There is a narrow and winding dirt path which leads through the lower part of the woods. At this time of the year there is enchantment in the form of a lush carpet of bluebells.
© Peter Hillman ♦ 23rd April 2020 ♦ Local woods, Staffordshire ♦ Nikon D7200
© Peter Hillman ♦ 22nd April 2020 ♦ Local field, Staffordshire ♦ Nikon D7200
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan 1994
© Peter Hillman ♦ April 2011 ♦ Llandudno, Wales ♦ Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38
A misty day on the beach at Llanudno, but we can still see the pier dating from the late 1800s stretching out across the sea. The pier is the longest in Wales, being 700m (2,295ft) long. Beyond the Grand Hotel where Winston Churchill once stayed, is a glimpse of the Great Orme.
© Peter Hillman ♦ 21st April 2011 ♦ Llandudno, Wales ♦ Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38
I took this photo of the ‘Sea Serpent’ which the Vikings most likely saw it as from their longships as they approached, and where todays name originates from, as I stood on Llandudno Pier.
© Peter Hillman ♦ 18th April 2011 ♦ Llandudno, Wales ♦ Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38
Sounds like the name of a seaside pub, I know. As the sun lowers in the sky a lone gull appears to be preparing for it settled on the sea wall.
© Peter Hillman ♦ 21st April 2011 ♦ West Shore Beach, Llandudno, Wales ♦ Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38
I have a thing for shafts of sunlight as they break through cloud. It can happen and change so quickly the moment is over all too soon. And as the old saying goes, considering the goings-on around the world at present, ‘every cloud has a silver lining’.
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38
Date taken: 21st April 2011
Place: West Shore Beach, Llandudno, Wales
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Albert Einstein
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38
Date taken: 19th April 2011
Place: West Shore Beach, Llandudno, Wales
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
Rachel Carson 1952
No photo filters or effects here … this is a genuine pink sunset.
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38
Date taken: 19th April 2011
Place: West Shore Beach, Llandudno, Wales
Standing amidst the sand dunes watching the sun slip down the distant horizon is such a beautiful spectacle to behold. Soaking up the changing atmosphere as the colours of the sky and sea alter simultaneously, almost like they are melting into one another, a cooling breeze ruffling through your hair is purely awe-inspiring.
Distant gulls screech and sail through the pink and sepia flushed skies, voicing their last for the day as the light gradually fades, our star appearing to sink into the ocean afar, but rising out of the deep to brighten a new day somewhere on the opposite side of the world.
I wonder who maybe standing there in a strange far off land, as I am standing here now in the moment, marvelling at such a wonder of cosmic perfection and splendour slowly unveiling itself in reverse.
I can’t help but wonder what thoughts pass through their mind, and if they are thinking and feeling the same as I do. A star connecting two minds, as it connects us all.
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38
Date taken: 19th April 2011
Place: West Shore Beach, Llandudno, Wales
Totland Bay Pier was completed in 1880, with a small shelter at the pier head and a small amusement arcade at the shore side. It is a 450ft (137m) long cast-iron girder construction. The funds to build it were raised by the nearby Totland Hotel which has since been demolished. During the Victorian era it was used to allow paddle steamers to dock, enabling tourists to visit the area.
Sadly the bulk of the pier has now become derelict and closed to the public, but a nice little cafe has replaced the arcade shore side, and I had coffee there on a bench outside. The last time I visited here was back in the ealy 1990s, and an artist had bought it and used it as his studio. The pier aside, I really like the green-cloaked rocks on the beach.
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Nikon D7200
Date taken: 5th September 2019
Place: Totland, Isle of Wight, England
These were taken back in the autumn of 2017. I enjoyed the mysterious mood of the early morning mist as it steadily rose from the landscape with a bluish tinge.
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Nikon D7200
Date taken: 28th September 2017
Place: Staffordshire
I took this a few years ago one early summer morning. There is no post-processing here. Nature is the artist, painting the clouds and the dawn light.
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Nikon D7200
Date taken: 8th July 2017
Place: From rear garden, Staffordshire
This monster of a cloud formation which dwarfed the land below as storms roamed the area at the time, is a form of cumulus cloud called cumulus congestus.
