Crich, en passant

Setting time aside for this week's outing was extremely difficult, what with visitors over the Easter weekend, and putting the house on the market. As Tuesday dawned I had made no definite plans for a photographic expedition, but also knew that the rest of the week would be just as hectic - so I needed to get cracking.

As luck would have it, however, I had to make a trip down to Duffield to deliver some papers to Sue's client. So after making a mad dash down the M1 and A38 I decided to take a scenic route back and go though Crich (otherwise known as Carr Dale in the Peak Practice TV series).

On a hill just outside the village is Crich Stand, a monument which serves as a memorial to men of the Sherwood Foresters regiment who died in the First and Second World wars. The Sherwood Foresters mainly recruited from the two counties of Nottingham and Derbyshire, and the monument can be seen from many places in both counties.

Travelling around Derbyshire I have of course seen the monument from a distance, but have never actually visited it before. It resembles a lighthouse and one is able to climb to the top to get magnificent views of the mid-Derbyshire landscape. When I reached the top I must admit it was a bit of a surprise view for me. What I had not realised was that a lot of the hill on which the monument stands is no longer there - a large quarry has eaten away into one side of it.

So, as with the canal walk a few weeks ago, I can present a picture of two halves: contrasting the natural beauty of sky and hills with the ravages of man's activities in the foreground:-



There are many such 'scars' on the landscape in Derbyshire, which has been mined and quarried for lead, coal, fluorspar and limestone for centuries - no wonder Derbyshire was one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution. Times change though, and many of the former trappings of industrialisation have now been transformed into tourist and recreational facilities: railway lines are now cycling trails, opencast mining sites are now country parks and nature reserves. But roads are still being built and their foundations, as likely as not, originated in a hill in Derbyshire.

Descending back down to ground level I noticed that the monument now has a smaller sibling in the form of a beacon. I assumed that this would be a Millennium beacon, but on reading the plaque on it I discovered that it had been erected by the villagers of Crich in honour of the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002. Here it is, its new stone (quarried below?) shining brightly in comparison to the older monument behind it:-



You will have noticed from the two photos above that it was a fairly drab day in early spring, with no real sign yet of those fresh spring greens which can provide easy-on-the-eye landscapes. But a main aim of this blog is to flex my photpgraphic muscles by accepting whatever conditions prevail and get at least one reasonable photographic result. So for the second week running I found myself seeing in black and white, giving the shot below similar post processing treatment to last week: selecting the sky and enhancing its contrast, converting to monochrome and applying local contrast enhancement:-

Town and Country

Spring is coming and I am looking forward to the arrival of all the spring wildflowers which will keep me photographically busy in April, May and June. In planning this weeks expedition I thought I would have to curb my impatience for a few weeks and restrict my photographic excursions to other subjects.

So I decided to visit Buxton, a Victorian Spa town in the Peak District. It's a good few years since I've had a look round the town of which I have fond memories from childhood: back in the pre-Beeching fifties, when even a small country town like Ashbourne had a railway service, a visit to Buxton on a steam train was a favourite Sunday or Bank Holiday treat. I remember sunny afternoons spent in the Pavilion Gardens feeding the ducks and eating ice cream.

If Matlock Bath, with its over-abundance of fish and chip shops and amusement arcades can be considered the Blackpool of Derbyshire, then Buxton, with its Pavilion, Opera House and Crescent would have a far more upmarket parallel: something like Harrogate, or even Bath.

I started my tour in the well-tended Pavilion Gardens, still well populated with water birds. These two were very friendly with each other and seemed to be suffering from a spot of species confusion:-



I watched them for several minutes, the goose following the swan everywhere it went. I couldn't see any other geese or swans around, and they really looked the best of pals!

From the gardens I continued on into the town itself. I was a little disappointed by the current state of the town. It seems a little drab and in need of a facelift. Indeed, whilst stopping for a coffee, I read in a local paper that decisions are about to be taken on plans for re-furbishing the famous crescent. I also noticed that the famous conservatory in the Pavilion is closed because of the ubiquitous 'health and safety' reasons. And round the rear of the pump house I found an appropriate opinion on the surroundings by a local artist:-



Behind the Pavilion there is a road containing some very large Victorian houses. One in particular caught my eye and I immediately thought it had the possibility of making a nice monochrome shot. In processing it I initially struggled to get a result I was happy with: I just couldn't get the right sort of contrast to give the sense of drama that I had envisaged when pressing the shutter. I was almost ready to give up when I had the idea to try a technique called local contrast enhancement, which I sometimes use to give added 'pop' to a colour shot. This involves using Unsharp Mask with a very large Radius (50) and a small Amount (20%). I've no idea what this actually does at pixel level, but to my delight it produced just the result I wanted:-



To me this sums up Buxton: a glorious past, a little drab at present, but not totally run down, and a prime candidate for refurbishment and improvement in the future.

