overflowing

We had some sunshine today between the deluges so I decided to go down to the River Irthung at Willowford and see how the water was flowing.

As I turned into to track to Willowford Farm I could hear the waterfall roaring, I've not yet managed to find a safe way down to this fall and today definately wasn't the one to try it.

Lots of repair works to Hadrian's Wall going on and much of the Wall is covered with tarpaulin while the traditional lime mortar fixes.
Essential work but no good for photographs.

The sun was shining as I headed down the steps towards Willowford Bridge, at this time of the year the sun is low and today at midday it was shining directly down towards the bridge.

I headed south and tried some different shots, trying to get some long exposure shots without any real success.

Typical of the day the rain started and in the darkening sky in front of me a rainbow appeared.

I hadn't brought an umbrella and the filters were getting covered in raindrops. I was frantically trying to dry them off to catch a photograph of the rainbow over the bridge. Managed one with just a few rainspots that I was able to clone out.

The cloud covered the sun so I moved to the north side of the bridge, the water there was showing whitecaps.

I just got set up when down came the rain again. This time I was facing diretly into the rain and had to cover the camera, shame because the light was lovely. Eventually I managed to take a photograph, then two walkers crossed the bridge but alas by then my filters were covered in rain again.

Spent a little bit of time seeing how many fossils had been washed down by the torrent of water, some very large stones had sea shell fossils but they're too big to move.

Amazing to pick up something that was a sea bed millions of years ago.

Apparently I missed the canoeists coming down the River Irthing, at least someone is glad of all this water.

Eventually I wandered back home, stopping at the House of Meg in Gilsland for a warming cup of coffee. Andrew has just won an award in the Cafe section of the Ethical Good Food Awards 2009, congratulations to him and his team. Wonder if the resident ghost Meg Teasdale (Walter Scott's Meg Merrilees) helped influence the judges :)

Take care and stay safe