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Nikon D7200
Date taken: 20th May 2017
Place: From rear garden, Staffordshire
These two photographs show the same stunning autumn rainbow which appeared as a part of a ‘double rainbow’ … there was a fainter one above this one. Unfortunately I had my macro lens on at the time, and I know how quickly rainbows can fade. So I grabbed my camera and took what I could. I wish I could have got the whole arching rainbow in all its magnificence … and even the one one above it, but at least I have these.
Copyright: Peter Hillman
Camera used: Nikon D7200
Date taken: 17th October 2019
Place: Rear garden, Staffordshire
“Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning”
The last day of September starts off with quite an amazing spectacle at sunrise … but ends with heavy rain coming nightfall.
Rear garden. September 2019 © Pete Hillman.
2 images of Exmouth Marina, Devon. August 2019 © Pete Hillman.
From the garden decking this morning. This September has been one of the best for sunshine here.
September 2019 © Pete Hillman.
… ah, but it is … on the third rock from the sun, planet Earth.
Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight is quite famous for its different coloured sands, and a craft tourist industry has grown up around it since early Victorian times.
Here are cliffs of sand of varying hues. The sands are coloured due to oxidised iron compounds formed under different conditions, and look great layered in shaped glass ornaments. There are usually 21 shades of sand available.
Turning your head away from these magnificent cliffs towards the sea and you will see the Needles as featured in the previous post.
September 2019 © Pete Hillman.
Of 2 photos. Alum Bay, Isle of Wight. September 2019 © Pete Hillman.
Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. September 2019 © Pete Hillman.
Exmouth, Devon. © Pete Hillman August 2019
This is another reason I realy love summer.
July 2019, local field, South Staffordshire, England. © Pete Hillman.
I crack open the window blinds and my sleep weary eyes are filled with such wonder and joy, such magic of the world and the cosmos as a new day dawns.
September 2018, rear garden, Staffordshire, England. © Pete Hillman.
On a stroll across a quieter section of beach where the tide had gone out I came across this little arrangement of rocks. They kind of reminded me of the remains of a prehistoric cairn, although this is most likely child’s play.
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Shanklin Beach, Isle of Wight, England, August 2018 © Pete Hillman.
You can’t help but see chalk cliffs wherever you go on the Isle of Wight, so I couldn’t resist getting closer to the stuff on a walk along the Ventnor coastline. Plus I have a thing about textures.
The island gets its name not from the colour white, but from ‘wight’. There are several explanations but the most likely are:
1. Around 1900 BC the Beaker people arrived – so-called from their distinctive pottery. They called the Island “Wiht” (Weight) meaning raised or what rises over the sea. Then the Romans arrived in 43AD and translated “Wiht” into the name Vectis from the Latin veho meaning “lifting”.
2. 400BC – Iron Age Celts from the Continent gave Wight its name, meaning ‘place of the division, because it is between the two arms of the Solent. It is one of the Island’s few surviving Celtic names.
So how is chalk formed? Well, from dead things of long ago.
Chalk rock (calcium carbonate), a pure form of limestone formed in warm, tropical seas about 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous Period, a time when dinosaurs roamed the planet. Microscopic marine algae, called coccoliths, lived in the ancient sea. Their shells were made of calcite. As the algae died, their bodies sunk to the sea floor and chalk sediment was deposited. Over millions of years layers of chalk sediment were deposits caused compaction of loose sediment into solid chalk rock.
There there lies your geology lesson for the day 🙂
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Isle of Wight, England, August 2018 © Pete Hillman.
This mysterious sea mist drifted in from Luccombe Bay. As soon as it appeared it disappeared. Memories of John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’ came to mind. It had quite an eerie quality to it.
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Isle of Wight, England, August 2018 © Pete Hillman.
This photo was taken during a pleasant evening’s walk along Keats Green at Shanklin. In the distance, across Sandown Bay, we can see the white chalk cliffs of Culver Down. We can just make out a tall edifice on its top. It is called the Yarborough Monument, erected in memory to Charles Anderson-Pelham, the 2nd Baron Yarborough (later first Earl of Yarborough and also Baron Worsley), founder of the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes.
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Isle of Wight, England, August 2018 © Pete Hillman.
Sandown Bay, Shanklin, Isle of Wight, England, August 2018 © Pete Hillman.
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July 2018, rear garden, Staffordshire, England. © Pete Hillman.
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July 2018, rear garden, Staffordshire, England. © Pete Hillman.
I think this goose was actually watching me! It was a beautiful start to the day again down by the lake. An easier day beckoned after walking up and down Walla Crag the day before, so what better way to spend but down by the shimmering waters of Derwentwater.
The Greylag geese were certainly enjoying themselves and cooling down.
This was beautiful stretch of shoreline, looking down the length of the lake, the humpy Catbells to the side.
Along with the geese folk were out on the water, all having some fun in the morning sun.
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July 2018, Derwentwater, Keswick, Cumbria, England. © Pete Hillman.
This is actually a shot of the River Greta which runs through Keswick. ‘Greta’ derives from the Old Norse ‘Griótá’, meaning ‘stony stream’.
I have always been fascinated with the concept of just focusing on something, a small part of something, like a patch of grass, or a section of river. I find I see more detail than if I take in the whole. This is the thing with photography, you will never ever capture that same moment again. Whatever the image it is unique, and there is such beauty in that uniqueness.
I used a slower shutter speed to capture the above image. Doing it hand-held is pretty tricky as I wanted to keep the lovely detail in the stones and the driftwood, and yet I also wanted to retain some equilibrium to capture the movement and texture within the flowing water itself. I love to see those little swirls around the stones, and the foamy splashes and silky rippliness (another word that I am not sure really exists, but sounds okay).
This was indeed a lovely spot sitting on the grassy bank, just being, and flowing with the stony stream …
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July 2018, Keswick, Cumbria, England. © Pete Hillman.
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July 2018, Derwentwater, Keswick, Cumbria, England. © Pete Hillman.
On my walk to Wall Crag I strolled along the shores of Derwentwater and came by an old friend I hadn’t seen for 18 years. We will just call him ‘The Boulder’. I don’t know why but he made an impression on me back then, and I was quite delighted when I came across him once again. Last time I visited the lake was curling around the base of him, which just shows how little rain there has been here in recent months. In the background we can see the distinctive spine of Catbells.
It is hard to tell from a photo, but this stone is fairly huge, and it kind of reminds me of one of those ancient and colossal stone-carved Olmec heads of Mesoamerica.
So to get an idea of scale yours truly has stepped into the frame. I suppose I should have taken my hat off.
The views from this side of the lake are quite spectacular with the wooded slopes of Castle Crag in the centre. It is apparently the site of an old hill fort.
And we have Catbells again with some folk relaxing around the shoreline. Onwards to Walla Crag, but you know all about that already 🙂
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July 2018, Derwentwater, Keswick, Cumbria, England. © Pete Hillman.
On the way down from the fell and passing by a traditional dry stone wall we see Clough Head on the right beyond rollling green pastures.
I thought how lonely and lost those horses looked amidst the enormity of the landscape, and had to try to capture the moment. You may have to click and double-click to see them.
Following the wall and a stoney path down the fell the vista opens up to the valley of Borrowdale where the Brockle Beck runs wild. (This all sounds kind of Lord of The Ringish, don’t you thnk?). I was so taken with the view before me which stretched out for miles and miles into the distance. Clough Head can still be seen on the right.
A glimpse of the stone wall and the path we travel, and can you see how the clouds cast shadows on the fells? I am fascinated how the changing light can transform the landscape.
Looking across Borrowdale we see the Blencathra fells, which are the most northerly in the English Lakes. It is also called ‘Saddleback’, and you can see why. Again amorphous cloud shadows shift over the face of the land.
