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:-