Elterwater, Lake District, Summer
After a seriously dry and hot April/May—as noted by the MetOffice—June has proved to be more tropical and, well, wet.
In the last week or so we’ve had mid-20°C heat combined with thunder and lightning (very very frightening), and heavy downpours of rain.
It seems to me, an enthusiastic amateur of meteorology, that the UK is increasingly experiencing more tropical summers: humid, hot, and wet. Climate change, yo.
After extensive, and perhaps obsessive, checks on various weather services, Lisabet and I decided to venture into the Lake District for a decent post-work summer hike. We chose a favourite of ours, and a generally popular trail: Skelwith Bridge to Elterwater village, via Elter Water the lake.
Thankfully our weather chimping paid off. There was no rain, barely any wind, puffy clouds everywhere and hardly anyone around. I’ve never seen Skelwith Bridge and Elterwater so bereft of people during the summer.
All photos shot on a Fujifilm X-T2 with a 16–50mm f/3.5–5.6 lens, using a customised Classic Chrome film simulation.
This is Skelwith Force, one of my favourite Lake District waterfalls. It’s not very big at all, maybe a 15ft drop, but the force of water through it is powerful, especially after heavy rain.
This is an attempt at a 6-shot panorama, scanning right to left. I wanted to capture the whole span of Skelwith Force in one image. The individual photos were edited in Capture One, then manually blended together in Affinity Photo.
The astonishing view you get when exiting Force How Woods from Skelwith Bridge. The open fields of Birk Rigg Park and the magnificent peaks of the Langdale Pikes.
Not pictured: all the horseflies bumping into me.
It’s hard to stop shooting compositions involving the Langdale Pikes around here.
And then there’s “the view”… this is Elter Water, with the Langdale Pikes almost perfectly reflected in it. Elter Water’s one of the smaller lakes in the Lake District, but no less spectacular. Its name, like a lot of Northern England places, comes from Old Norse: elptr/alpt, which means “swan”, and vatn, meaning “lake”, giving us “lake of swans”.
Someone left a towel by the shore of Elter Water. And below it, the charred earth signifying a fire or BBQ. Clean up after yourselves.
The bridge over Great Langdale Beck at Elterwater Village.
I spotted this composition in the distance and though my main lens only zooms in to 50mm I had to try and shoot it anyway. A lone horse in between the woods with the crags of Loughrigg Fell above. I had to crop in quite a lot.
The way back to Skelwith Bridge, with the sun start to dip and giving us those deliciously long shadows and warm light.
Perfect reflections of Wetherlam (763 m/2502 ft) in the River Brathay.