Photos from hill and dale

click photo to enlarge
Today's photograph was taken on 1st October on an unseasonally warm and bright day with scarcely a cloud to be seen. We were walking from Settle to Knight Stainforth upstream alongside the River Ribble. The water was lower than is usual for this time of year due to a dry spell and with very little by way of breeze its surface was quite mirror-like. Looking at my photograph you could almost imagine it was high summer, such is the brightness of the light and the clarity of the scene. Only the hint of the trees turning to autumnal colours reveals the later date in the year. Weather of this kind isn't what I usually look for when I'm out with my camera; I prefer more interesting skies. And yet this light on this scene was sufficiently attractive for me to take the shot.

As I reviewed the photographs taken during our time in the Settle area I realised that a couple of days before I took this photograph we had been on the limestone above the Ribble Valley near this point. A shot I'd taken of the valley side with its medieval terrace remains emphasised by the slanting light also included this stretch of river and the prominent tree (the first of a line of five or so). If you enlarge the small photograph and look near the centre you'll see the location. What I find interesting about this pair of images, from hill and dale, is how the second photograph contextualises the first and shows the topography of the setting.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Penyghent, Stackhouse and limestone

click photo to enlarge
One of the interesting things about ageing is the perspective that it brings. As a young child I lived in Stackhouse, a small group of houses and a farm that can be barely glimpsed in the trees towards the bottom right of this photograph. Though I was small I got to know the limestone valley side behind where we lived, the cliffs, the beeches, the rowans, the bracken and the sheep that wandered over the rugged landscape. When we moved to live in Settle I continued to walk the area, and I've carried on doing so regularly ever since. As a child, even as a teenager, I wasn't aware that the valley side was slowly changing. But, as the years have passed those small changes have become more obvious.

The bracken has spread, the drystone walls are not as well maintained as they were, the sheep are not almost exclusively Swaledales and are fewer, ash saplings are multiplying in and around the outcropping limestone, and the dew pond is becoming ever more cracked and overgrown with weed. The remains of children's play - dens and the like - are no longer to be seen. Most of these changes must be a consequence of fewer sheep and an increase in the amount of time that farmers are devoting to the core business of producing meat and wool. I haven't seen children on the hills without their parents for decades; a reflection of the concerns of adults and changes in the play of youngsters. Older people can frequently be heard expressing regret at change. However, I think this frequently arises from a selfish yearning for a known past and fear of a different and constantly evolving present and future. I've found myself fascinated by the rise of "scrub" on this part of the "scar" landscape. If it doesn't take over completely the changes that it brings must enrich the wildlife that the land can support.

We recently spent a few days in the place of my upbringing. We experienced quite a bit of rain, not unusual for the area, and something that people settling there on the back of a couple of pleasant summer holidays soon have to come to terms with. However, we did have one unseasonally balmy day when the Ribble valley showed off its colourful trees, the hills could be walked in shirt sleeves and distant Penyghent could be photographed without its obscuring cap of cloud.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Beech woods

click photo to enlarge

Beech is a woodland tree. It is less frequently found as a single specimen in a hedgerow or growing alone somewhere. However, in some places it can be seen as a landmark tree signalling a crossroads or a boundary. On the Lincolnshire Wolds it was used to line some of the old drove roads, and in Yorkshire it is often planted around hill farms. When beech grows in a close-canopy wood it is tall, up to 140 feet, with trunks that are relatively free from branches. Where single specimen trees do grow, however, they are shorter with very large crowns - the so-called "deer park beech."

The examples in today's photograph near Stackhouse, North Yorkshire, are part of a small wooded area on steeply sloping pasture with outcropping limestone. The trees' canopy has kept the ground damp allowing moss to grow over the grey stone, something that doesn't happen higher up the slope where the only shade comes from bracken and the occasional rowan. This woodland must have been planted here to make use of an otherwise quite unproductive area. Beech can manage quite well on thin, rocky soil, as this photograph that I took in Lancashire shows. The hamlet of Stackhouse would find these trees a good source of fuel, but also useful for furniture, tool handles and other strong wooden articles. In medieval times oak and beech were the main trees involved in the system known as pannage. This was the right to pasture mainly pigs in woodland so that they could eat the acorns and beech mast. In a thinly wooded area such as this there would be slim pickings for any foraging swine, but in the bigger, denser woods of, say, the Weald, it would be very worthwhile.

I have a fondness for beech trees, and as well as the Lancashire example noted above I've photographed this clump and this beech wood edge in autumn.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 250
Exposure Compensation:  -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On