Sunset On The Moors
The weather was awful on Wednesday morning, but after lunchtime things brightened up considerably and by teatime it was perfect walking weather, but having settled in for a lethargic day around the house it took me a few more hours to summon enough energy in order to head out for a walk and as such, it was 19:30 before my boots hit the moors.
I hadn't planned on going too far, maybe just a short walk to the quarries on Black Coppice, or a wander up Black Brook. I chose the latter and threaded my way through the White Coppice quarry and onto the moorland path that follows the line of the river. There is a lower path closer to the river, but I figured that would be pretty treacherous after the heavy rain earlier in the day, it's treacherous enough in good conditions and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to slowly pick my way along it.
Anyway, at the point where the brook runs through a double bend before heading up to its source on the moors, there's a point where, in dry conditions, you can cross to the other side, after the morning's heavy rain, this was more of a challenge, requiring me to carefully wade into the river as far as I could without the water coming over the top of my boots or slipping on the slimy stones and then taking a short leap to arrive safely on the other side.
From here I had two choices. Follow the somewhat dull path back along this side of the river to Black Coppice or, head up the steep moorland slope to the top of Grain Pole Hill and then loop back to Black Coppice via Stronstrey Bank. Feeling a little more energetic than I had when I originally set out I chose the latter.
I was quite breathless by the time I reached the summit of Grain Pole Hill, those good old beta blockers doing their job there as I tried to maintain a reasonable pace. My fitness has improved significantly over the past few months, but even moderate physical activity can become challenging when your heart is being chemically rev limited to 120 BPM.
The views at the top were great and it was starting to look like there might be a chance of a half decent sunset occurring if I stayed out long enough to catch it.
From Grain Pole Hill I headed back down to Stronstrey Bank, a steep slope that marks the boundary of the open moors from the more cultivated land below and eventually leads to Black Coppice where I was thinking of shooting the sunset from in one of its two quarries.
Along the way I spotted something moving in the grass up ahead, this turned out to be quite an unexpected and exciting encounter, as revealed in the photos below.
For this wander I decided to take the Nikon Z8 with the Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8S and the little Nikkor 70-180 f/2.8. For once, both lenses got a decent workout.
Trees at White Coppice
This group of trees stand beside the river at White Coppice, just below the entrance to the quarry.
Black Brook
This shot was taken looking down Black Brook towards White Coppice after I'd just crossed the river. Grain Pole Hill is off camera to my left.
The River Valley
Ascending a little way up the side of Grain Pole Hill gives a much better overview of the valley that is home to Black Brook.
White Coppice to Coppice Stile
Looking back towards the river from the slopes of Grain Pole Hill. The green mass rising from the left is White Coppice and the tree at its summit marks the ruins of Coppice Stile, the first of the ruined moorland farms that you'd encounter walking up to Heapey Moor via the main path from White Coppice.
The crumbling dry stone walls here fascinate me for some reason. These form a large, roughly horseshoe shape, separating Black Coppice on this side of the river and White Coppice on the far side, from the open moors. The wall on this side runs down to the river and is met with a matching wall on the opposite bank running back up the hillside to Coppice Stile and beyond. The scale of these walls is surprising. In places they're significantly higher than most of the dry stone walls you see around here. Typically these walls stand just over waist height on my 6ft frame, but parts of this loop tower above me which seems unusual. Still, they make for good subjects on a bright sunny evening like this. Just don't get too close to the tall parts, they're not looking particularly stable these days.
Grain Pole Hill
This is looking back towards Grain Pole Hill as I was coming back down again. Honestly, it looks a lot steeper from the other side.
Sheep
I sometimes wonder if the sheep (other animals are available) have any appreciation of the beautiful landscape they reside in, beyond just seeing it as somewhere to eat grass and poop. On several occasions when there's been a nice sunset on the cards, I've come across large groups of sheep bedding down for the night, having positioned themselves to get a good view of the spectacle, so maybe they do. This pair look like they're appreciating the moment.
Soft Light Before Sunset
By this point, I've made it down to the top of Stronstrey Bank and was looking for nice compositions amongst the rolling fields and long shadows below me. This is an area just North of The Nab, you can just see The Nab rising up on the left of the frame. I like the way the backlit atmosphere begins to glow at this stage in a sunset, emphasising the depth of the receding land and giving everything a slightly soft and peaceful feel.
Something Moved In The Grass...
As I walked the path along the top of Stronstrey Bank, dividing my concentration between the landscape unfolding beside me and the path before me, I spotted movement in the grass up ahead. It was the briefest flash of something light brown and then it was gone. As I reached the spot where I'd seen movement, I stopped and scanned the grass between me and the fence that runs along the top of the bank. There was nothing to be seen. No movement or signs of anything hiding in the grass. I was about to move on when I saw what looked like a face in the shadows on the other side of the fence. I couldn't be sure what it was, it was small and could have just been an oddly shaped tree stump or rock at this distance. I had the 24-70 on the camera at this point, so I slowly raised it to my eye and took this unimpressive picture at 70mm, my intention being to zoom in and see if what I thought was a face, really was a face.
Can you see it here?
Sure enough, my initial thoughts were right. A moorland fox was cautiously watching me from the other side of the fence. It didn't seem to be planning to move on any time soon, so I slowly reached into my bag for the 70-180, but as I did this it turned and disappeared into the shadows, so this quick snap (cropped from the previous image and upscaled in Topaz) is all I got. Still it was quite a treat to encounter one of these elusive creatures in the wild. In many years of walking the moors this is the first fox I've seen up there.
Sunset On The Fylde Coast
As sunset loomed, the distant shoreline, roughly 30 miles away began to get more interesting. This is looking towards Blackpool with its famous tower, now surrounded by windfarms in the Irish Sea.
March Of The Pylons
Looking to the right of Blackpool, from my vantage point, an army of pylons appeared to be massing.
Sunset At The Quarry
By the time I reached the first quarry at Black Coppice the sun was hiding behind a low lying cloud, but I could see the gap beneath it, so I scouted around for a good viewpoint and waited for it to emerge below the cloud. Framing these sort of images with a mirrorless camera is not as straightforward as you might think. Even equipped with an excellent EVF as the Z8 is, with the exposure set to anything like what was required here, the quarry looked pitch black through the viewfinder, so I needed to over expose in order to frame up the shot and then drop the exposure compensation back down to the inky depths to shoot it, hoping I didn't shift my framing at all while I faffed around. An optical viewfinder might have made this a lot easier in terms of framing it up, although at least using an EVF the sun is not going to burn your retina for your troubles.
Dramatic Clouds
One final shot as the sun was disappearing over the horizon. This time I'm looking North across the White Coppice cricket ground towards Brinscall (the sun was setting off to the West as it has a habit of doing). Here it was all about the rich colours in the clouds, so I underexposed to stop them from clipping at all and then teased them out in the edit. The landscape below was very dark in this image, but has come back out of the shadows remarkably unscathed by noise and retaining good colour too.
