A Grand Day Out

Well, a quick look at the weather forecast determined that I was taking today off.  According to”The Times” (so it must be true!) last weekend was the optimum time to see the autumn colours.  Given that the in laws were stopping over I didn’t want to appear more rude then usual to them (joke), so I had to defer to today to visit Bolehill Woods and Padley Gorge.

Before “doing” Bolehill, I revisited a staple of mine, Mother Cap and “that” millstone beside it near Surprise View Car Park – mainly to put right with film an HDR abomination that I created some years ago.

Shocking isn’t? Hopefully some 120 Provia 100 will right this wrong, but we’ll see!

Before that I went up to Mother Cap, which is a lump of rock about the size of house that seems to have avoided glacial and/or wind erosion.  I took a couple of pinhole exposures using Pan F, so they were in the region of 13mins with variable light.

I then headed off to Bolehill woods.  Most of the silver birch appear heavily denuded of leaves.  That said there was still enough interest to keep me busy for a couple of hours pottering around.  It was also just nice to sit and have a coffee and take in the scene and all the sounds around.

After lunch at the Grindleford Cafe, I headed up Padley Gorge.  I was slightly concerned as for a week day there was a lot of tripods, cameras and LOTS of L glass wandering about.  I even spoke to some of them!!  I did find that having my old Bronica with me cut through all the Canon/Nikon digital willy waving, because (as we all know)  film is best.  There was one gent that I spoke to from Lichfield, he was at a loss as to what to do, as he said he had been up  and down the Gorge a couple of times already and he wasn’t sure whether to go up again – he was visibly excited about the light and the fantastic conditions – which was quite infectious.

I had planned on catching the sun set over at Hordron Stone Circle, as the sun sets on or near Win Hill at this time of year, which is meant to be aligned with one of the stones.  However, I was having too much fun in the Gorge, despite my Wellington boot malfunction which I only discovered on entering the stream #coldwetfeet.

I have to say that it was one of my best photography days for a while, the light was fantastic, especially after 1400hrs when the sun shone right up the Gorge illuminating the trees around some of the waterfalls in the depths of the Gorge.  I ended up going through about 9 rolls of Provia and Velvia today – that will keep Harrison Cameras going for a while longer when I drop them in for processing tomorrow.  I’d love to go back tomorrow, however with my addiction to film I can see me going through a similar amount of film again if I did.

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