There was still plenty of afternoon left, so I decided that on the way back home I would pay a quick visit to Tideswell Dale, one of my favourite dales for wild flowers, just to see if there were any signs of early arrivals. Walking down into the dale from the car park at first I thought I was on a wild goose chase. But then as I got to the small bridge that crosses the stream I did discover a few very early Butterbur flowers. The flowers on this plant appear before the leaves (which are very large and rhubarb like). In a few weeks time the banks of the stream will be absolutely covered in these conical pink flowers. For now I was glad to be able to see the few early ones and capture this specimen:-

Canal Walk

On a nice Summer's evening we occasionally bike along the Chesterfield Canal towpath, working up a thirst and appetite for a pint and a sandwich. The Chesterfield Canal Society has done sterling work over the last few decades, dredging and cleaning up the disused canal and making a good stretch of it navigable again.

The restoration of the canal, combined with the decline of industry along its banks, has made some stretches of it, from Brimington towards Staveley, quite picturesque and has provided many havens for the return of wild life.

This week I thought I would walk along the canal to see what sort of condition it is in at the end of Winter, before Spring provides its beautifying blanket of fresh greens and white and pink blossoms.

I decided to walk from Brimington towards Chesterfield, where the canal wanders between our two temples of consumerism, Sainsbury and Tesco, is backed onto by various industrial estates, and runs parallel to the River Rother (not a pretty sight, even in Spring and Summer).

The tow path was slightly wet from an earlier shower and provided some interesting textures in the now bright sunlight.



However, after a hundred yards or so I came across the following 'landscape', which struck me as a fine contrast between the beauty of nature and the ravages of man. The glorious blue sky with fluffy white clouds would look well above a vista of green fields and hills, but here it provides light for an altogether different scene.



Continuing on I came across more and more scenes of discarded detritus. I think they can all be summed up to 'perfection' in this view of tree-borne litter on the banks of the Rother.



The camera is of course very selective, and I could have ignored the unpleasant areas and concentrated on the swans and ducks, or the very early blossom beginning to show, and given an entirely different gloss to my walk. So, to provide balance I will end with what I think is my best shot of the day. A simple, almost colourless, reflection study; formed by the breeze on the canal's surface, abetted by the sunlight and merely recorded by me. It's dark and sombre but the little colour in it, to me, represents a glimmer of hope for a tidier future.

Snow capped mountains....

We've booked our summer holidays this year in the French Alps, so I am eagerly anticipating getting many photos of snow capped mountains. Although we have been to the Austrian Tyrol in the past, those trips were 'pre-digital' so this year I am hoping for many shots to keep me happily engaged in the digital darkroom next winter.

I missed the chance of a practice run when we had a rare snowy weekend a couple of weeks ago, so when Sunday evening's weather bulletin forecast snowy showers for Monday morning I gathered my kit together for an early start.

Snowy showers actually turned out to be a few flurries in Chesterfield, which managed to give a very patchy covering of white to the local fields: not much more than a heavy frost would have done. But I told myself it would be a different story in the heart of the Peak District, where the familiar contours of Mam Tor and Rushup Edge would be completely transformed by a good layer of fresh sparkling snow.

After loading the car I set off in brilliant sunshine accompanied by an unaccompanied Bach violin sonata playing on Radio 3. The aural experience of rising and falling arpeggio and scale passages punctuated with guttural double-stopping combined with the visual experience of the countryside bathed in bright winter sunshine to so mellow my mood that I was quite content to follow a large lorry slowly negotiating the narrow road through Barlow and up to Owler Bar.

On the road above the Longshaw Estate I now glanced a view of my destination. I stopped in a layby to assess the state of the distant hills. As you can see from the following photo there was some snow on the hills, but not as much as I was hoping for.



There were, however, plenty of clouds in the distance which might result in some further snowfall: I might even get a dramatic view of a blizzard rolling over the edge of the Kinder Scout plateau! Arrival at the National Trust car park near Mam Tor soon dashed these hopes. No further snow, and a distinct lack of clouds likely to dump a quick landscape transforming layer.

I set off up the fairly short but very steep path to the summit of Mam Tor. It was quite calm in the car park. It started getting breezy after a few hundred yards. By the time I reached the summit I had to hug the trig point to stop being blown over! How on earth did the builders of the Iron Age fort which used to stand here survive this environment? Nice views, but I would need triple glazing to even consider a place up here.

Hanging on to my new-found friend the trig point I did just manage to wrestle the camera from its bag and get a few shots in, the best of which was this view of Rushup Edge:



After this I hastily beat a retreat down the path to the car park and then made the short journey down through Winnats Pass to Castleton to have a warming cup of coffee. Newly refreshed I then wandered round this village of tea shops, pubs and gift shops. There are many Peak District villages I would love to live in, but not those, like this, which have had to give themselves up totally to the tourist trade.

Passing the village church I found a suitable position to photograph it from. A lane runs past it, bordered by a stone wall about five foot high, at the top of which is the churchyard. So I was able to get a view, complete with snowdrops, as though I had taken it at ground level. So here is this week's 'Picture of the Week' (yet another Derbyshire church):-