England

Millstone at Longshaw Estates

Photo of the Day

Autumn colours add magic to the forests surrounding Longshaw Estates in the Peak District and the abandoned millstones hiding beneath the trees.

More of my photos of the Peak District and the English midlands are available here.

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An abandoned millstone in the forest near Padley Gorge in Longshaw Estate, Derbyshire.


Autumn at Longshaw Estates

Photo of the Day

Though winter is almost officially upon us, I don’t presently have any newer images to fit that theme, so here’s one from a short while ago that clings to autumn and just won’t let go. These fiery leaves come to you from Longshaw Estates in the Peak district.

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Autumn Mushrooms in the Peak District

Photo of the Day

As autumn winds down, today’s photo of the day brings a bit of vestigial life in the form of some diminutive mushrooms at one of my favourite spots in the Peak District: Longshaw Estates. I’m no mycologist (yes, I had to look that up) so I’m afraid I can’t tell you what kind of fungi we’re looking at here. They’re small, they’re cute, and from the looks of it, a little bit slimy. Anyone know what species we’re dealing with or does that just describe most mushrooms?

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Mermaid Street in Rye

Photo of the Day

The most famous street in the small medieval town of Rye in East Sussex is Mermaid Street and its most famous building is the Mermaid Inn. It’s been operating for almost 600 years and is visible on the right side of this photo.

Please visit my gallery of photos from Kent and East Sussex to see more of the area.

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Photo of the Day

If you ever drew a picture of a castle when you were a kid, chances are it looked something like Bodiam Castle. The moated castle is near archetypal in its appearance. The imposing towers, the solid ramparts, the bridge and moat. It’s all just perfect. If I had any of my childhood drawings, I could probably find one that has a castle that looks just like Bodiam.

For more images of Bodiam Castle, visit my gallery of images from Southeastern England.

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The White Cliffs of Dover

Photo of the Day

The morning sun warms the brilliant chalk faces of the White Cliffs of Dover in today’s photo of the day. The spectacular coastline overlooks the English channel and either welcomes visitors coming in from Europe with a splendid sight or gives a final taste of some of England’s magnificent scenery to those departing its shores.

While walking along these iconic cliffs, clear days will yield a view of the French coastline in the distance. And while admiring the view, your phone just might beep with a misguided text message welcoming you to your respective phone network’s French services. No one called while I was there, so I managed to avoid the roaming charges.

An interesting detail here is the remnants of a recent landslide spreading parts of the cliff into the ocean.

For more photos of this beautiful part of the world, check out my photos from Southeast England.

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Canterbury Cathedral

Photo of the Day

Just as striking from a distance as it is from up close, Canterbury Cathedral glows in the last light of the day. It’s an enormous building that truly dominates the medieval town surrounding it.

This world heritage site is one of England’s best-known buildings and deservedly so. The massive gothic building has a history that dates all the way back to 597 A.D. That kind of timespan always boggles my mind and visiting a place with so many stories in its walls is one of my biggest attractions to this country.

For more images of Canterbury Cathedral, check out my gallery of images of Southeastern England.

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Leeds Castle

Photo of the Day

Today’s photo comes from my recently-published gallery of photos of Southeastern England. My time there was spent getting over a pretty nasty flu, so I didn’t make any heroic efforts to try to catch many sunrises and sunsets while there. Fortunately, the weather was generally cooperative during the day and after sleeping in a bit, I was still able o get some nice shots of the area.

This is Leeds Castle in Kent, a remarkably lovely castle. While wandering through its impeccably-manicured gardens, it’s hard to think that it was originally built for the purposes of fortification – it’s far too peaceful a place to be built in preparation for battle.

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Bridge over Brook near Alston

Photo of the Day

Last November, we stayed at one of the cottages at the Lovelady Shield Country House a couple of miles from Alston where our alarm clock was only the cows mooing in a nearby field. It was our base for exploring the Hadrian’s Wall and its surroundings, but I didn’t have to go far from the cottage to get a good view.

This bridge spanned a small brook that crossed the property and was only a few short steps from the hotel. The swirling current made for a great pattern in this long exposure as the sun sat low in the sky.

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Bridge over Brook


Staward Gorge at Allen Banks

Photo of the Day

I was looking for a photo that might be a bit more Christmasy to take us into the heart of the holiday season, but my more recent photo expeditions haven’t been to any frost-covered landscapes or snowy scenes, so we’ll have to content ourselves with something autumnal.

This image comes from Walks Woods at Allen Banks and features the fall colours flanking the river flowing through Staward Gorge.

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Allen Banks


Hadrian’s Wall at Hotbank Crags

Photo of the Day

Hadrian’s Wall rises and falls with the undulations of Hotbank Crags.

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Hotbank Crags


Hadrian’s Wall at Housesteads

Photo of the Day

I took this picture only a few feet away from the previous photo of the day, but the effect of it is pretty different. In the cool, purple of dusk, this shot really emphasizes the line that Hadrian’s Wall follows along the crags.

The Roman builders of the wall knew what they were doing. As much as they could, they used the natural cliffs and steep slopes of the land to form the better part of their defence. When the wall you’re building spans the length of an entire country, you better make sure you use every shortcut you can.

