Anglezarke
With the recent reopening of the Heapey Dam, I can now easily reach the woods along the North East shore of Anglezarke reservoir. As such, I've spent the last couple of weeks revisiting and exploring that area.
My initial idea was to do a full lap of the reservoir shoreline starting and ending at the dam. I'd estimated it to be about 6 miles, but in reality it turned out to be about 4.3, however it still felt like 6, go figure.
Completing this walk gave me the great idea to make a video of the walk as it's quite a nice and varied route and so, early one morning, armed with the Z6iii, the 24-70 f/4S, a lightweight tripod, microphone and variable ND filter I set off, or at least I thought I did.
When I arrived at the dam, I realised I didn't have the Arca adapter plate required to fit the tripod head. All of my cameras have variants of Arca L-brackets attached, which work a treat on my big tripod, but I don't like carrying that more than a mile or two, but the video head on the travel tripod expects the bevels of the Arca plate to be aligned in the opposite direction (i.e. along the direction you're pointing the camera, not along the film plane), the L-bracket style bevels are at 90 degrees to what it requires, so I packed everything up, jumped back in the car and went home to grab the correct plate, then drove back to the dam again.
This time, I set up the tripod, mounted the camera and started taking shots around the dam. I very quickly noticed that my 24-70 lens seemed a bit short on reach. That's because it was the 17-30. When I set out, I'd checked the lens already on the camera was a collapsing one, but didn't bother to check which collapsing lens it was. As it turned out, it was the wrong collapsing lens. So, pack everything up again, jump back in the car and nip home again to grab the 24-70.
On the third time I returned to the dam I had everything needed, but by this point it was approaching midday. Still, I set out, hopeful I could shoot this video and then proceeded to stumble over my narration (it was going to be a walking and talking kind of thing, although, hopefully a bit more cinematic than the usual action cam based affairs). As I was doing this a number of people passed me, stopped for a chat and continued on their way.
After about a 90 minutes, I reached the end of the first section of woods, something that would take me about 10 minutes if I was just walking and taking photos. I even ran into one of the people who'd passed me earlier who was on his way back and commented that I hadn't got very far.
Eventually, after about four hours, I'd covered just over a mile of the four mile walk and realised there was no way I was going to get round the full thing on that day, so I gave up and went home, planning to return and complete the rest of it later in the week.
However the weather was having none of it and subsequent days have either been too hot or wet to consider continuing filming, so instead, I returned with a traditional handheld stills setup and looped the reservoir with those.
Return With The Z8
On This occasion, I returned with the Z8 and the 24-70 f/2.8S. The weather wasn't really conducive to taking photos, so I just came away with a few tree studies and wider shot of the reservoir, oh, and this bonus Roe Deer that I startled right at the beginning of the walk. I didn't have a longer lens on me and even if I had, I didn't have time to swap them, so this is a tiny crop taken at 70mm and upscaled in Topaz. It's come out surprisingly well and says a lot about the quality of that lens.
A wider shot of Anglezarke reservoir. This is the sight you see as you leave the initial woodland section of the walk.
Trees in the woods. These are along a path that sticks close to the waters edge that I didn't actually take on this walk, but I do use on my return visit a few days later (pictures below).
Trees beside the road.
Return With The X-T50
On the next day that I felt like attempting the loop again, it was much brighter and hotter, so I decided to go light and took the little X-T50 along with the Fujifilm 10-24 f/4. I also had the Sigma 28-50 f/2.8 in the bag, but I'm really not a fan of this lens and think the 10-24 gives a much better image for its range, so it didn't get a lot of use and I didn't shoot anything particularly compelling with it.
As is traditional with the X-T50, I shot everything in ACROS+R. As they're all raw shots anyway, I did try converting some of these back to colour in Capture One, but I'm not keen on how they looked, irrespective of the film sim used as a starting point, so I'm sticking to monochrome for this set.
With this being a bright, sunny day, these pictures have a contrasty look reminiscent of when I used to shoot on Ilford Pan-F back in the 80's.
Trees from the first set of woods. The first four of these are at the shoreline, overlooking the reservoir.
In the second section of woodland, this tree stands out as quite a menacing character. In years past, I've photographed it around sunset with the GFX, but haven't been able to easily reach this spot for the past couple of years due to the work on the dam, but now that I can get here again without a massive roundtrip, I look forward to getting the GFX down here in autumn to make the most of the changing colours.
The next three images were taken from the steep path that climbs over the hill separating Anglezarke reservoir from its nearby chum High Bullough reservoir.
As you come down the other side of the hill, the view opens out a little and you can see the reservoir again.
Here I'm back on the main path running alongside the reservoir below what's know at The Viewing Point. This particular tree looks a bit angry.
Eventually, I reached the Yarrow Dam, this is at the far edge of the reservoir from my starting point at Heapey Dam and is probably the spot most local visitors recognise when visiting Anglezarke (it's often packed with parked cars). This is a boundary stone, the little plaque beside it reads;
"Bears an inscription with historical significance, during the second world war it is said to have been defaced in an effort to confound enemy troops in case of invasion. The stone serves as a reminder of the past and measures taken during war time."
Finally, I'm on the homeward leg of the journey. By this point I'd decided to take the easiest route back and headed down the little lane that runs below the Knowsley Dam, this is easier on the feet than the footpath that sticks close to the waters edge. There's another block of woodland at the end of this before reaching the Heapey dam itself, but nothing in there piqued my interest. However, I did quite like this tree at the side of the road, which is the same one seen in the final colour shot at the end of the Nikon set.
So despite the disastrous video production, I did enjoy the subsequent walks and will attempt to finish the video, hopefully publishing it before autumn kicks in (no guarantees on which autumn).
