Three Days of Heather
Heather season has arrived. That five minute window when the moorland heather is at its most colourful that I always seem to just catch the tail end of. But not this year as I've still got plenty of free time on my hands, I've been determined to get out and catch it at its best. Of course, free time is not the only requirement for making the most of this brief window, you also need the right sort of weather and sufficient energy to reach the best spots.
I thought I knew what the right sort of weather was for heather. Bright sunny days with broken cloud, or a vivid sunset to draw out the reddish hue, but after this week, I'm not so sure.
Monday - X-T50
Monday had promise. As I left the White Coppice car park around 9:30, the skies were clear and the temperatures had dropped to what I'd describe as pleasant. There was even a gentle breeze in the air. I'd planned to follow Black Brook up onto the moors. This stream winds across the moors before plunging into a rocky gorge that is often lined with heather.
My energy levels were pretty low, so to mitigate this I packed very light, just taking the little X-T50 and a handful of lenses, which all neatly fit into a small Billingham shoulder bag. I didn't fancy carrying the hefty Fujinon 16-55 f/2.8, a large lens for a small camera, so I substituted the Sigma 18-50 f/2.8 instead. This is tiny and light, but it lacks an aperture ring, zooms the wrong way and has significant optical issues (serious distortion and fringing to name but too). I also packed the Fujinon 10-24 f/4, another lens that's always disappointed me, being a bit fuzzy at the corners so it doesn't get a lot of use, although the centre of the frame is pretty sharp. Finally, because there was space and it's not too heavy, I threw in the Fujinon 55-200 in case I needed a longer reach. I used this a handful of times, although non of the images are in this set. I also had my trusty old 77m B+W CPL which did double duty on both the 18-50 and 55-200 via a cascade of step up rings.
Initially, considering myself a bit out of practice at rock hopping, I ignored the river and instead scrambled up through the quarry onto the moors. Above the quarry, there's a path that follows the river, running along the top of the gorge, this is easier and safer than trying to navigate the edges of the river itself. I followed this for about 1/3rd of a mile and then found a path overgrown with ferns that leads down the steep bank of the gorge to the river.
From the bottom of the path, it's a short walk back downstream to reach this spot.
Heading upstream from the previous location, you quickly arrive at this spot. When the river is in full spate, this is a fast flowing canyon with hidden depth. On a day like this, when there's been no rain for a couple of days, the water level is low and instead it's just a precarious rocky drop. Still, I wouldn't want to fall down there as I've no idea how deep it actually is, so I made my way along the rocky ledge with great care.
At the top of the gorge the river does a little dog leg to the left and then right into another steep sided valley. Someone walking up the river reaches this tree just before that point. Just beyond here, there's a place you can cross the river to reach Black Coppice.
The Black Coppice Boundary Wall as seen from the level of the river. The path leading up to Grain Pole Hill runs alongside this.
Having walked some way along the path that runs above the Black Coppice side of the gorge, this is the view looking back towards the moors. The tree from the last shot but one can be seen on the left above the gorge. You can also see the main route of the river bending off to the left and then sweeping back round behind the large purple covered hill which is where Anglezarke Moor meets Heapey Moor. The valley running off to the distant right is a small tributary from Anglezarke Moor that feeds into Black Brook.
Near the end of the walk, I'm stood above the Black Coppice quarries looking towards Healey Nab. For anyone who's seen Healey Nab from the M61, this view is from the opposite side. The reddish patch in the middle of the distant hill is the abandoned quarry where the murky depths of Blue Water may be found.
Tuesday - GFX100S
I was quite pleased with some of the pictures I got on Monday, but even at the time I was taking them, I felt they could have been a bit more detailed. As I'd enjoyed Monday's walk and the weather was still looking pretty good, I decided to have another crack at the same walk, but with a better camera. The GFX100S hasn't been getting a lot of love lately, mostly because it's heavy (well, the camera's not too bad, but its lenses are) and I've been using the more agile Z8 for birds and suchlike. The forecast for the rest of the week was looking pretty wet, so, figuring this might be the last chance to use the GFX on this years crop of heather, I decided to take the hit and packed the big Billingham bag with the GFX100S, Fujinon 20-35 f/4 and Fujinon 45-100 f/4. My set of magnetic filters also came along for the ride. I'm generally of the opinion that the GFX requires a tripod to get the most out of that 102MP sensor, but as i was a bright day, I figured I could get along without it. Also, I felt I would already be carrying too much and didn't want to burden myself any further.
Unlike the previous day, due to a weary start and deliberating over which gear to bring, it was about 15:00 by the time I had boots on the ground in White Coppice car park. The conditions were similar to Monday, but there was a lot more broken cloud in the sky. This made the skies a bit more interesting, but often led to delays when a cloud covered the sun just as I was about to take a shot.
I followed the same route as before, but detoured closer to the gorge at the top of the quarry to take this shot, looking across the gorge itself.
