Rivington Pike
RIvington Pike is a stone built monument perched atop one of the prominences of Winter Hill and overlooks Rivington Terraced Gardens, which I've featured in a number of my posts here. Having wandered through the gardens and up to The Pigeon Tower, it's rare that I'll make the extra trek to the top of The Pike, but on this occasion, I'd skipped the gardens entirely as The Pike was the target I was heading for.
The route was simple, park at the car park on the moorland road that crosses from Rivington to Belmont and head up the direct, but crumbling path to the Pigeon Tower, then up the last bit to The Pike. Easy. Well, easy, but quite steep, I'm sure it didn't used to be as steep and according to the OS Maps, it's only about 300ft of ascent, but boy did I feel it. From The Pigeon Tower, it's only another 150ft of ascent to the top of The Pike and then you've got a commanding view across the gardens out to the Irish Sea.
The camera for this trip was the Z8 with the trusty old 24-70 f/2.8S plus the 70-180 f/2.8, although most (if not all) of the sunset shots are taken with the 70-180. All shots taken handheld with no filters and processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23.
Remains of A Wall
I spotted this crumbling wall on my way up the steep path to the tower.
Yarrow Reservoir
The levels in Yarrow Reservoir, the highest reservoir in the Rivington Reservoir chain, are looking pretty low at the minute. All of them are to be honest, although I've seen it lower.
Prehistoric Plug Sockets
The British mains plug and socket are legendary pieces of engineering design and these stone examples show how we've been working on this design at least since the late Neolithic. Probably.
Arch Glow
The shadows cast on the inside of these arches caught my eye as the trees casting them were rattled by the strong, chilly wind (ah, British summertime!).
Backlit Trees
Not my usual careful woodland setup, just casually grabbed leaning over a fence. This little strip of woodland runs alongside the track leading up to The Pike. I don't think you can get into it, which is a pity because it has some neat looking trees that get nicely lit at this time, but getting a good angle on them from the path is a bit problematic.
The Pike
Another 150ft of climb later and I'm at the top of The Pike.
Variations On A Theme
I eventually managed to snag one of the benches at the side of the monument and sat there for around an hour as the sun went down taking a few hundred bracketed shots. The view from the hill is stunning on a clear night and this evening proved particularly good.
Not only do you have views of the nearby moors and woods to enjoy, but you can see out to the Irish Sea and on a clear day, the peaks of Snowdonia are visible looking South West (ish) with the peaks of The Lake District visible to the North West (ish). On this occasion, The Lake District fells were clearly visible, but Snowdonia was a bit more hazy, so I tended to concentrate on views in the West to North quadrant of the compass.
I was also fortunate on this occasion to find the Irish Sea Permafog™ was undergoing maintenance and therefore would not be making an appearance, meaning I actually got to enjoy seeing the sun disappear below the horizon for a change. The sky was pretty clear, but there were a good few strategically placed clouds in the sky to make matters a bit more interesting. On the whole, this is one the best sunsets I've witnessed in a long while.
At this point I'd started making my way back down from The Pike, hence the change in foreground.
Returning past The Pigeon Tower I took this shot. Unfortunately, a young couple had driven up and parked right in front of the damned thing, meaning a bit of digital painting was required to remove them from the final image.
