Very stylish lady in the second. Now if only she had been walking past the heart in the first... 😁

Black Brook to Heapey Moor In Miserable Conditions

The weather here in northern England has been pretty miserable over the last week, lots of wind, rain and very, very dull light. I did manage to get out during a brief period of calm and decided to have a wander around White Coppice, a local spot that it seems I haven't visited in ages due to spending my free time galavanting around the Anglezarke woods to capture what I could of the autumn colours.

On this particular trip, I was faced with a choice of taking the regular path up to the moors, or following Black Brook. The former is something of a dull slog, with what views there are hidden behind you, but it's a reliable and simple route that's typically not too muddy, whereas the latter is a narrow river gorge, with a lot more interesting details, but it requires a fair bit of scrambling if you don't want to leave the gorge and use the path that runs alongside it. Its main disadvantage is the scrambling is mostly over slimy black rocks which offer less traction than the surface of a teflon coated frying pan.

Of course I chose the latter, but hadn't mentally prepared myself for just how slippy it would be, so it took the best part of two hours carefully negotiating the slippery surface to reach the point where the gorge opens out into a wider valley where I would leave the brook and head up onto the moors (albeit briefly).

I didn't want to be bogged down with heavy cameras or a tripod, so the camera of choice for this trip was the little Fuji X-T50 (I did consider the OM1, but plumped for the better IQ of the Fuji over the ruggedness of the OM, although if rain had been expected, the OM would have been my pick). I did consider just bringing this along with the 27mm Fuji lens, which is a combination tiny enough to fit in my jacket pocket, but I didn't want to be stuck with just a 40mm equivalent, so my bag of primes came along to mostly get in the way while scrambling over the rocks, although I did start getting out a variety of lenses other than the 27mm once I'd left the confines of the gorge. I have no filters that fit the Fuji primes, so there's no CPL action going on here, which is probably just as well given how horrendously dull the light was on this day. I even had to bump up the ISO to the 2nd gain point (640) more than a few times, but all of the images shown here were taken at base ISO.

All images were taken hand held and processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23, with the files nobbled using EXIFTool to look like X-T5 so that my current version of C1P doesn't turn its nose up at them.

Looking back to White Coppice

At this point I'd just left the safety of the path through the old quarry via that rocky ledge on the right and was now picking my way along the river itself.

The Tree

I know I'm getting somewhere when this tree emerges from the bank. Now is this the first tree or the second? As you can see, the bit of a path on the left sort of runs out here, so the options are crossing the brook to the other side or scrambling up the steep bank.

On The Rocks

This is a little further upstream, just beyond the bit of a path shown on the left of the previous picture where I'm about to cross the stream. It's not particularly wide at this point and I could just about stride across, but I'd be putting my weight forward and my foot down on a surface that may well have a very low coefficient of friction which could lead to implanting my teeth in the rocks on the far side, so I proceeded very carefully and probably looking somewhat arthritically to any casual observers who stumbled across me at the time. I'm sure I used to just stride across this river with very little care only a couple of years ago.

Downstream

Looking downstream towards White Coppice again, having once again crossed the river via some more ultra low friction rocks.

Leaving The Brook

At this point it was time to leave the brook and head up onto the moor. This shot was taken part way up the slope and once more looks downstream.

Great Hill From The Edge Heapey Moor

There's a crumbling dry stone wall that encircles White Coppice. A similar wall encircles Black Coppice, both descend steep slopes to meet at the brook, which is in itself the common boundary between the two. The White Coppice wall marks its boundary against the open expanse of Heapey Moor.

I followed this wall up the steep slope of White Coppice to the ruins of Coppice Stile that sit roughly at the highest point where the wall meets the main moorland path I chose to ignore at the beginning of this walk.

Along the way there are various gaps in the wall where lack of maintenance has allowed the wall to tilt on the peaty surface it was built upon and slowly collapse. This was taken at one such gap just below Coppice Stile, where there's a nice view of Great Hill. The 27mm lens made Great Hill look somewhat distant and tiny against the gap in the wall, so I swapped over to the 56mm and took a few steps back to reframe it in the gap.

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Just brilliant shot.

I love this one. But whole series is striking.

This is a set of extraordinary beauty. So lucky to live in such an environment. These three stand out.

These are some impressive photographs but my god, kill me before asking me to go to one of those gigs!

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore...

It'll be spring before we know it. That's a pretty shot.

Pretty cool game taking advantage of the insane angle of view that the 12mm lens gives us.

I am tempted by the Laowa 9mm FF lens. Imagine that for this shot.

What an incredibly beautiful place. Beautifully photographed obviously.

These guys look really wicked, buy I am sure they are the nicest chaps you could ever meet. Your music pictures are so full of movement.

Great atmosphere and symbolism in this shot.

Those snappy red shoes are a real eye magnet.

I love the way you deal with bad weather. This first shot is my pick from these.

As we get older stuff we did easily ten years ago seem dangerous, as I discovered on the walk I did two weeks ago over crumbly sandy rock. Maybe we lose some confidence in Vibram soles gripping. I have found Vibram has zero grip on ice, last week my wife's Gucci wellies were better than my mountain boots.

It's tense! Seems high, don't like heights...

Sun and snow, what an uplifting combination. Neither of that here...

Lovely views, especially with sun shining. Avalanches though are warning that this beauty can be lethal.