Having left the quarry, I spotted this rocky blast of colour from the moorland path. Again, this is looking across the gorge, with the ferns in the foreground leading down to this side of the river.
This is taken from the same location as the very first picture in this post. The lighting is different, now being mostly from in front of the camera rather than behind in the previous one, but the tonality and saturation is (to my eyes at least) much nicer than the X-T50 shot. It would be interesting to recreate this under similar conditions with the X-T50 to see if it's the better lens and sensor giving things a lift here or just the prevailing lighting conditions being more favourable.
Another shot from roughly the same spot. This one's actually a wider focal length, but I've moved down that little path you can see on the right of the previous shot to get closer to the edge of the water. I did end up scrambling down to the river and crossing onto the rocks on the left, but the images weren't really worth the effort. It's also worth noting how low the water levels are here. The river is really running at a trickle. Something that wasn't going to last.
Having carefully picked my way further upstream, I'm once again looking downstream from another trickling waterfall (just below the bottom edge of the frame).
Eventually, I reached the point where the river bends off to the right and once again, I crossed to the Black Coppice side. Here I've made my way up the Grain Pole Hill path to get a closer shot of the Black Coppice boundary wall.
Finally, I made my way back down to the Black Coppice path that runs along the top of the gorge. I was hoping to take another shot looking back at the moors, similar to the one from Monday, but with the light being behind me it just looked flat and dull. Instead I took this shot looking towards White Coppice quarry as it seemed to serve the colour and texture of the heather in amongst the grass much better.
Friday - OM1
It rained most of the day on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday wasn't looking too promising either with heavy rain in the morning. However, while I was on my weekly morning expedition to a farm shop in Brinscall, I got a good glimpse of the stormy murk that had Withnell Moor and Heapey Moor beyond completely socked in. It looked spectacular, so I decided that when I got back, I'd head up onto the moors for some atmospheric stormy weather.
Deciding which gear to take was easy on this occasion as there's only one system I'd trust in drizzly conditions; the Olympus/OM System, er, system. For most of the years when I used to walk in the mountains my E-M1 MKII + 12-100 f/4 was the kit I trusted in all weather. It's been out unprotected for hours in storms and heavy downpours, so a little bit of moorland drizzle wasn't going to worry its successor the OM1 (with the same lens).
By the time I'd finished my errands and had something to eat, it was around 13:00, so I once more headed up to White Coppice, this time with a light rainproof jacket and just the OM1+12-100 - no point carrying a heavy bag or attempting to change lenses in these sort of conditions. By the time I left the car the drizzle had stopped and conditions were reasonably good, albeit with heavily overcast skies and that's how it remained for the rest of the walk.
With the heavy rain from the past few days (and the morning) the river was now in full spate. The various waterfalls were thunderous, so I was unsure how I'd get on following the same route as the previous days, but I set off in the same direction anyway.
When I eventually scrambled down the gorge to the river, this is the sight that met me. The waterfalls, that had been trickles on the previous days were now thundering along and the level was much higher (if you compare this shot to the two earlier shots from the same spot). As I had the OM1 with its fancy Computational Photography trickery, I decided to shoot a number of handheld long exposures whenever there was a significant waterfall to be found.
This was taken a little further upstream. It's the deep channel that was pretty much empty in the first group of shots, now many feet deeper than before.
Even further upstream, I crossed the river to get this shot. The crossing point is just past the log in the previous shot. Earlier in the week, I'd just walked across, but now, the stones I'd used were underwater and the surrounding stones were wet and slippy, so crossing there was not as easy, literally involving a leap of faith to get over.
This final walk was by far the most fun, as I got more confident I visited parts of the brook I hadn't even attempted to reach earlier in the week, despite them being far more treacherous to reach. In the end, I ended up staying out for more than four hours, unheard of these days as I start getting knackered after just a couple, but I was having so much fun climbing over the rocks and solving the puzzle of how to reach certain locations that I didn't want to stop. However, I eventually had to stop, partly because I was getting tired and also because the OM1's battery ran out.
Today though, I'm paying the price. All of my body hurts every time I move. While I still scramble here and there, it's rare that I actually have to climb while out on these walks and it really shows today. My arms are aching, my feet are sore and I have muscles I'd forgotten I had complaining to me for putting them to work. I'll be fine in a couple of days though and hopefully get back up there again before too long.
There's also the matter of about 50 minutes of video footage. With the force of the river, I couldn't resist filming it at various locations. Mostly static clips up to 10-15 seconds long, but when I dumped them all on a timeline last night, they totalled around 50 minutes, so that's a lot of clips. I'm not sure if I can make anything presentable or coherent out of them, but if I do I'll let you know.
One final point. At the top, I mentioned that I thought I knew what the best weather conditions were to photograph heather, namely bright and sunny. But in some way, I think I prefer the look of the last set taken on the overcast day, they've got a moody and slightly brooding quality the other shots lack. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts?