It would have been quite a spectacle to behold in its original form, but even today, it’s an impressive sight.

One funny detail I only noticed after processing the image: All the black cows are on one side of the wall and the white sheep on another. Can’t we all just get along?

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Hadrain's Wall at Dusk


Hadrian’s Wall Panorama from Housesteads Roman Fort

Photo of the Day

A brilliant, saturated sunrise rewarded my efforts to wake early and trek up the hill to get this classic shot of Hadrian’s Wall from near the Housesteads Roman Fort. I took plenty of shots from at or near this vantage point at various different times of the day, but I think this is my favourite. It captures both the detail of the wall and its snaking path along the crags while also showing some of the surrounding countryside bathed in a light that had me applauding Mother Nature.

I’ve now managed to process a few shots from this trip as well as more from the earlier visit to Scotland, so those will trickle through in the next the next little while and I’ll try to show off images from some of the top landscapes in the UK.

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Hadrian's Wall panorama


Manchester Exchange Square Panorama

Photo of the Day

Today’s image is from my current home city, Manchester and features Exchange Square and the Manchester Wheel in the evening.

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Exchange Square Panorama


Millstone at Padley Gorge

Photo of the Day

The millstones randomly scattered around Northern England’s Peak District captivate me. These weathered stones all probably have some story attached to them and who knows if anyone remembers just how they got where they are.

This mysterious stone rests beneath a picturesque tree near the edge of Padley Gorge on the Longshaw Estates National Trust property.

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Millstone at Padley Gorge


Ruin above Dovestones

Photo of the Day

This shot is another from a little walk I recently did on the edges above Dovestones reservoir in Lancashire. As I crested the rise, this tiny, ruined house and the accompanying lovely view greeted me at the top.

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Ruin above Dovestones


Padley Gorge in Longshaw Estates

Photo of the Day

On the way back from our most recent trip to Lincoln, we stopped at Longshaw Estates, a beautiful National Trust property that provides extensive opportunities for walkers to have a good stroll.

I immediately headed for the confines of Padley Gorge and peaty water cascading over mossy stones while emerald branches swayed overhead. There I found a few photo ops including the scene below.

I’ll definitely have to go back and spend a longer time there and I’m guessing it’s a pretty fine place to be when autumn arrives.

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Padley Gorge


Lincoln Cathedral Panorama

Photo of the Day

In the past few months, I’ve been through Lincoln twice now and this is one of the many shots I’ve taken of its towering cathedral. I kept gravitating towards this particular view of the great building from a spot between the cathedral and the castle.

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Lincoln Cathedral Panorama


Bodmin Moor’s Cheesewring

Photo of the Day

The Cheesewring is a rock formation sitting atop the barren hill of Stowes Hill in Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. According to good-old Wikipedia, it’s named after a cheesewring, “a press-like device that was used to make cheese.”

Almost unbelievably, this is a natural formation. No ancient astronauts came down to pile these giant stones onto one another – this is all the result of weathering. The hill has a few other strange formations like this one and there’s a stone circle not too far away as well.

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Bodmin Moor Cheesewring


Chesterton Windmill

Photo of the Day

Here’s another one of my experiments in using a single flash to light a scene in dozens of separate photos later combined. This one is of the Chesterton Windmill which stands by itself in a field not too far from Stratford-upon-Avon.

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Chesterton Windmill


Stanage Edge Millstones

Photo of the Day

These abandoned millstones sit at the base of Stanage Edge in Derbyshire near the village of Hathersage. Stanage Edge makes for a good walk with nice views of moors on one side and hills on the other, but these millstones are what captivated me.

Millstone manufacturing was a burgeoning industry in the Peak District in the 19th century and these stones are most likely a leftover from one of the factories in the area, long since shut down.

For me, there was something wonderfully mysterious about them. There was no evidence of any other structure around them – just the stones – so you naturally ask the question of how they got there.

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Stanage Edge Millstones


Ely Cathedral Window

Photo of the Day

This west-facing window on the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral caught the light of the descending sun in an extraordinary way. The whole window seemed to be set ablaze for a few moments as the sun neared the horizon. I’ve tried to capture just how bright the light looked, but I’m not sure a photograph can show just how brilliant it was.

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Ely Cathedral Lady Chapel Window


Castle Drogo Panorama

Photo of the Day

On travels in the south of England, Drogo Castle’s fortified exterior and fascinating interior (no photos allowed, unfortunately) made for an enticing stop.

This image is of the front entrance to the castle. It was a bit of a tricky shot to put together as it’s a panoramic HDR shot. I shot five bracketed exposures for each segment of the panorama, put together the HDR images then stitched the panorama. It’s all rather time consuming, but the results can be worthwhile.

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Castle Drogo


Trinity Lane in Cambridge

Photo of the Day

On a recent trip to Cambridge, the late-afternoon light was providing a brilliant backlight to the pedestrians passing through Trinity Lane. It would have been a nice enough shot without anyone in the scene, but I was sure that if I could wait for the right person to pass, the image would have a lot more interest to it.

Fortunately for me, before the light shifted and faded, the right person did indeed come along and the photo below is the result.

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Trinity Lane in Cambridge