, but the tones in the bright area don't spread over a very wide range. I've darkened the sky as much as I can without it looking too bizarre and HDRish using a manually tweaked tone curve. I do like how it's brought out the dangling tendrils of cloud coming down above the pike.

6 - White Rake

There's a cairn at the top of this gouge in the hillside known as White Rake. We shall return to take a closer look at that later.

7 - Meanwhile Back In Mordor

This is approaching the head of the valley. I was disappointed to discover the arched structure (bottom right) isn't an entrance to some fantastic, elaborate caverns. Either it's been filled in, or is in fact just a somewhat over the top shelter.

8 - What Are Ewe Looking At

At the top(ish) of the valley I took a path to the right and headed up onto the hill above White Rake. I had been hoping for better views of Dufton Pike and Knock Pike (the latter completely hidden by Brownber Hill on the right, which seems to be harbouring intentions of being a mini Yewbarrow), but I guess I'd need to get a bit further South for that, perhaps on the edge of High Cup Nick. Standing on its own merits the view was still excellent, so I can't complain and neither did these two.

9 - White Rake Cairn

This is the cairn seen in #6. I made a point of tapping it from this side as there was a sheer drop on the far side.

10 - Far Off Fells

This was taken just below White Rake. You can see the foot of Dufton Pike on the left and Brownber Hill on the right. On the distant horizon, just left of centre is Great Mell Fell, with it's underachieving sibling Little Mell Fell to its left, while right of centre, with its head in the clouds stands Blencathra.

11 - Here Comes The Rain

This was a last look up the valley before my final descent onto the path below. You can just see the top end disappearing into the slowly approaching clag. I started getting hit with light rain as I left Dufton Pike, but as I was on the last mile back to the car it was actually quite refreshing and I didn't bother with a jacket. Of course it pelted it down during the drive home, I'd expect nothing less from a classic British summer.

12 - Wildflowers and A Tree

I took a number of shots of trees during the walk up to the pike, but I think this is the only one I'm particularly happy with and I quite like the look of the wildflowers in the foreground. I'm not entirely sure what they are, but patches of them seemed to be everywhere.

Glad to see you exploring Dufton. I've walked up this valley in April last year, looping back over the top to High Cup Nick - fantastic walk for a good visibility day (and when it's dry underfoot!). Although it turned out fine later, our walk up the mining valley was about as grey as yours 😁 Our daughter now lives in Kirkby Thore, just to the left of the steaming chimneys in your view of far off fells. The steam comes from the British Gypsum works, which mines gypsum from an almost totally hidden underground mine nearby. The geology of the area is quite interesting. The gypsum is in beds in the low lying Permian Penrith Sandstones, while the mines of Dufton are in the Carboniferous sediments of the main Pennine escarpment. The mineralisation is due to the nearby Great Whin Sill - that of Hadrian's Wall fame, which also makes the amazing cliffs of High Cup. There is a major fault running along the face of the escarpment, which has lumps of unrelated rock caught up along it, making Dufton Pike, and indeed several other pikes lined up along the fault. They make interesting topographical features, especially when the cloud/light is just right. Daughter has only recently moved here (in March) so I'm looking forward to exploring more in the area. Much preferable to the Lakes in summer!!
The wildflowers are meadowsweet. Lovely warm honey fragrance, once used for adding to mead, hence the name.

Very nice shots as usual. This one stood out to me composition-wise. I love the position of the sheep (and its head position which matches the hill behind it), the layers and the different colors as well and the fade into the background is the cherry on top. A joy to look at!

Excellent color work - very effective! I'd perhaps tone the blue down just a little bit, because it's on the brink of overwhelming the red tones, but I feel like it wouldn't need much.

Interesting info, thanks for that. I'm tempted to give High Cup Nick a try tomorrow (4/8/23) if the weather is Goldilocks enough for me. There's no obvious path marked over the top between the two valleys, but I think I've found some tracks by looking on the OSMaps aerial view, hopefully they don't turn out to be streams :-)