My name is Paul.
Winnat’s fields on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
At the end of Hope Valley, Winnat’s Pass climbs sharply up from the village of Castleton through craggy hills criss-crossed with dry stone walls made from the lumps of limestone that are scattered across the landscape.
Across Loxley Valley on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
Quick bike ride yesterday evening, circling up through Worrall and Oughtibridge and back through Bradfield. It was lovely and cool and clear, the sky almost completely clear above but with enough cloud on the horizon to give the sky some texture.
I didn’t stop for a proper shoot, just hopped off my bike here and there to take the odd snap. Perhaps it’s that (along with my cracked rib) why I was having trouble focusing, although I suspect the mechanism on my Sigma 28-70 mm is going. Or maybe I just want to think that as it would give me an excuse to fork out on one of those proper Canon landscape lenses I’ve been drooling over…
evening clouds over Edale on Flickr.
Kinder Scout on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
At the head of the Vale of Edale, where the River Noe has its source, sits Kinder Scout, a moorland plateau which includes the highest point in the Peak District National Park, indeed I think in all England except for the North York Moors and the Lake District (the latter has many peaks half again the height or more).
The Pennine Way, a walking route that goes all the way to the Scottish border, begins in Edale and crosses Kinder Scout. It was also the site of the famous mass trespass in 1932, where workers (principally from Manchester and Sheffield) converged in opposition to the heavily enforced exclusion of the public from large parts of the British countryside, which were maintained by wealthy landowners, often for pheasant hunting. This action saw the birth of the Ramblers Association and lead directly to the founding of the National Parks and, ultimately, The Countryside Rights of Way Act in the year 2000.
In the lower centre of the picture you can see the small village of Barber Booth.
cloud shadows over Mam Tor on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
The view back from Rushup Edge. Despite the wind it was lovely up there, warm and summery with the cloud shadows moving across the land in stately ballet. Even sitting or kneeling it was difficult to keep steady, so I laid down on the soft grass at the edge of the ridge.
glorious summer on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
I had a wonderful afternoon cycling around the Hope and Edale valleys in North Derbyshire. The views from Rushup Edge into the Vale of Edale were particularly stunning. I’d hoped to be there for the magic hour, with the sun going down right at the end of the valley, but was a bit early and thought if I hung around for another three hours I’d struggle getting back, so headed toward home via the bridleway past Mam Tor.
I took around 600 photos so will be going through them over the next couple of days, but thought I’d upload a few that caught my eye just as they are, straight from the camera.
This was looking back across Edale from a ways past Mam Tor. The sun wasn’t yet low enough to pick out the texture of the landscape as well as it would later that evening, but looking in toward it slightly I loved the softness that the glare gives the shot, and the lens flare really captures how summery it was - although not the wind that always seems to blast along the ridge.
silence on Flickr.
clouds over the valley on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
At the moment this overlook with a view out over Broomhead Reservoir is one of my favourite places. I’d gone out on my bike, really hoping to catch the magic hour later (the direction of sunset would be pretty much straight down from the head of the valley) but just as I arrived these swirls of vapour formed off the surface of the water and danced up the valley. I hadn’t yet set up my tripod so just grabbed the camera from my bag and started shooting.
oblivious of the approaching storm on Flickr.
Ladybower from Stanage Edge on Flickr.
Stanage Edge is part of an outcropping of millstone grit (the local course sandstone), part of the same ridge that winds its way through the landscape forming Curbar and Froggat Edges to the South, through Burbage, Stanage, and High Neb. The gritstone gives the Dark Peak its name; it forms a cap that sits atop the limestone visible in the White Peak part of the national park, and can be a bleak, wild place. Much of it has never been wooded, being too high and windswept for trees to colonise since the glaciers retreated from the area a little over six thousand years ago. Most of the area is covered with tough grass and heather, with the characteristic jut of the grey boulders, carved by wind and rain.
The soil is peaty (many of the rivers and streams run the colour of tea), but shot through with sand from eroded conglomerate and is often more boulder than soil. This lack of utility for agriculture is why the area is still a wilderness; only the tough sheep can make use of the land, and even then the meagre herds stretch over large areas to find sustenance.
As a child most summer weekends would involve a trip out here, a bus ride out of the city with potted meat sandwiches and bottles of pop which would be placed in a stream to keep cool while I and all my friends that my mother had rounded up would explore and climb, seeing who could travel the furthest without stepping on soil or grass or swarming up some of the great up-ended slabs of rock like mountain goats.
If I ever move away it will have to be to somewhere with comparable terrain, and this place will still live in my bones.
