Just a Few Yards Upriver
It wasn’t the most productive of Peak District afternoons. So far, we’d got up late - after a very long Saturday when the oil had been burned at both ends - and wandered into the centre of Buxton for a restorative pint of Neck Oil at a sunny bench outside the King’s Head, before returning via a snack based foray at the local Sainsbury’s to our rented cottage to watch the last day of the Premier League season on the TV. It was hot outside, and with a plain blue sky on a Sunday afternoon we quickly surmised that landscape photography could take a back seat until after the football - even though the outcome of the latter seemed all but certain. For the evening, once the final knockings were complete, we had a plan.
Among the forty or more locations where I sunk pins into the map before coming to the area, some were pleasingly close to the handsome market town in which we were based. We’d already visited one of them for a grand Flickr gathering before sunrise the previous morning, and another almost immediately after arriving here on Friday evening at the end of nine and a half gruelling hours on the road. More of those to follow. And while we were tempted to return to Hitter Hill for sunset, we agreed that after such a lethargic day, the Three Shires Waterfall might offer rather more in the way of photographic opportunities. All we had to hope was that the good burghers of the three counties might have disappeared by the time we arrived so that we could concentrate on our compositions without unwanted distractions and interventions in the two hours leading up until sunset.
We might as well have wished for the moon to be made of cheese. By 7pm, the deep river valley was well and truly in shadow as we’d expected. Surely by now, with no sun to bathe in, the local weekend hedonists might be heading for home? But no, around the bridge and the bathing area below the waterfalls, they gathered in numbers, filling the space we hoped to point our cameras at. While I headed straight into the foray and clambered down a rocky platform to the water to get something in the bag from the main draw, Dave and Lee didn’t even bother to stop, continuing past the bridge to see what else lay further along the river.
Later, I’ll come back to my efforts among the masses, but for now I’m going to whisk you forward twenty minutes or so, by which point I had decided to see what the other two were up to. Either they’d found something to photograph, or they’d decided to wait for the chaos to settle and eat what they’d found in Sainsbury’s earlier. I found them sitting on the riverbank just above the bridge, chewing on sandwiches and gazing hopefully at a small waterfall just a little further along, beneath a modest beech tree, currently out of bounds, thanks to the presence of a young couple with a picnic table and furtive expressions. Even in the spaces beyond the main attraction here it seemed we’d have to be patient. Whether the waterfall would be worth the wait, none of us were sure, but it was worth a closer examination - or at least it would be once the trysting pair had moved on and found a nearby hotel in which to carry on with their wooing.
Eventually, the young woman set forth from the space beneath the tree, armed with folding chairs, him following closely, balancing the picnic table on one side with the empty hamper on the other. We watched carefully, if only to see where they’d crossed the river, and once they’d departed for the long trudge back up the valley to the road, Dave slipped across and set up his tripod. Lee and I soon followed - both of us considerably shorter of limb than my brother, who’d made it look easy. Somewhere in my memory I summoned up the mighty leap that earned a podium place in the fourth year boys long jump final at school sports day in the summer of 1980 and made it across without incident, only to watch Lee attempt the same and come squelching ashore with one soggy foot.
Once I’d finished laughing, I set up the tripod and zoomed into the fall, an intimate scene where ferns spread their green tendrils out from the black bank towards a simmering white crescendo. Here in the borderlands, just a few yards upriver from the splashing hoots of the late crowd was a different world, where few stopped to admire the simple beauty. The wait had been worthwhile, and perhaps now we could move on to the area below the bridge that we’d come for.
Just a Few Yards Upriver
It wasn’t the most productive of Peak District afternoons. So far, we’d got up late - after a very long Saturday when the oil had been burned at both ends - and wandered into the centre of Buxton for a restorative pint of Neck Oil at a sunny bench outside the King’s Head, before returning via a snack based foray at the local Sainsbury’s to our rented cottage to watch the last day of the Premier League season on the TV. It was hot outside, and with a plain blue sky on a Sunday afternoon we quickly surmised that landscape photography could take a back seat until after the football - even though the outcome of the latter seemed all but certain. For the evening, once the final knockings were complete, we had a plan.
Among the forty or more locations where I sunk pins into the map before coming to the area, some were pleasingly close to the handsome market town in which we were based. We’d already visited one of them for a grand Flickr gathering before sunrise the previous morning, and another almost immediately after arriving here on Friday evening at the end of nine and a half gruelling hours on the road. More of those to follow. And while we were tempted to return to Hitter Hill for sunset, we agreed that after such a lethargic day, the Three Shires Waterfall might offer rather more in the way of photographic opportunities. All we had to hope was that the good burghers of the three counties might have disappeared by the time we arrived so that we could concentrate on our compositions without unwanted distractions and interventions in the two hours leading up until sunset.
We might as well have wished for the moon to be made of cheese. By 7pm, the deep river valley was well and truly in shadow as we’d expected. Surely by now, with no sun to bathe in, the local weekend hedonists might be heading for home? But no, around the bridge and the bathing area below the waterfalls, they gathered in numbers, filling the space we hoped to point our cameras at. While I headed straight into the foray and clambered down a rocky platform to the water to get something in the bag from the main draw, Dave and Lee didn’t even bother to stop, continuing past the bridge to see what else lay further along the river.
Later, I’ll come back to my efforts among the masses, but for now I’m going to whisk you forward twenty minutes or so, by which point I had decided to see what the other two were up to. Either they’d found something to photograph, or they’d decided to wait for the chaos to settle and eat what they’d found in Sainsbury’s earlier. I found them sitting on the riverbank just above the bridge, chewing on sandwiches and gazing hopefully at a small waterfall just a little further along, beneath a modest beech tree, currently out of bounds, thanks to the presence of a young couple with a picnic table and furtive expressions. Even in the spaces beyond the main attraction here it seemed we’d have to be patient. Whether the waterfall would be worth the wait, none of us were sure, but it was worth a closer examination - or at least it would be once the trysting pair had moved on and found a nearby hotel in which to carry on with their wooing.
Eventually, the young woman set forth from the space beneath the tree, armed with folding chairs, him following closely, balancing the picnic table on one side with the empty hamper on the other. We watched carefully, if only to see where they’d crossed the river, and once they’d departed for the long trudge back up the valley to the road, Dave slipped across and set up his tripod. Lee and I soon followed - both of us considerably shorter of limb than my brother, who’d made it look easy. Somewhere in my memory I summoned up the mighty leap that earned a podium place in the fourth year boys long jump final at school sports day in the summer of 1980 and made it across without incident, only to watch Lee attempt the same and come squelching ashore with one soggy foot.
Once I’d finished laughing, I set up the tripod and zoomed into the fall, an intimate scene where ferns spread their green tendrils out from the black bank towards a simmering white crescendo. Here in the borderlands, just a few yards upriver from the splashing hoots of the late crowd was a different world, where few stopped to admire the simple beauty. The wait had been worthwhile, and perhaps now we could move on to the area below the bridge that we’d come for.