Stenkrith Park, Cumbria, Winter
By the gods, there has been a lot of rain.
By the gods, there has been a lot of rain.
It’s made getting out for some winter hiking difficult, if not impossible. In decades past, the Lake District was more known for a lurking misty drizzle that saturated everything. With climate change ever more present, these days rain in Cumbria crashes down in sheets of massive downpours, overwhelming infrastructure and rivers alike.
Finally, after careful cross-examination of various weather services, there appeared to be a gap in all the rain. We quickly made our way to an area not only familiar to us but that also had the best chance of some clear skies: Stenkrith Park in Kirkby Stephen.
It felt good to be out.
All photos taken on my Fujifilm X-T2 using my Vivitar “Series 1” 28–105mm f2.8–3.8 zoom and Laowa 9mm ultra-wide prime lenses. Shot using the camera’s Pro Negative Standard film emulation. RAWs developed in Capture One for iPad, and finalised in Affinity Photo 2 for iPad.
Stenkirth Park, Cumbria, Winter by Ian Cylkowski is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The crown of Stenkrith Park, known as the Devil’s Grinding Mill. Here the River Eden takes a sharp bend and has carved a deep and narrow gorge, dropping in several stages below the Millennium Bridge. It’s a spectacular sight, but I’ve never seen this much water flowing through. It was roaring.
We followed the Northern Viaduct trail towards the village of Hartley, the trees now bare. Winter afternoon light showed the way forward.
From atop Podgill Viaduct there are excellent views all the way to the Northern Pennines. Their summits never escaped the clouds.
Looking the other way from Podgill Viaduct. The bare trees allow the shape of the meandering beck to be more visible, making a stronger leading line towards the hills.
Kirkby Stephen’s always a pleasure to visit. We stopped for lunch and a potter around some of the charity shops, before relocating the River Eden for the return stretch of the walk.
Quintessential British quirkiness or a scene of horror? You decide!
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The Storr, Isle of Skye, Autumn
My favourite place on this earth: the Isle of Skye, Scotland.
Hello, readers! It’s been a while.
We’ve just returned from a fortnight around my favourite place on this earth: the Isle of Skye, Scotland.
This is the fourth time we’ve been to the island now; the last time was in 2019 (last year), which was an… interesting time for us as I was diagnosed and then hospitalised with Type II Diabetes.
One year on I’ve put my Diabetes into remission, I’m off the medication, and I’m seven stone lighter.
Huzzah!
Back to this year’s trip; I managed to shoot about 25 Gb of photos, which has took me the whole afternoon to back up and organise. But I knew, even when organising my catalog of images, that the first ones I wanted to edit was our sunrise hike up to The Storr.
The Storr (An Stòr in Scottish Gaelic, meaning “the big”) is the highest point on the Trotternish Peninsula of Skye (719 m/2,359 ft), featuring gentle slopes on its western flank to the summit and then sheer cliffs and otherworldly rock formations on its eastern flank. It’s part of the Trotternish landslip, which is the longest landslip in Great Britain.
Just below the cliffs of the Storr is an area known as the Sanctuary, which houses incredible towers and pinnacles of rock including the most famous one: the Old Man of Storr, a solitary finger of rock 164 ft high.
We woke up before sunrise and began the steep ascent up to the Storr with the sun slowly catching up with us. What followed was a gradual reveal of a temperature inversion below us, spreading out across the sea as we climbed into the Sanctuary above.
A magical experience I’ll never forget.
All photos shot on my Fujifilm X-T2 with a combination of my Samyang 35mm f/1.2 and new Laowa 9mm f/2.8 lenses, using a customised Pro Negative Standard film profile.
The steep ascent up to the Storr. Whilst not technically challenging, it is a short and steep hike; you end up climbing 1,100 ft in less than a mile, about an average of a 33% gradient incline. Phew! Thankfully the infrastructure around the Storr has massively improved over the years and most of the paths are properly pitched and laid out.
The view looking back down. As the sun rose a temperature inversion formed, quickly covering the sea and land below us. An absolutely magical moment.
Tendrils of fog and mist gently caressed the cliffs of the Storr and burned off just as quickly.
Getting closer to the cliffs of the Storr as the fog started to burn off from the rising sunlight. My aim was to take the path down to the left here, so I could get behind all the Sanctuary formations for a composition I had in mind.
I got my 35mm/f1.2 out for a closer look up at the sheer cliff faces of the Storr, a little bit of mist clinging to the tops. Above, ravens cawed around the clifftops
The composition I was primarily after. Centre-left is the most famous rock formation in the area: the Old Man of Storr, a solitary rock pinnacle measuring 164 ft from base to tip. The rising sun just started to peak over the right-hand side, catching some of the grass and the face of the Old Man.
A closer view of the Old Man, shot with my Samyang 35mm. I wish there was a person standing around the base of the Old Man, to provide a sense of scale and context.
I clambered around the base of the pinnacles to get this composition of Needle Rock.
A clearer view of Needle Rock. I’ve recently acquired a Venus Optics “Laowa” 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D lens, possibly the widest ultra-wide APS-C prime lens on the market, and it has opened up a whole new world of compositions for me.
The more “classic” or “traditional” view of the Sanctuary rocks below the cliffs of the Storr. The temperature inversion was thickening up, along with the cloud cover, but a bit of sunrise light broke through to illuminate the scene.
One of the best compositions I managed to nab from our sunrise hike around the Storr. I was thankful for the conditions, the light, and of course the incredible scenery.
A view of the other side of the Old Man of Storr. There’s a lot of scree to be dodged around the Sanctuary.
More photos to come of some of the other areas we hiked around Skye. Stay tuned!