Scouting for hills

Another week of dreary weather passes by here in the Uk but undetrerred myself and Dave decided to head out Sunday to a spot we visited briefly a few years ago now in the hope there might be some fog lingering about. We also wanted to pay a visit to the so called Valley of Snowdrops on Exmoor but more on that later!

As usual we had a catch up chat in the car on the way over discussing all things photography related, current fave tv shows and the usual banter, which passed the time quickly on the hour or so trip over. We drove over the top of Dunkery beacon which was shrouded in thick fog and both of us were instantly like a couple of labradors waiting for the ball to be thrown! Our hopes were dashed as the ball never materialised and as we drove down the other side of the hill the fog faded away replaced by that stuff that looks like fog but is alway 200 meters away! However the wood we were visiting was right there so it would seem daft not to explore a bit.

My first impression as I got out of the car was I had somehow been transprted to Scotland as the trees surrounding the car park are all Scots pines. They are rare in our area so made for a welcome change to photograph over the more usual oak and beech we often encounter in our wanderings. I was half expecting a few wild Haggis to emerge from the undergrowth in search of their favoured food, the flowers of the Shortbread plants.

See, it looks Scottish right? RIGHT?

So as you can see the camera was picking up a bit of atmosphere on the images, unlike my eyes so we decided to head off and explore for a while. Dave had visited here once since we both came last and knew of a couple of nice scenes so we headed there first. Despite it being the depths of winter there was still quite a lot of colour about with plenty of young beech clinging onto their orange leaves,the brighter greens of moss and lichen along with the dark greeens of gorse and holly and the deep reds of the dead bracken. It made for messy but colourful images!

Even had some brief fog move in on this one!

The fog was drifting in and out quite quickly so proved challenging to get any in the images before it moved away but I did manage it on a couple of the images. I found this wood to offer a very different dynamic to other I have photographed recently, with no real stand out characterful trees it meant looking for the wider scenes among the chaos which proved to be challenging but fun!

As we were heading back to the car I stumbled across the scene below and instantly took a liking to it. there was balance, some light and a lot about the character of the wood in this one spot and it turned out to be my favourite image of the day!

Actually like this image a LOT.

After about an hour we lost the final patches of atmosphere and felt we had got the most of the conditions so headed back to the car to drive over to the “Valley of Snowdrops”. But of course on the way over we were distracted by the return of the fog on the top of the hill and ended up exploring another section that offered a deep gulley with lots of gnarly oaks hanging off the edges, reminiscent of Dartmoor. It was quite the atmospheric enviroment and will be coming back to visit it in the Spring and Autumn for sure!

Very creepy spot!

After we finished up at the hollow we finally made it to the “Valley of Snowdrops” (in my head I am saying this in a loud booming voice!). After paying the nice old man five pounds for parking and entry we started the what i thought would be a simple walk to the valley………no, nope and non. The paths were incredibly muddy and the parking area was at least a mile from the location….a mile down it felt like! I got about halfway before I realised with my knee and the lung capacity of a small rodent due to years of smoking, I wasn’t going to enjoy the climb back out of the valley. I took the decision to bail whilst the much more lithe Dave continued down to view the carpets of snowdrops lining the river. As it turned out I made the right choice as Dave informed me it wasn’t so much a carpet but a scattering of small rugs, nay, doormats in the valley! It turned out to be messy, bad light and very few of the little buggers there so we left that place very disappointed and realising why the old man in the car park was so happy!

So a mixed bag on Sunday but all in all a good morning out and another couple of stories to tell! Thats all for this week, toodles!