Boxing Day in The Lake District
What a rotten couple of weeks it's been here in the North of England. The double whammy of persistent rain and strong winds has kept me indoors for the bulk of my Christmas holidays. Boxing Day turned out to be an oasis of calm compared to the days surrounding it. It had been forecast as dry and sunny, so with this predicted lull in the storm, I headed up to Ambleside to check out Fishgarth's Wood and subsequently Todd Crag above it.
The forecast failed to live up to expectations in the dry department with showers regularly passing through during the day, but it was very still, with no discernible wind, so at least I didn't have to cling onto my tripod to stop it blowing away and overall it was quite a pleasant day. Between the intermittent soakings that is.
All images were taken on a tripod with the Fujifilm GFX100S and either the 32-64 f/4.0 or 45-100 f/4.0 (the 100-200 stayed safely in the bag, providing reliable ballast, which is just what you want when trudging up a steep hill). Most were taken with a circular polariser, particularly the woodland shots. I think I stopped using it though once I got out into the open around Todd Crag. Processed from single raw files as usual in Capture One 23. All images cropped to match the in camera framing used at the time.
1. Little Tarn in Fishgarth's Wood
I wasn't expecting a lot from Fishgarth's Wood, but found it quite enjoyable once I started exploring a bit. This little tarn caught my eye and I spent ages shooting around it, although for the most part the sun wasn't playing ball and casting strong shadows with lots of highlights, the latter being something I try to avoid in woodland photography. However, in this instance, I think the harsh backlight helps.
2. Little Crag at the Little Tarn
There were lots of interesting features around the tarn, but unfortunately most of them were obstructed in some way or other by a misplaced tree or sapling. Bloody nature and its untidy ways. I did like this little crag though and the reflections it cast in the water.
3. Windermere
At the top of the main woodland path there's a gate. I popped through the gate and took this shot on the other side, but quickly popped back through to explore another path that forked off and appeared to climb higher through the woods.
4. Colourful Chaos
This was taken further along the forked path. It's a chaotic scene, but the trees have character and seem very busy and energetic as they go about their woody business. At least the light was playing ball here, with no highlights and nice colours.
5. Windermere Again
Finally the forked path exited the woods, revealing this scene. Actually, this scene required a little bit of scrambling to reach, but I feel was worth it. Initially I was disappointed by the hill in the foreground, but I think the contrasting colours, presence of the tree and a little bit of rim light makes it quite a nice feature.
6. Trinity Through The Trees
This shot of Brathay's Holy Trinity Church was taken from a vantage point close to the previous image.
7. Trinity Two
Moving down into the dip seen at the bottom of the previous shot gave me this image, with the tail end of a passing shower being backlit by the sun in the top left.
8. Windermere Three
Nice vantage points over Windermere kept popping up throughout the first half of this walk, so it would have been rude not to photograph them.
9. Lily Tarn
Taken after scrambling up a little rocky crag. The two peaks in the distance are Froswick and Ill Bell, part of the Kentmere Horseshoe. I last climbed the pair of them back in 2016 and along with Yoke they form quite a nice little ridge walk, although I think I'd be hard pressed to get up there these days. Wansfell is to the right in the middle distance.
10. Todd Crag
Todd Crag itself. The highest point I was planning to lug my 6KG of camera equipment up to on this walk, with a somewhat storm shrouded Wetherlam just visible in the distance.
11. Wetherlam
By the time I was perched atop Todd Crag enjoying my hot flask full of beef Stroganoff the weather had cleared a bit to reveal the lower flanks of Wetherlam.
12. Runestone Quarry
Bit of a bonus pic. This is a crop from the previous image that's been through a Topaz sharpen and upscale step to show the details of Runestone quarry, a long gash cut into the lower flanks of Wetherlam. When we visited the quarry at the beginning of the year and stood at the top of the cutting, I had no appreciation of just how large these working were or for that matter the size of the spoil heaps on the side of the mountain.
One mildly depressing observation is that I seem to recall it felt like quite a tough walk reaching the altitude of this quarry, which is pretty insignificant compared to overall the height of the mountain it's at the foot of, so I don't think I'll be adding to my current record of three ascents of Wetherlam (2015, 2016 and 2019) any time soon.
13. Wall and a Gate
When I initially decided to photograph this winding wall, I was stood quite a bit closer, off to the left as it would appear in this photograph, but I couldn't quite fit in the entirety of the wall with the 45-100 that I had on the camera. As it had recently showered, I didn't want to swap lenses, so I ended up pacing out into the scrubby grass until was far enough back to fit it in. "Zooming with my feet" if you will. This has led to quite a different image from what I originally conceived. Whether it's better or not is debatable. I'll have to got back and take a shot with the 32-64 one day. Just for comparison.
