When I have my chemo, as regular readers know, the night before consists of little, or no, sleep. This was the case again this time around, so I knew I was going to to be dosing myself with Night Nurse and needed to keep busy during the day, in case I fell asleep and my rhythms were disturbed. Overnight there were reports of 'wintry weather' so I wondered if it was worth trying to find some photogenic winteryness.
I headed off from Manchester up the A6 hoping that Lyme Park might be under a dusting.....no luck. That was disappointing and I had pre-visualised The Cage surrounded by a lovely blanket of crisp snow. Red deer building snowdeers and throwing snowballs (I have an active imagination).
I pressed on heading towards Buxton, and as I reached Whaley Bridge I saw the tops of the hills were covered with a light dusting of icing sugar. Bingo! I pushed on to the edge of the Derbyshire Dales to a place called Sparrowpit, which is small and famous for an incredible hairpin bend in the road which scares the bejaysus out of you the first time you encounter it - especially if you are coming from the east.
I find in these situations that as soon as I stumble across even a vaguely photographic opportunity I pounce on it with the theory that if I pass up this (first) opportunity - however scrawny - I might miss out. So I parked up at Sparrowpit and took a picture of a snow tree.
Not the greatest picture by any means, but at least I had one under my belt. A little further up the road was a small copse bounded by a dry stone wall, which made for a weird composition which even with a bit of cropping in photoshop still doesn't look quite right.
I liked the snow blown on to the outer edges of the tree trunks and branches. I probably need to lose a bit more foreground.
I took a few more shots of a broken down old barn, but they didn't really work, so I headed off to get some dinner. I chose to move on about three miles from Sparrowpit to a small truckstop called The Yonderman Cafe, where I'd had brekkie on a previous scouting mission.
What surprised me a little is that about a mile and half on from Sparrowpit, the snow just disappeared. Green rolling hills and stone walls and not a drop of snow. Some snow was evident on the far hills but nothing in between. A little oasis of snowlessness.
Anyway, at the cafe I had a splendid repast.
Steak and onion pie, chips, peas and gravy. Northern boys just love gravy.
I had intended to visit the small village of Litton, which is about a mile from the cafe where I had sussed out some locations a few months ago, but I could see this was going to be fruitless as there weren't no snow. So I headed back towards Sparrowpit and turned off on the road to Wheston which was another location I'd scoped last year.
I parked up, put me wellies on and headed off up the hill. The temperature gauge on the car told me it was about 1 degree but with the windchill it felt much colder. Nice as the sun was out, but definitely cold.
I found my way to a rather nice lone tree and had a go at taking a few shots, balanced precariously on a dry stone wall to get the whole thing in. I also used, for the first time, my red filter (this is something we monochrome photographers need to use as we can't do clever stuff in photoshop with a pure mono image).
Quite pleased with that, but feel perhaps I need to get a bit more of the stile in the foreground in the shot. That's going to require a bit more precarious dry stone wall balancing.
There were some more places I could try close by, but I decided to head off to see what the snow was like near Castleton. Rather spookily, as I drove close to the Blue John mines an article on Radio 4 started talking about.....the Blue John mines. Eeek!
And the answer to the snow question was, "quite nice". It was drifting in the high wind too. I quite like this image of Mam Tor with the big sky and the side of the hill bathed in sunlight. I also like that if you peer closely, you can see people climbing up the ridge towards the trig point on the summit.
I checked out another couple of locations for future opportunities and then headed back home on the road to Chapel-en-le-Frith, where I came across this little valley with a farm in it. I found a place to park up, and took a few more shots. The light wasn't perfect, and it was a pain to find a good place to get a decent composition (I tried getting the lane to the farm as a lead-in but it didn't work) but I quite like this one. Maybe a bit more off the sky....
I returned home, had some nice warm house, some home made chicken soup and, at the end of the evening, some Night Nurse and a FANTASTIC nights kip.
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