Return To The Woods
It's been a while since I've visited Brinscall woods, in fact, quite surprisingly, I hadn't set foot in the place since November last year, but this week, with my lower back still feeling a bit fragile, I decided to go for a wander in the woods with the GFX kit. Like I say, my back has been giving me grief of late, so I only took the body and two lenses, 32-64 (equiv to 25-50ish in full frame terms) and 45-100 (36-80 equiv) in a sling bag along with a tripod as hand holding shots in the woods with anything I own other than my old Olympus E-M1 MKII never goes well.
All images taken on a tripod with the aforementioned kit and a CPL, then processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23.
1 Before entering the woods, I wanted to visit som ruins outside the woods that I'd once stumbled across a little further South, but didn't manage to find them, so I ended up walking back up the Goit from the southern edge of the woods. On the far side of The Goit, there is a relatively inaccessible part of the woods (i.e. no paths there, I'm sure with some determination it's accessible), it's all a bit chaotic, but there are some interesting groups of trees and the rising slope of the hillside behind prevents the sky from being much of an issue when shooting across the river.
2 This is another shot taken across the river.
3 As I made my way upstream to the point where you can cross on an old concrete bridge, I noticed an apparent path that I hadn't spotted before, climbing up the steep embankment on the far side, so when I crossed I decided to check it out. It may have once been a path, but it's not been consumed by muddy sludge washed down the bank, so I didn't get very far along it. However on my way back down, I did spot the vine covered tree and if you squint at the lower right, you'll see early signs of bluebells.
4 Looking deeper into the woods.
5 Another curious tree. This one's got a curved branch sprouting from its base.
6 More hints of bluebells.
7 Scrambling further up the hillside through the woods eventually leads to this long forgotten path that descends from the main woodland path into a muddy swamp.
8 A bit more of the ruins.