The path takes us down the slopes towards Rakefoot. Shall we go through the gate? After you …
I had to take this shot just beyond the other side of the gate, leaning on an old dry stone wall, for besides the beauty of the scene, I was taken by all the different layers in the landscape, and the various shades of green. We see the mountain Skiddaw rise up before us like a humped behemoth, and the gentle wooded slopes of Latrigg.
Let’s keep on moving. Crossing the Brockle Beck, now on Chestnut Hill. Keswick is still 2 miles away, but it is still all downhill 🙂
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July 2018, Walla Crag, Keswick, Cumbria, England. © Pete Hillman.
I had walked a fair way around Derwentwater before getting here on the start of our journey up Walla Crag. We begin at this rather quaint and charming stone bridge called Ashness Bridge. Barrow Beck which flows beneath its arch was but a trickle after almost two months with hardly any rainfall. This is an old packhorse bridge which is said to be one of the most photographed in the Lake District.
A narrow, stoney path takes you up Walla Crag amidst lush green ferns despite the extreme dry weather. Soon the path steeply rises and magnificent views of Derwentwater and the mass of Skiddaw rising above Keswick can be seen. This panorama can suddenly take you by surprise and it does take your breath away.
Climbing higher above the lake the vista opens up further, and beyond Derwentwater can be seen Bassenthwaite Lake and an open window into Scotland on a clear day. The two lakes have merged during past flooding.
This ash tree offered some welcome shade from the baking heat of the day whilst I rested and had a spot of lunch. I couldn’t help but drink in the views.
Turning back we can just about see Ashness Bridge down below towards the left, and the magnificent splendor of Falcon Crag And Maiden Moor rising from the far shore of Derwentwater.
Further on and levelling out, and not far from my sighting of the Dark Green Fritillary butterfly (see previous post), we once again see (not that we entirely lost sight of it) this mighty mountain range rise up above the landscape. Skiddaw is the sixth highest mountain in England and it is 931-metres (3,054 ft) to the summit. It offers some of the finest views in all of the Lake District, and one that is definitely on my to do list in cooler climes in another year.
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July 2018, Walla Crag, Keswick, Cumbria, England. © Pete Hillman.
On a small stretch of the shore between the Keswick Launch and Friar’s Crag I stopped to take in the views. Above is the distinctive humps of Catbells, a name I remembered from 18 years ago, surprisingly for me. The fell rises from the western shore of the lake. The name is derived from ‘cat bield’ a place where wild cats shelter.
We have Catbells again on the left in the above and below images, showing the well-worn pathway up Skelgill Bank. On the right is Causey Pike leading out of frame, which dominates Newlands Valley where it is set. You can just see the summit ‘knobble’, even in the bottom image where Causey Pike is partly obscured by trees.
Below is looking along the lake towards the jaws of the beautifully named Borrowdale. We have Catbells again on the right and Castle Crag down the centre in the distance.
Gliding by near the water’s edge came a family of Greylag geese.
And set where it has come to lie some gnarled driftwood, like the bones of something long dead, cast near the shore’s edge.
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July 2018, Keswick, Cumbria, England. © Pete Hillman.
Friar’s Crag is a viewing promontory jutting out over the lake of Derwentwater which offers wonderful views of the surrounding fells towards Borrowdale. The top image is of Walla Crag, and will feature in a future post.
There are four islands scattered about the lake, and of these two the one on the right is called St Herbert’s Island. It is believed the name of the promontory came about by monks who embarked from the point on pilgrimage to the island.
A few yards from Friar’s Crag is a monument to John Ruskin, the artist and painter, who had very fond memories of the area which made a big impression on him. He described the view from here as one of the three most beautiful scenes in Europe. Castle Crag can be seen centre of the image below.
The images were taken on an evening as the sun was gradually lowering, and the views and atmosphere of the place certainly made a lasting impression on me. I hope you get at least some sense of what I witnessed and experienced.
July 2018, Keswick, Cumbria, England. © Pete Hillman.
This is one of the views from across Derwentwater, a large body of water in the Lake District National Park, Cumbria. The last time I visited here was 18 years ago. I wonder why I left it so long when there is so much beauty here amidst nature.
July 2018, © Pete Hillman.
Nature Journeys 