At the End of The Roaches - a photo on Flickriver

            It had been a very enjoyable four days.  Admittedly we might have chosen a better time of year - autumn golds and August heather spring to mind - but no matter, we’d made the best of the conditions and had a happy time exploring the Peak District.  In the four days and one evening, we visited barely a quarter of the places where I’d jabbed virtual pins into the online map, so there’s plenty left that remains to be discovered.  But we were happy enough with the locations we’d chosen and a follow up visit in the future remains a distinct possibility.  Actually I’ve been back twice already - sort of - but that’s another story from another adventure.  

Among the near misses as far as locations go were the Roaches and neighbouring Hen Cloud, with their repeating forms and offers of foreground rocks through which to point the camera towards the light.  On this last evening we might have managed to make it up onto the ridge, but we’d come here directly from the nearby Ramshaw Rocks and time was starting to run out on us.  I suspect one could easily lose an hour or three up there trying to perfect a foreground with the wide angle lens.  At least down by the barn things should be a bit more straightforward, and the high ground would still be there for another adventure.  So the barn it would be, at the end of the Roaches.  By the time we arrived, we had a little under an hour and a half to try and make sense of things. 

Roach End Barn seemed a fitting place to finish this visit to the area.  Just a handful of miles from our Buxton base, it was delightfully peaceful on a gently smouldering Tuesday evening towards the end of May.  Not a single person was around to interrupt us as we plodded contentedly about the fields, trying to work out the best angle from which to shoot the dilapidated old barn.  With space to work on our compositions without getting in each other’s way, our three paths quickly diverged. I stood and frowned at the brown, softly lit building from the side.  I frowned even harder when I contemplated it front on.  I climbed the steep edge of the field along the line of the drystone wall, trying a focus stack or two.  But nothing really seemed to be working.  

Lee had vanished, taking photographs of a three legged tree as we later discovered.  You may need to find his award winning picture of a fifty foot tall headless green sheep under a glowing sky to understand that one.  Eventually I ended up alongside Dave, ignoring the barn completely, our cameras low to the ground and pointed at the same lone sycamore while the colours in the sky intensified and deepened into the golden hour.  The foreground grasses, so much easier to compose than the thousands of unique rock formations above, were a photographer’s dream to work with.  A patch of clear sky hovered over our subject, full of simmering colour, while bluish clouds filled all else except for the thin gap at the edge of the horizon.  As the sun finally descended from the shroud to nestle behind a group of distant hilltop trees, the unexpected moment arrived.  The icing on an already well decorated cake.  What a perfect evening to be in the heart of England’s gentle green landscape.  It seemed we were being rewarded for those two ridiculously early starts, especially the cold Mam Tor morning on the previous day when in the absence of any light to speak of, we’d had to think in black and white.

On the way back along the Roaches Road, under the trees below Hen Cloud we saw a motorhome parked in the long layby, and there wasn’t much doubt that the owners were here for the night.  As we headed north towards Merseyside for the second part of our adventure the next morning, little did I imagine the sight of it might sew a germ of inspiration that would bring me back here again just a few weeks later.  On what turned out to be an even more colourful evening than this one.  But there’s that other story I mentioned earlier.  You might need to look back at two of the last three posts if you want to see what happened!

Taken in: UK / England / Staffordshire Moorlands / Leekfrith (show map)

Taken on: May 21, 2024

Tags:

pink sky

pink

Roach End

Staffordshire

Peak District

Peak

District

countryside

United Kingdom

Great Britain

Britain

England

Canon

Sunset

glow

landscape

landscape photography

trees

tree

sycamore

evening

summer evening

vista

Leek

Buxton « less

Sets appears in: • Peak District • Peak District and Merseyside Trip 2024

Groups appears in: • Outdoor Photographer Magazine (Unofficial) • Peak District Online more » • Your Peak District Experience • Photography Week • Amateur Photographer Magazine • Flickr Social • Trees UK « less

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, f/14.0, 1/5 sec, 62mm, ISO 400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Lens:	EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
Aperture:	f/14.0
Exposure Time:	0.2 sec (1/5)
Focal Length:	62mm
ISO:	400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 13.5 (Windows)
Show full info

Stats: 1,073 views / 45 comments

Link to this photo view:
Link to this photo large view: