After spending a long weekend staycation in the Lake District, and arriving home around Monday lunchtime, I thought it would be worth a trip out to try and find a atmospheric, cloudy scene to photograph somewhere within a reasonable travel time from my home.
I plumbed for Crummock Water and Buttermere, thinking that the low cloud would be present whisking up and over the surrounding fells. As I drove along the edge of Crummock Water a serious lack of any low cloud was a big disappointment, but this was overshadowed by the sheer number of people about, the end of Crummock Water was awash with people swimming in the lake, having pick-nicks, or just sitting enjoying the location.
Time for plan B, onward to Buttermere, but having just witnessed the scene at Crummock, I was sure that Buttermere would be a lot more busy. Surprise, surprise driving through Buttermere village was a solid traffic jam, the road was littered with parked cars, and many hundreds of people could be seen walking along the lakes edges. Time for Plan C, which i did not have.
I decided to drive over Kirkstone Pass and head to Borrowdale, the road was very busy over the pass, meanwhile I was racking my brain has to where I could go, eventually I decided to park in Stonethwaite and head up towards Gelleny Force Falls to see if I could find anything to photograph. I parked the car well down the valley and set off walking along the Cumbrian Way towards the falls, I noticed that the campsite on the far side of the river was very busy, perhaps the busiest that I have ever seen it.
As I walked along I noticed a little stream coming down Willygrass Gill, from Dock Tarn high above us, I could here the water further up the Gill, so I decided to investigate to see if there were any possibilities of a decent photo. I found two interesting small falls and set about picking out a composition from the scene in front of me, coming away with two reasonable images, one of which can been seen below.
Back down the Gill, then up towards the falls, when I arrived there were loads of people swimming in the rock pools enjoying the summers day, this meant that I overlooked some locations as there were simply too many people around, not that this was an issue, after all they have as much right to be there as I do.
I then took the right hand path over the bridge and climbed up the slope to investigate the falls looking for a image. I set up to photograph an interesting fall as there were leaves stuck to the rocks behind the falling water. I was just about to take an image when a group of 15 to 20 males descended upon the scene, they were very boisterous, insisting on banging on a drum constantly and singing/shouting constantly at each other, the joys.
Whilst I waited patiently for them to move, I noticed the attire they were wearing, quite worrying really, footwear consisted plimsolls, and flip-flops, clothing was high fashion trousers and tee-shirts. Worrying if the weather changed!
After about 30 minutes, they had their fun and left the scene from where I captured a couple of images, after processing these most did not make the cut, the one image that did was one of the water cascading over the upper most rocks, which can be seen blow.
I arrived home around 5.30 pm, 5 hours after leaving earlier in the day, all for the sum total of 3 photographs, the joys of landscape photography.
